No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Verbal Reports
Abstract
This chapter describes the methodological framework related to the use of verbal reports to elicit data on mental processing as outlined by Ericsson and Simon, discusses relevant research evidence in translation process research (TPR), and highlights the need for systematic methodological research on verbal reports in translation studies. It introduces the basic assumptions of Ericsson and Simon's “theory of verbalization” to discuss its application and potential problems in relation to investigating translation processes. Then, an overview of the existing methodological studies in TPR, focusing on concurrent verbal reports (think-aloud) and retrospection is presented. The chapter also provides an overview and describes the state of the art of using verbal reports in TPR and identifies potential areas for further research and theoretical exploration. It focuses on written translation, although verbal reports are used in interpreting research as well; and orally produced verbal reports, although written retrospective reports could also be regarded as verbal reports.
... Por otro lado, también se han aducido posibles contradicciones entre epistemología y metodología de investigación, ya que, a medida que avanzan los conocimientos sobre el proceso traductor, los fenómenos apa-recen cada vez más complejos y difíciles de someter a una lógica de control de variables. Para una visión de estas objeciones y de la situación actual del paradigma, ver el resumen que hace Jääskeläinen (2017). ...
Se presenta la base teórica y un estudio exploratorio de registros conversacionales recogidos, gracias a la conectividad (potencial de interacción mediante la tecnología), en un marco de cognición situada durante la ejecución de tareas de traducción en un entorno didáctico en línea. El objetivo es el de hacer emerger patrones del proceso de traducción exclusivamente a partir de verbalizaciones. El análisis tiene lugar mediante los elementos básicos de la teoría fundamentada: diseño de investigación emergente, muestreo teórico, saturación teórica, etiquetado y categorización de los fenómenos por medio del método de comparación constante, tal como los conciben Strauss y Corbin (1998). El estudio, sobre diez verbalizaciones, constituye una parte del proyecto en el que se están analizando, mediante esta metodología, 200 conversaciones con la ayuda del programa para el análisis cualitativo de datos asistido por ordenador, Atlas-ti.
... Jakobsen, 2003Jakobsen, , 2017, the TA method was unsatisfactory in TPR, "particularly as automatization was generally taken to be evidence of expert translation" (Jakobsen, 2017, p. 28). The more recent review on the use of verbal reports to elicit data in TPR can be found in Jääskeläinen (2017). ...
Translation Psychology, as an umbrella concept, is heterogeneous and can be investigated from different perspectives. The past few decades have witnessed the development of the cognitive–psychological approach, the social–psychological approach, the gestalt–psychological approach, and the embodied cognitive approach. These interdisciplinary approaches have spawned theoretical advances and methodological innovation, and also substantial research findings in Translation Psychology, although there are some aspects awaiting improvements. This article offers a panoramic theoretical and methodological review of these approaches: it presents their achievements, discusses the problems in their theoretical development and foresees the prospect of more integrated research on translation psychology. Multidimensional research projects on translation psychology are expected, with broader coverage of more factors influencing the translator’s psychology and more holistic views of translators in their authentic, personally, socio-culturally and historically embedded environments and networks.
... Verbal protocols have been used to investigate translation processes (Jääskeläinen 2017). For instance, data analyses from various studies have indicated that verbalizations can be systematically analyzed, in terms of both content and production (e.g., Tirkkonen-Condit 1997;Jääskeläinen 1999;Englund Dimitrova 2005). ...
Metacognitive aspects of decision-making processes were investigated in eight professional translators who translated related and unrelated texts from L2 English into L1 Portuguese and also from L1 into L2. Retrospective protocols were recorded after each translation task. Verbal utterances were classified into two categories (problem identification and prospective solution) and each one was divided into several subcategories. The data analyses evaluated metacognitive activities during decision-making processes. Results suggest that noteworthy differences between direct and inverse translation can be assessed via retrospective protocols and that translator performance and behavior might be closely related to the source text.
