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Psycholinguistic and Cognitive Inquiries into Translation and Interpreting
Edited by Aline Ferreira and John W. Schwieter
[Benjamins Translation Library 115] 2015
► pp. 17–40

Translation process research at the interface

Paradigmatic, theoretical, and methodological issues in dialogue with cognitive science, expertise studies, and psycholinguistics

ORCID logo | Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

This chapter aims at revisiting the main assumptions of cognitive science, expertise studies and psycholinguistics to discuss how they interface diachronically and synchronically with translation process research (TPR). By revisiting the tenets of these three disciplines, the chapter reflects upon their possible contributions to the development of TPR and proposes a paradigmatic foundation with theoretical and methodological implications for empirical-experimental research in translation. The chapter examines contributions from cognitive science as it discusses cognitivism, connectionism, and embodied/situated action as a basis for the epistemological foundations of TPR. It also considers TPR at the interface with expertise studies and looks into how concepts such as consistently superior performance, deliberate practice and expertise trajectory can have meaningful implications for TPR. Finally, the chapter reviews the influence of psycholinguistics on TPR from its early days in the mid-1980s, with the sole use of think-aloud protocols, up to the state of the art of today’s research which incorporates key logging, eye tracking, and computational modeling. The chapter also reflects upon what TPR has gained from interfacing with these three disciplines, how much from these disciplines it has incorporated into its own research agenda and how TPR is now in a position to contribute to the development of other related disciplines; therefore not only borrowing from them but also lending to them.

Published online: 22 January 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.115.02alv
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