Gazing and Typing Activities during Translation: A Comparative Study of Translation Units of Professional and Student Translators, Meta: Translators' Journal , vol. 56, n° 4, 2011, p. 952-975 (original) (raw)

The concept of ‘translation unit’ revisited

2017

In translation studies, the theoretical concept of ‘translation unit’ has traditionally been a subject of debate. This paper will discuss different views of the concept, relating it to the dichotomy between product and process-oriented translation studies. It will be argued that ‘translation unit’ has two readings: ‘unit of analysis’ in product-based studies, and ‘unit of processing’ in cognitive translation studies. With the exception of literary translation, translation services may now be said to fall within the domain of the language industry, which calls for considering the relevance of ‘translation unit’ to machine translation (MT). From a historical perspective, the concept will be related to the main issues of system design and translation quality.

Ut Once More: The Sentence as the Key Functional Unit of Translation

Meta: Journal des traducteurs, 2000

Text linguistics enables translators to [201c]climb up,[201d] to work more effectively from the level of text with [201c]textual judicial authority.[201d] It should enable them to [201c]look down[201d] as well at lower units as functional units. Technically, discussions of translation often treat localized passages rather than full texts. The notion of Unit of Translation (UT), once defined, is thus useful for bridging the technical gap between the full text and its components in describing relationships involved in a translation, and looking at a localized passage's potential accountability to the whole text. This article approaches the issue of UT from the point of view of division of labour between short-term and long-term memory in translating, and defines the UT functionally as textual unit instead of language unit which maintains its textual integrity by performing three functions, viz. syntatic bearer, information carrier, and stylistic marker. Text translation thus boils...

Translation practice in the field

Translation spaces, 2017

that permits insights into the diversity and complexity of translation practice, aspects that cannot really be reconstructed in a laboratory setting. While the specific theoretical foundations of the individual articles in this volume might differ and range from situated cognition and ergonomics to practice theory, they all nonetheless agree on the situatedness of translation, interpreting and related processes, one of the main assumptions of our research. Of particular interest are the processes at the workplace, the actions of those involvedas embedded in a specific environmentand how such workplaces develop over time, i.e., the process dimension of translation work. Accordingly, it seems appropriate to begin with an overview of the notion of the translation/interpreting process in Translation Studies before moving on to introduce and discuss those elements of workplace research that are of relevance for this Special Issue and for contemporary translation studies research. 2. The derivation and diversification of translation process research Interest in TPR has continued to grow since the first pioneering works emerged in the 1980s (e.g., Gerloff 1986; Krings 1986; Lörscher 1987). The study of translation as a process complements research that focuses on source/target text relationships or the cultural and literary systems of which they form part. TPR applies empirically sound cognitive science approaches to observe and describe translation processes in order to identify patterns in the behaviour of translators/interpreters under different conditions and draw inferences on their cognitive processes. Theories and models initially from the cognitive sciences, cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics in particular are used to describe and explain the connections in this behaviour and obtain a better understanding of translation processes (e.g., Risku 2010; Muñoz 2010a; 2010b; Martín 2013). TPR looks at factors related to people, tasks and (work) settings, studying, for example, whether bilingual laypersons translate differently to advanced translation students (Hansen 2003); whether and how creativity shows itself in the translation process (Kußmaul 2000; Bayer-Hohenwarter 2009); how contextual information influences translation (Rydning and Lachaud 2010); how reading and writing processes are distributed during translation (Dragsted 2010); or the special challenges faced in sight translation (Shreve, Lacruz, and Angelone 2010). Substantial parts of translation/interpreting processes take place in the brain or, in the case of translation, on the screen and are therefore difficult to observe with the naked eye. Thus, TPR uses various data collection methods (e.g., introspection, EEG measurement, think-aloud protocols, retrospective self-reflection, screen recording, keystroke logging, pupillometry and eye tracking), often in combination, to increase the reliability of the results (cf. triangulation; Alves 2003; Lachaud 2011). In the case of interpreting, separating the process from the

From polarity to plurality in translation scholarship

International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature ISSN 2200-3592 (Print),Vol. 1 No. 5., 2012

Review of the literature in translation studies shows that translation scholarship can be discussed in 3 Macro-levels including 1) Corpus-based studies, 2) Protocol-based studies, and 3) Systems-based studies. Researchers in the corpus-based studies test the hypothesis about the universals of translation. They also try to identify translation norms and regular linguistic patterns. This scholarship aims at showing that the language of translation is different from that of non-translation. The other purpose is to identify the techniques and strategies adopted by the translators. In protocol -based studies, the researchers study the mental activities and the individual behaviors of the translators while translating. They aim to describe the behavior of professional translators (versus translator trainees) during the process of translation in a bid to identify how they chunk the source text (unit of translation) and to describe how the translation trainees develop their translation competence. These studies are longitudinal for the reason that they aim to investigate the change of intended behaviors in the subjects of the study. Like corpus-based studies, they are experimental and data for analysis are collected by various methods including the translators' verbal report, keystroke logging, eye tracking, and so on. Recently, in a method called "triangulation", they combine the above-mentioned methods of data collection to test their hypotheses on a stronger experimental basis. To collect the data, they also employ the methods used in neurology (for example the technology of Electroencephalogram) in order to obtain information on the physiological processes in the brains of the translators while translating. And finally in the systems-based studies, the researchers analyze more extended systems of production, distribution, and consumption of translations and their impacts on the target culture in a specific socio-cultural context. Differentiating these levels does not mean that there is a fragmentation in translation scholarship. Rather translation scholarship despite having pluralistic frameworks is focused on a single object of study. In other words, differentiating these levels is related to the method of research rather than the object of the research. This paper makes an attempt to shed light on the mentioned levels and then to introduce some new areas which have not been discussed widely. It also tries to introduce a systematic framework for historical research of translation based on Pym's theory of humanizing translation studies and finally to discuss the metaphorical concept of unity in diversity from the vantage point of translation studies.

Translation Equivalence Factors (A descriptive Analytic Study)

This is a descriptive analytic study addresses the need for an organized approach for training translators. It focuses the need to provide clear translation model that reflects details involved in interpretation of a text from one language into another. It displays the relationship between linguistics and translation; it elaborates how an understanding of these key areas affects translator’s decision. The chapter inspects various areas of language ranging from signal word, expression to grammar and cultural contexts. It provides instances from various translation literature.