En las últimas décadas, los estudios sobre los procesos cognitivos implicados en la traducción han cobrado gran relevancia (Alves y Jakobsen, 2021). Uno de los procesos clave en este contexto es la focalización de la atención, entendida como la capacidad del traductor para seleccionar y priorizar información relevante durante la tarea traductora. A pesar de su importancia, este fenómeno ha sido escasamente abordado, en especial al considerar variables como el nivel de avance curricular de estudiantes de traducción y el uso de géneros especializados. En este estudio, se analiza la focalización de la atención de dos grupos de estudiantes —de tercer y cuarto año— del programa de Traducción Inglés-Español de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Para ello, se utilizó una herramienta de keylogging que permitió registrar pausas durante un encargo de traducción especializado, entendidas como indicadores del uso de recursos cognitivos (Saldanha y O’Brien, 2013). Los resultados evidenciaron diferencias en la cantidad de pausas entre ambos grupos; sin embargo, el análisis estadístico no arrojó diferencias significativas. Estos hallazgos plantean nuevas interrogantes sobre la relación entre la competencia traductora y los patrones atencionales en la traducción especializada.
Situations in which a source speaker attacks their addressee's face pose a challenge for interpreters, due to the potential controversy or conflicts to which impoliteness is prone from a pragmatic perspective. In this study, I drew upon Bousfield's (2008) linguistic model of impoliteness and analysed a political speech by Nigel Farage, a former UK politician, at the European Parliament to examine how conference interpreters render impoliteness. I also conducted interviews immediately after the experiment to probe interpreters' motivations behind their impoliteness interpreting moves. The analysis of the interpreting data from eighteen participants has evinced that (a) speaker-input impoliteness is predominantly attenuated by interpreters and is seldom strengthened, and (b) for less experienced interpreters, attenuation is consistently the most frequent manoeuvre to interpret impoliteness among the five identified ones. For more experienced interpreters, attenuations decrease in number and close renditions increase, with the latter sometimes surpassing the former. More experienced interpreters also have much less or no omissions or misrepresentations. Analysis of the interview data indicates that (a) attenuations and close renditions are interpreters' intended decisions, and (b) omissions and misrepresentations are forced options. It is hoped that the findings from the current study will contribute to the literature on impoliteness interpreting.
As digital advancements reshape communication, researchers need interdisciplinary methods to understand the cognitive processes involved. This essential reference for advanced students and researchers provides a comprehensive introduction to innovative research methods in cognitive translation and interpreting studies (CTIS). International experts from diverse disciplines share best practices for investigating cognitive processes in multilectal mediated communication. They emphasize the application of these methods across research domains situated at the interface of cognition and communication. The book offers an in-depth analysis of key research methods, explaining their rationales, uses, affordances, and limitations. Each chapter focuses on one or two closely related research methods and their tools, including surveys, interviews, introspective techniques, keylogging, eyetracking, and neuroimaging. The book guides readers in planning research projects and in making informed methodological choices. It also helps readers understand the basics of popular tools, fostering more rigorous research practices in data collection. Additionally, it provides practical suggestions on study design, participant profiling, and data analysis to deepen our understanding of texts, tasks, and their users.
While research on literary machine translation has gained considerable momentum over the past few years, there is still wide agreement that, for the time being, machine-generated translations need to be followed by human post-editing to obtain publishable results. As a translatorial process, post-editing differs from translation from scratch on multiple levels. This contribution investigates one of those levels, i.e., the different ways in which translators and post-editors read and creatively engage with the source text, and how these differences are reflected in the final target texts. Drawing on cognitive stylistics and narratology frameworks, it is shown how translators and post-editors develop narrative understanding of the story, the characters, and the worlds evoked by the source text; how they infer meaning from the source text and its style and, for example, fill in blanks and gaps during their readings. The discussion is based on findings from a two-part empirical study in which five professional literary translators translated a short story by Ernest Hemingway into German and five different professional literary translators post-edited a machine-translated draft of the same story provided by DeepL. The participants were asked to think aloud while they worked on their task, and their think-aloud protocols were used to explore their reading processes.
