Dr. James Hadley

James Hadley studied a dual degree of Japanese and computing as his undergraduate. He then went on to study a master's degree in Buddhist Studies before moving on to a second master's degree in translation studies. In 2013, he completed his PhD in translation studies with a thesis challenging the hegemony of a small number of translation theories and cultural contexts in translation studies research outputs. After completing his PhD, James moved to China, where he taught and continued researching translation studies. He then became the translation studies researcher for the University of London's School of Advanced Study before moving to Dublin to take up his current post.

  Asian Languages/Literature   Asian Religions   Chinese Language/Literature   Creative Arts   English Language/Literature   European History   History of Philosophy   Japanese history of the Tokugawa period   Japanese Language/Literature   Language and/or Literature, Medieval   Language and/or Literature, Modern   Language and/or Literature, Non-Fiction   Language and/or Literature, Renaissance   Language and/or Literature, Translation   Language and/or Literature, Victorian   Linguistic analyses of contemporary literature   Linguistics   Literature and cultural history of the Enlightenment   Medieval Europe   Non-Western History   Sociolinguistics   Translation   Translation studies

James' research has had a formative effect over several emerging aspects of translation studies. His work focuses predominantly on literary translation, and especially on phenomena which have historically been under-researched. James' work stands out in the field for his use of digital humanities methods to increase academic rigour, along with his use of the scientific method in a subject area which has historically been characterised by subjectivity. He began by correlating the publications of translations of European works in Japanese against world events, identifying possible impacts each had on the other. His work then shifted on to focus on indirect translation, the very widespread phenomenon of translating works which are themselves translations. Indirect translation has only recently attracted sustained scholarly attention. James wrote a book and several articles proposing new hypotheses and demonstrating new methods for analysing and comparing indirect translations with one another and with direct translations. Some of these texts have since become foundational to this sub-field. More recently, James' expertise in the interplay of literary translation and computing have made his work highly sought-after in the context of the new sub-field called Computer-Assisted Literary Translation (CALT). Having organised events, co-edited books, collaborated widely on research projects, and authored and co-authored journal articles on this rapidly developing but still poorly understood sub-field, James' voice has come to be sought after in bringing clarity to questions related to the use of technology in literary translation. Since the widespread emergence of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, this subject has become fertile ground for wild speculation, based on a generally poor understanding of the mechanics, limitations and most efficient ways of using these tools. James' ability to test and explain the implications of tool use for practice, theory and industry are, therefore, valued by scholars and practitioners, alike.