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Part of
Translation in Transition: Between cognition, computing and technology
Edited by Arnt Lykke Jakobsen and Bartolomé Mesa-Lao
[Benjamins Translation Library 133] 2017
► pp. 107–134

Chapter 4
Translation, post-editing and directionality

A study of effort in the Chinese-Portuguese language pair

| Universidade Federal de Uberlândia
| Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
| Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
| Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
| University of Macau
| University of Macau
| University of Macau
| Universidade de Évora
| Universidade Federal de Uberlândia
| Universidade Federal de Uberlândia
Translation process research has focused on alphabetic scripts in post-editing and translation tasks from the second language (L2) into the mother tongue (L1). This chapter approaches translation and post-editing tasks involving Chinese, which has a logographic script, in combination with Portuguese. The aim is to compare task type (translation and post-editing) and directionality (L2-L1 and L1-L2) focusing on cognitive and temporal measures of effort. Eye-tracking and key-logging data were collected from 18 Chinese professional translators in four consecutive translation/post-editing sessions. The results point to a significant impact of directionality and task type on virtually all cognitive measures investigated by means of a linear mixed-effect regression model. However, directionality and task type had no significant impact on total task time.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of literature
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Equipment and analysis tools
    • 3.2Participants
    • 3.3Data quality
    • 3.4The experimental texts
    • 3.5Task execution
    • 3.6Data processing
    • 3.7Data analysis
  • 4.Results and discussion
  • 5.Final remarks
  • Appendix
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.133.04lou
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