Human and machine translation share several features, one of which is actions that are not motivated by meaning. In addition, the human process often consists initially in the semi-conscious production of literal translations that are only weakly motivated by meaning. A definition of the translation process is proposed, based on these features. Since key words in the definition are ‘matter’ and ‘meaning’, I suggest a speculative view of how matter and meaning are connected in the mind. I tentatively conclude that the answer to the title question is yes. The argument is bolstered by textual examples of both human and machine translation.
English ‘gradation’ expressions—the interrogative adverb how followed by an adjective or an adverb—are frequent in questionnaires and they are not straightforward to translate into French. A good translation approach is needed, and there are mainly two options: The recommended approach involves the French adverbs à quel point or dans quelle mesure. The second approach uses a direct question, and the gradation occurs by choosing one of several options in the pre-established answer scale. Could there be a link between questionnaire translators’ expertise and the way they handle these translations, both the product and the process? This exploratory project studied six professional questionnaire translators, whose performance was recorded with concurrent think-aloud and keylogging techniques, and then triangulated. Correlations were analysed qualitatively. The results revealed a link between the questionnaire translators’ expertise and their translations. This confirms the importance of relying on expert translators and further briefing and training them to become good questionnaire translators.
Renewed interest in research methods used in cognitive translation and interpreting studies (CTIS) has led to increased reflection on the nature of research and experimental design, internal and external validity, and the type and nature of experimental tasks. Of particular concern is the extent to which valid generalization can be made from empirical studies of translation, interpreting, and their associated cognitive behaviors as objects of study. This article traces the definition and history of ecological validity in the extant literature on research methods and philosophy of science, emphasizing three considerations: the experimental setting, the stimuli under investigation, and the behavioral response of participants. Subsequently, we discuss potential misunderstandings or misapplications of appeals to ecological validity, including mundane realism, naturalistic tasks, and various data collection methods. A final section describes key points to consider for research in CTIS. Throughout, the argument considers tradeoffs among various categories of validity as well as the importance of aligning experimental design with research goals. This extensive engagement with a singular aspect of validity is provided to encourage deeper reflection and better communication around the topic of ecological validity.
Advance translation is a method of source questionnaire development for multilingual survey projects to enhance translatability and (inter)cultural por-tability. The aim is to minimize translation issues in the final translation stage. I empirically tested the results of a previously conducted advance translation in a think-aloud study and analyzed the utterances made in a mixed-method approach , calculating chi-square statistics and cross-checking these by observational notes of the think-aloud sessions. My study confirms the usefulness of advance translation in making source items better to translate, thus improving final translation quality. It appears to be particularly useful for comprehensibility issues of the source text, irrespective of the target language. I recommend that advance translations be carried out into all languages and cultures into which the final source questionnaire is to be translated. This will improve source questionnaire translatability and, thus, final translation and overall cross-cultural data quality.
Simulations and games bring the possibility to research complex processes of managerial decision-making. However, this modern field requires adequate methodological procedures. Many authors recommend the use of a combination of concurrent think-aloud (CTA) or retrospective think-aloud (RTA) with eye-tracking to investigate cognitive processes such as decision-making. Nevertheless, previous studies have little or no consideration of the possible differential impact of both think-aloud methods on data provided by eye-tracking. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to compare and assess if and how these methods differ in terms of their impact on eye-tracking. The experiment was conducted for this purpose. Participants were 14 managers who played a specific simulation game with CTA use and 17 managers who played the same game with RTA use. The results empirically prove that CTA significantly distorts data provided by eye-tracking, whereas data gathered when RTA is used, provide independent pieces of evidence about the participants’ behavior. These findings suggest that RTA is more suitable for combined use with eye-tracking for the purpose of the research of decision-making in the game environment.
This chapter presents the translation competence model that is being worked on by the PACTE group and that is the basis for designing the hypotheses of an empirical-experimental study of translation competence. This research is the first stage in a larger project to investigate the process of translation competence acquisition. The first part of the chapter describes our theoretical framework and the first models that we designed in 1998. This is followed by a brief presentation of the design of the research project. The last part of the chapter deals with the modification we have introduced in our 1998 translation competence model as a result of the first exploratory studies.
