Solitude and breakthroughs in translation studies research

I am writing this essay with the intention to share my research experience with novice researchers in translation studies. Specifically, I would like to take on the issues of solitude and breakthroughs. In the humanities, doing research can be a lonely process. Unlike experimental scientific research, humanities disciplines often require us to read, think, and write on our own. It is exactly the individual creative or reflective experience and the researcher’s receptivity and sensitivity that contribute to the uniqueness of humanistic literature. I started feeling this sense of academic loneliness in my doctoral study in England. Although there was a research group in my department, each of us in that group, coming from different countries, did very specialized research. We could give each other support, but we were very much on our own in dealing with occasional depression when none of our peers quite knew what we were working on.