This study follows our previous NAER-sponsored research on establishing a program for creating English abstracts for Taiwan’s humanities and social sciences(H&SS) books to advance global scholarly conversation as well as to advance Taiwan’s visibility in the global academic arena. The former study was based on in-depth interviews with experts and stakeholders from academia, professional translation, publishing industries, indexing and abstracting, and other related government sectors. Drawing on the conclusion and recommendations from the previous study, this project aims at the implementation-level analyses. The goal is to look for guidelines that will contribute to best abstracting practices in the future. Fifteen H&SS publications were selected for the pilot study of creating longer English abstracts. The practices and problems of the authors, abstractors, and translators were recorded and analyzed to inform future implementation. Further, due to the lack of existing guidance on abstracting for humanities research, this study interviewed fifteen active humanities researchers to understand the needs for and requirements of an informative and fully functional abstract. The findings may shed lights on the creation of abstracts for humanities and will enhance the scholarly communication in the fields. Specifically, the objectives of this study include:
To create longer English abstracts for a number of H&SS publications written in Chinese to observe if the current way can bring high-quality abstract
To analyze the abstracts to see what of the products needs to be improved
To analyze the problems encountered during the process and to propose solutions
To articulate the needs of and requirements for humanities abstract to better inform future abstracting work for those fields
Fifteen H&SS research publications that were sponsored by the National Academy for Educational Research were selected for our studies. Following the recommendations from the previous research, the selected publications collectively demonstrated a focus on Taiwan and contained different forms of narratives (i.e., a single work or a compilation of research papers). The researchers analyzed the review records created by the abstractors and interviewed the translators to categorize the problems that may emerge in the English abstract production process. In addition, based on the interviews with fifteen humanities researchers, this study systematically summarized the features of a sound abstract for humanities work and the analysis may be used to guide future abstracting work. The conclusion of this research includes:
The professional editing for Chinese abstracts is important in creating longer English abstracts;
The experiences learned in the creation of longer English abstracts are valuable references for translators;
Some guidance for creating abstracts are summarized;
More communications between team members are needed and the translators payment should be raised;
The abstracts for humanities works have unique features in contents and writing style;
The humanities researchers have for and against opinions toward structured abstract.
Finally, this research suggests that the longer English abstract should be customary created through the perspectives of international communication and advanced by disciplines and by stages. It also suggests that the “rewriter” should be created in the process, continue building academic terms database and cultivate new translation talent.