This thesis investigates the expenditure of cognitive effort in post-editing of machine translation. A mixed-method approach involving the use of eye movements, subjective ratings and think-aloud protocols was adopted for the investigation. The project aims at revealing connections between cognitive effort and variables including linguistic characteristics of the source text and the machine-translation output, post-editors’ individual traits, different linguistic aspects of the activity attended to during the task, and the quality of the post-edited texts, assessed by human translators in terms of fluency (linguistic quality) and adequacy (faithfulness to the source text). Two tasks were conducted to pursue these aims: one involving eye tracking and a self-report scale of cognitive effort, and another carried out by a different, but comparable, sample of participants, under a think-aloud condition. Results indicate that variables such as an automatic machine-translation quality score and source-text type-token ratio are good predictors of cognitive effort in post-editing. The relationship between cognitive effort and post-editors’ traits was found to be a complex one, with significant links in this respect only appearing in the context of interactions between variables. A complex relationship was also found between editing behaviour and the quality of the post-edited text: the number of changes implemented was found to have a generally positive association with post-edited fluency, though cognitive effort was found to be negatively correlated with both the fluency and adequacy of the post-edited texts. Mental processes involving grammar and lexis were significantly related to the levels of cognitive effort expended by participants. These were also the aspects most frequently attended to in the activity. From a methodological perspective, despite the criticisms received by the think-aloud method in previous research, empirical data obtained in this project indicates that think-aloud protocols correlate with eye movements and subjective ratings as measures of cognitive effort.
http://hdl.handle.net/10443/3130
This study extends previous reactivity research on the cognitive effects of think‐alouds to include eye‐tracking methodology. Unlike previous studies, we supplemented traditional superiority tests with equivalence tests, because only the latter are conceptually appropriate for demonstrating nonreactivity. Advanced learners of English read short English texts embedded with pseudowords in an eye‐tracking ( n = 28), think‐aloud ( n = 28), or silent control condition ( n = 46). Results indicated that neither eye tracking nor thinking aloud affected text comprehension. In terms of vocabulary recognition, thinking aloud had a small, positive effect, and the results for eye tracking were mixed. We discuss challenges and opportunities of equivalence testing and explore ways to improve study quality more generally in second language acquisition research.
Open Practices
This article has been awarded Open Data and Open Materials badges. All data are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/9zpaj . All materials are publicly available in the IRIS digital repository at http://www.iris-database.org . Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki .
Based on some common traits of situated, embodied, and distributed cognition, a new framework for a functionalist, cognitive translatology is proposed. This framework views translating as an interpersonal activity focused on creative imitation. It also adopts a developmental perspective on the empirical, ecological, and psychologically realistic study of expertise and suggests that expertise and proceduralization should be top priorities in empirical research. The framework also considers that there is an urgent need to establish experimental paradigms to foster the interplay between theory and research in cognitive translatology. The paper concludes with ten principles for developing the discipline of cognitive translatology and a framework for establishing general research standards against which individual research projects in the field can be evaluated.
Retrospection is one of the few research methods equally suitable for studying the processes involved in both translation and interpreting. At the first workshop on research methods in process-oriented research (Graz 2009), we presented the results of a pilot study of retrospection as a research method, published as Englund Dimitrova & Tiselius (2009). The study involved data from two groups (15 years of professional experience vs. no professional experience), each with 3+3 subjects (interpreter subjects vs. translator subjects, all with Swedish as their L1). The source text was a 10-minute plenary speech in English from the European Parliament, interpreted simultaneously into Swedish. For the translation data, the translator subjects translated the original European Parliament transcript of the speech, 1,093 words, using Translog. After the task, subjects did immediate retrospection. The first analysis of the data indicated that a challenge when using retrospection is that subjects tend to report having forgotten about some of their processes. In this paper we report an analysis of the process data in relation to the retrospective protocols. Our focus is on reported problems and the occurrences of problem indicators in the process. It was found that most reported problems are confirmed by the presence of problem indicators in the process. However, the majority of problem indicators found in the process do not correspond to any reported problem. Hence, the subjects’ problem reports can only explain a limited number of the potential problems in the process. The need for further research into retrospection as a research method in Translation Studies is pointed out.
The main methodological approaches used in cognitive translation process research have hitherto been inspired by methods originally developed in the behavioural sciences, especially psychology. This article contends that mainstream experimental research in laboratory settings needs to be complemented with other methodological approaches such as qualitative, ethnographic research in order to be able to account for the situated, embedded and extended aspects of cognition – as described in current cognitive science approaches. In addition, it presents the empirical research design and initial results of an ethnographic field study into the socio-cognitive aspects of translation. The results show the complexity of the social network involved in the observed case of freelance translation, the tendency of the translator to externalize parts of the process and thus transform the internal processing into an interaction with self-produced outer stimuli—thereby reconfiguring the cognitive space—and the existence of distinct, iterative interaction patterns that stand out as behavioural and cognitive routines in the way the translator works.
The present paper focuses on the translation process, particularly on the features of the expert translation process, viewing expertise in translation as a specific case of expertise in general. It utilises conceptual and methodological tools developed in cognitive psychology. In this paper, translation is conceptualised as problem-solving and translation tasks as ill-defined problems. We argue that professionalism does not equal expertise. Four criteria of expertise are discussed with special reference to expertise in translation. The work of experts is viewed as progressive problem-solving. Translation problems are defined as entire translation tasks, rather than single textual elements or contextual issues. Translation tasks are defined as ill-defined problems, as they are not unambiguous with only one possible solution. In addition, there is no clear solution path from the initial to the final state. Think-aloud experiments were conducted with four expert and two non-expert translators to study how different competence profiles affect the translation process and its outcome. The findings support earlier research indicating that translation does not become easier with growing experience and expertise. We suggest that a productive line of research might be investigating the constraints which direct the translation process.
Mainly structured around issues revealed in a questionnaire survey among 25 eminent translation process researchers worldwide, this paper deals with methodological issues in think-aloud-based translation process research from two perspectives: theoretical and practical. It argues that there is no strong evidence suggesting that TAP significantly changes or influences the translation process, though TAP's validity and completeness in a specific study might depend more or less on several variables. TAP and such recording methods as keystroke logging and eye tracking serve different specific research purposes, so they can be combined in a multimethod study to answer more complex research questions. Several research designs are available for a multimethod study, and researchers are encouraged to try designs other than one-shot case studies or convergence design. As for the research procedure, this paper touches upon how to transcribe and analyze the protocols. Many stereotypes in this field have been problematized. For example, this paper suggests that researchers transcribe as much as necessary rather than doing a "complete" transcription, or they can even skip the step of transcribing; in choosing test materials, researchers do not have to choose whole passages; they can use a group of sentences.
Translation process research has been gaining momentum in recent years. One of the major research methodologies is Think-aloud Protocols (TAPs), with the aim of uncovering the "black box" (the mental activities) of translators. While most TAPs studies on the translation process have had research subjects translate alone and hence verbalise their thinking alone (i.e., monologue verbal reporting), there have also been studies designed in such a way where two research subjects translate together and hence verbalise their thinking together in their discussions (i.e., dialogue verbal reporting). For instance, both House (1988) and Matrat (1992) argued for joint verbal reporting based on their studies. However, others disagreed, pointing out, for example, that "joint translating does not provide access to the solitary translation process" (Jääskeläinen 2000: 78). We therefore would like to join the debate by investigating the perceptions of research subjects: what are their thoughts of the two modes of translating cum verbal reporting. For that purpose, we recently surveyed the research subjects' views in this regard by administering two questionnaires with them in our TAPs experiments, and found that: a) different students had different experiences and opinions about the two modes of translation; b) however, students had more positive experiences with joint translating than individual translating; and c) joint translating may be considered more conducive for participants, especially those from more reserved cultures, for instance some Asian countries, to speak out their thoughts. Based on these findings, implications for future TAPs studies are discussed.
The paper considers the interdisciplinary interaction of research on the cognitive aspects of translation. Examples of influence from linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, reading and writing research and language technology are given, with examples from specific sub-disciplines within each one. The breadth of borrowing by researchers in cognitive translatology is made apparent, but the minimal influence of cognitive translatology on the respective disciplines themselves is also highlighted. Suggestions for future developments are made, including ways in which the domain of cognitive translatology might exert greater influence on other disciplines.
Over the last decade, Think-aloud Protocols (TAPs) have been used extensively in process-oriented Translation Studies (TS). The serious questions regarding the experimental validity of this research methodology when applied to translation have nonetheless often remained unspoken. This paper surveys the breakthroughs as well as the limits of the growing body of literature dealing with TAPs in TS, points at the necessity to take issues of experimental, theoretical and environmental validity more seriously, and offers suggestions for improvements. The claim is that the risks involved in the adoption of a lax experimental methodology in TAP studies, often underestimated in the past, may invalidate not only the results obtained in the single projects, but, crucially, the method as a whole.
Criticizes R. E. Nisbett and T. D. Wilson's (1977) counterintuitive argument on theoretical and methodological grounds. It is suggested that inappropriate statistical tests were used and that their argument was stated in a nonfalsifiable position. In addition, it is also argued that causality was incorrectly defined, other essential definitions were missing, and that other evidence opposes their theory. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Reviews evidence which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Ss are sometimes (a) unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, (b) unaware of the existence of the response, and (c) unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes. (86 ref)
After several paradigm changes and even more turns, after fights about scholarly territories and methodological renewal, after intra- and interdisciplinary discussions, Translation Studies continues to produce a large number of publications dealing with the challenge of defining itself and its object, with the borderlines of both the discipline and the object, with ways of interacting with related (sub)disciplines. This publication gathers contributions from established TS scholars (all former CETRA Chair professors) about the topics that will very probably dominate the near future of the discipline. This is an extended and updated version of a Target special issue with the same title that was published in 2012 (24:1).
The argument made in this chapter is that the incorporation of cognitive approaches into the study of translation will lead to a reorientation of the field, implying a much more central position for the individual translator. The argument builds on converging thinking in two main areas: the study of bilingual cognition, including cross-linguistic influence and bilingual processing, and work within philosophy on the emergence of the social world. The focus here is on socio-cognitive concepts currently in use within Translation Studies, more specifically Searle’s the Background, Bourdieu’s habitus, and the notion of ‘situated cognition’. The argument is related to similar issues raised by Chesterman (2009) and Pym (2009), as well as Tymoczko (2003).
This article illustrates the multiplicities of studies of the translation process. It focuses on studies using concurrent and retrospective verbal reports as well as keyboard logging software as data. Studying the process of translation contributes to building better theories and models of translation as well as to developing translator training. Translation process research offers a prime example of the interdisciplinary nature of translation studies. This article elicits the methods of studying translation process. Each of the methods has its own pros and cons, and the choice of a research method depends on the aims of the research as well as its theoretical framework. Many of the qualitative methods risk intentional or unintentional manipulation of the data. In the past twenty-five years, the number of process-oriented studies has steadily increased, new methodologies have been developed and adopted, research designs have become more refined, and the research questions more narrowly defined. © Editorial matter and organization 2011 Kirsten Malmkjær and Kevin Windle. All rights reserved.
How does the firing of neurons give rise to subjective sensations, thoughts, and emotions? How can the disparate domains of mind and body be reconciled? The quest for a scientifically based understanding of consciousness has attracted study and speculation across the ages. In this direct and non-technical discussion of consciousness, Dr. Gerald M. Edelman draws on a lifetime of scientific inquiry into the workings of the brain to formulate answers to the mind-body questions that intrigue every thinking person. Concise and understandable, the book explains pertinent findings of modern neuroscience and describes how consciousness arises in complex brains. Edelman explores the relation of consciousness to causation, to evolution, to the development of the self, and to the origins of feelings, learning, and memory. His analysis of the brain activities underlying consciousness is based on recent remarkable advances in biochemistry, immunology, medical imaging, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, yet the implications of his book extend farther-beyond the worlds of science and medicine into virtually every area of human inquiry.
The superior skills of experts, such as accomplished musicians and chess masters, can be amazing to most spectators. For example, club-level chess players are often puzzled by the chess moves of grandmasters and world champions. Similarly, many recreational athletes find it inconceivable that most other adults – regardless of the amount or type of training – have the potential ever to reach the performance levels of international competitors. Especially puzzling to philosophers and scientists has been the question of the extent to which expertise requires innate gifts versus specialized acquired skills and abilities.
One of the most widely used and simplest methods of gathering data on exceptional performance is to interview the experts themselves. But are experts always capable of describing their thoughts, their behaviors, and their strategies in a manner that would allow less-skilled individuals to understand how the experts do what they do, and perhaps also understand how they might reach expert level through appropriate training? To date, there has been considerable controversy over the extent to which experts are capable of explaining the nature and structure of their exceptional performance. Some pioneering scientists, such as Binet (1893/1966), questioned the validity of the experts' descriptions when they found that some experts gave reports inconsistent with those of other experts. To make matters worse, in those rare cases that allowed verification of the strategy by observing the performance, discrepancies were found between the reported strategies and the observations (Watson, 1913).
This dissertation investigates translation strategies and translation principles in technical translation. Five translation students and 5 professional translators from German-speaking Switzerland and 4 translation students and 6 professional translators from Sweden were asked to think aloud while translating a user guide from French into German and from French into Swedish, respectively. The focus of the analysis was on the strategies that could be observed by comparing the translation products with the source text; and on the principles underlying these strategies as revealed by the think-aloud protocols of the translation processes. In order to evaluate the extent to which the translation products complied with the fictitious translation brief given to the participants, 2 reviewers per language pair proofread the translation products. The analysis also included contrastive analyses of certain linguistic features of technical texts in French-German and French-Swedish. The results show that experience of translation does play a role in the choice of translation strategy. It is, however, an even more important factor with respect to knowing and applying translation principles in the translation process. Also, students more often display uncertainty regarding translation principles, and conflict between the principles verbalised and those actually followed. Language-pair specific differences were mostly found in connection with translation strategies. Comments about future directions include the need for clearer definitions and more systematic manipulations of the variables involved in translation, and the potential interest in investigating the principles governing how translations are revised through the use of think-aloud protocols.
Featuring contributions from leading scholars, this volume provides solid theoretical and empirical implications for translation and interpreting by including studies which focus on the performance of both expert and novice translators and interpreters. The presence of both review chapters and original empirical research fosters a universal, scientific set of perspectives which address valid experimental designs and critically review and build on existing theories. In all, this volume demonstrates that an emerging research area, namely cognitive translation and interpreting, promises to diversify traditional perspectives of translation and interpreting studies and to improve the quality and generalizability of the field. The volume is intended to act as a valuable reference for scholars, practitioners, translators, graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and anyone wishing to gain an overview of current issues in translation and interpreting from psycholinguistic and cognitive domains
This article draws on relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995) and its application to translation (Gutt 2000) to investigate processing effort in translation in relation to two different types of encodings, namely conceptual and procedural encodings (Blakemore 2002, Wilson 2011). Building on the experimental paradigm of data triangulation in translation process research (Alves 2003; Jakobsen 2005), it analyses the translation processes of eight professional translators when performing a direct and an inverse translation task. The analysis focuses on the number and types of encodings found in micro/macro translation units (Alves and Vale 2009; 2011). Results suggest that processing effort in translation is greater in instances of procedural than conceptual encodings.
Consideration of current developments in cognitive science is indispensable when defining research agendas addressing cognitive aspects of translation. One such development is the recognition of the extended nature of human cognition: Cognition is not just an information manipulation process in the brain, it is contextualised action embedded in a body and increasingly mediated by technologies and situated in its socio-cultural environment. Parallel developments are found in neighbouring disciplines, such as sociology with its actor-network and activity theories. This paper examines these approaches, their shared methodological tenets (i.e., ethnographic field studies) and the implications of the situated cognition approach for describing the cognitive aspects of translation, using a translation management case study to discuss conceptual and methodological issues.
Verbal accounts of the translation process have in the past been used almost exclusively to shed light on language learning activities, focusing primarily on lexical search strategies in second language acquisition studies. This paper reports on the use of such accounts to identify broader strategies in the translation process and, more specifically, to assess what distinctive characteristics community translation for ethnic minority groups may have. Twelve community translators provided verbal accounts of their strategies while completing translations of a short leaflet from English into one of seven community languages. Their comments were invited on any issue which arose, but specifically on the way in which they dealt with the cultural terms relating to British society and institutions. Rather than rely on theoretical ground rules for translation, the translators adopted approaches wholly oriented to the needs of the particular community they knew best and served, and the translation model which emerges from their accounts is markedly socio-cultural. It aims not only to ensure efficient transfer of information across languages and cultures, but also to increase the autonomy of minority language communities within British society, inter alia by retention of some English terminology. It also highlights the need for 'user education' for those using translation services.
This paper is an empirical study on pause patterns in fluent translation and monolingual text production. By comparing pauses recorded from both processes, it discovered two temporal features: Firstly, the mean length of pause at textual category boundaries grew the higher the category was in the syntactic hierarchy. Secondly, the length of pause at clause level or lower were on average longer in translation than in monolingual text production, whereas pauses above clause level tended to be shorter in translation. Besides the differences in pause duration, translation also affected the use of total production time. Translation requires on average a longer revision and monitoring phase while the drafting phase is completed more quickly. Both writing tasks used approximately the same proportion of time for the orientation phase.
Research on translation processes using think-aloud protocols (TAPs) as the research design has recently received increasing attention. Such studies over the past two decades have produced many interesting yet by no means definitive findings about mental activities during the process of translation. As the research community strives for more in-depth investigations into translation processes, some researchers have rightly expressed concerns over the rigor and trustworthiness of such studies. To address this concern, the article first summarizes important safeguards that must be put in place in data-based qualitative research to ensure this critical element of trustworthiness. These safeguards are then used to evaluate the research designs of 15 published reports on investigations of translation processes using TAPs. It was found that many of the safeguards were not incorporated in most of the surveyed studies, thus leaving much to be desired in their designs and reports. Implications for future TAP research and publishing are also discussed.
For more information, go to editor's website : http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=25615 Excerpts available on Google Books.
We discuss the impact of cultural differences on usability evaluations that are based on the thinking-aloud method (TA). The term ‘cultural differences’ helps distinguish differences in the perception and thinking of Westerners (people from Western Europe and US citizens with European origins) and Easterners (people from China and the countries heavily influenced by its culture). We illustrate the impact of cultural cognition on four central elements of TA: (1) instructions and tasks, (2) the user’s verbalizations, (3) the evaluator’s reading of the user, and (4) the overall relationship between user and evaluator. In conclusion, we point to the importance of matching the task presentation to users’ cultural background, the different effects of thinking aloud on task performance between Easterners and Westerners, the differences in nonverbal behaviour that affect usability problem detection, and, finally, the complexity of the overall relationship between user and evaluator when they have different cultural backgrounds.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2006.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Delaware, 1992. Principal faculty adviser: James P. Lantolf, Dept. of Linguistics. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 216-230). Photocopy.
Presents a model of reading comprehension that accounts for the allocation of eye fixations of 14 college students reading scientific passages. The model deals with processing at the level of words, clauses, and text units. Readers made longer pauses at points where processing loads were greater. Greater loads occurred while readers were accessing infrequent words, integrating information from important clauses, and making inferences at the ends of sentences. The model accounts for the gaze duration on each word of text as a function of the involvement of the various levels of processing. The model is embedded in a theoretical framework capable of accommodating the flexibility of reading. (70 ref)
Methodology, Technology and Innovation in Translation Process Research
- B. Englund Dimitrova
- E. Tiselius
Interlingual and Intercultural Communication: Discourse and Cognition in Translation and Second Language Acquisition Studies
- S. Börsch
Introspection in Second Language Research
- K. A. Ericsson
- H. A. Simon
Erfolgreich Übersetzen: Entdecken und Beheben von Störquellen
- G. Hansen