Article published In:
Developments in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting StudiesEdited by Kairong Xiao and Sandra L. Halverson
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 8:2] 2021
► pp. 356–377
Edited by Kairong Xiao and Sandra L. Halverson
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 8:2] 2021
► pp. 356–377
Dialogue interpreting, self-revision in translation and post-editing
Literalization in the self-revision process of novice and experienced biomedical translators
This paper explores decision-making in translation focusing on the self-revision process of novice and experienced translators of biomedical content in the English to European Portuguese language pair. Adopting process- and product-oriented methods, an experiment was designed to study thirty translations of a 244-word instructional text about a medical device intended for health professionals. The data elicited from fifteen novice translators and fifteen experienced translators included keylogging and screen-recording data. These data were triangulated and analyzed to describe the translation solutions in the interim and final versions in response to problematic translation units and to test if, during the self-revision process, novice and experienced translators tend to proceed from more literal versions to less literal ones, or vice versa, in biomedical translation. Contrary to expectations, the analysis points towards a literalization phenomenon in the translators’ processes. The data also indicates that the tendency to proceed from less literal versions to more literal ones is more pronounced in novice translators than in experienced translators. The findings reported here shed new light on the self-revision processes of novice and experienced translators and their relationship with prevailing translation norms, and enable us to better understand the practices in place in professional biomedical translation.
Keywords: self-revision, literal translation hypothesis, experienced translators, translation process research, biomedical translation
Article outline
- 1.Introduction and research objectives
- 2.Literal translation hypothesis
- 3.Methods and materials
- 3.1Participants
- 3.2Translation task and elicitation material
- 3.3Data collection methods
- 3.4Methodology for data analysis
- 3.4.1Identification of problematic translation units in the process data
- 3.4.2Classification of the interim versions and target texts
- 4.Data analysis
- 4.1Novice translators
- 4.2Experienced translators
- 5.Concluding remarks
- Notes
-
References
References
Alves, F., & Vale, D. C.
(2011) On
drafting and revision in translation: a corpus linguistics oriented analysis of translation process
data. Translation: Corpora, Computation,
Cognition, 1(1), 105–122. 
Balling, L. W., Hvelplund, K. T., & Sjørup, A. C.
(2014) Evidence
of parallel processing during
translation. Meta, 59(2), 234–259.
Borg, C.
(2017) Decision-making
and alternative translation solutions in the literary translation process: A case study. Across
Languages and
Cultures, 18(2), 279–304.
Carl, M.
(2012) Translog-II:
A program for recording user activity data for empirical reading and writing research. The
Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and
Evaluation 21–27 May 2012, Istanbul, Turkey, 2–6.
Carl, M., & Dragsted, B.
(2012) Inside
the monitor model: Processes of default and challenged translation production. TC3:
Translation: Computation, Corpora,
Cognition, 2(1), 127–145.
Chesterman, A.
(2011) Reflections
on the literal translation hypothesis. In C. Alvstad, A. Hild, & E. Tiselius (Eds.), Methods
and strategies of process research: Integrative approaches in translation
studies (pp. 23–35). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Dragsted, B.
(2004) Segmentation
in translation and translation memory systems. An empirical investigation of cognitive segmentation and effects of integrating
a TM system into the translation process. (PhD
diss.). Samfundslitteratur, Copenhagen.
Drugan, J.
(2013) Quality
in professional translation: Assessment and improvement. London and New York: Bloomsbury.
Englund Dimitrova, B.
(2005) Expertise
and explicitation in the translation process. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Englund Dimitrova, B., & Tiselius, E.
(2014) Retrospection
in interpreting and translation: explaining the process? MonTI. Monografías de traducción e
interpretación, 11, 177–200.
European Parliament, C. of the E. U.
(2007) Directive
2007/47/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 September 2007 amending Council Directive 90/385/EEC on the
approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to active implantable medical devices, Council Directive
93/42/EEC. Official Journal of the European Union, Series L
169, 21–55. Retrieved from [URL]
Frankenberg-Garcia, A.
(2005) A
corpus-based study of loan words in original and translated
texts. In P. Danielsson & M. Wagenmakers (Eds.), Proceedings
from the corpus linguistics 2005 conference series
1 (pp. 1–19).
Gambier, Y.
(2016) Translation
strategies and tactics. In Y. Gambier & L. van Doorslaer (Eds.), Handbook
of translation studies
online (pp. 412–418). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Göpferich, S.
(2010a) Data
documentation and data accessibility in translation process research. The
Translator, 16(1), 93–124.
(2010b) The
translation of instructive texts from a cognitive perspective: novices and professionals
compared. In S. Göpferich, F. Alves, & I. M. Mees (Eds.), New
approaches in translation process
research (pp. 5–55). Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur.
Halverson, S. L.
(2015) Cognitive
Translation Studies and the merging of empirical paradigms. Translation Spaces. A
Multidisciplinary, Multimedia, and Multilingual Journal of
Translation, 4(2), 310–340.
Hermans, T.
(1999) Translation
and normativity. In C. Schäffner (Ed.), Translation
and
norms (pp. 50–71). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Hu, B.
(2020) How
are translation norms negotiated? Target. International Journal of Translation
Studies, 32(1), 83–122.
Ivir, V.
(1981) Formal
correspondence vs. translation equivalence revisited. In I. Even-Zohar & G. Toury (Eds.), Theory
of translation and intercultural relations [Poetics Today
2:4] (pp. 51–59). Tel Aviv: Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University.
Kotze, H.
(2021) Translation,
language contact and cognition. In F. Alves & A. Jakobsen (Eds.), The
Routledge handbook of translation and
cognition (pp. 113–131). Oxon and New York: Routledge.
Krings, H.-P.
(1986) Was
in den Köpfen von Übersetzern vorgeht. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
Mossop, B.
(2014) Revising
and editing for translators (3rd ed.). London and New York: Routledge.
(2016) Revision. In Y. Gambier & L. van Doorslaer (Eds.), Handbook
of translation studies online. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
(2019) Revising
and editing for translators. Routledge.
Munday, J.
(2013) The
role of archival and manuscript research in the investigation of translator
decision-making. Target, 25(1), 125–139.
Plońska, D.
(2014) Strategies
of translation. Psychology of Language and
Communication, 18(1), 67–74.
Płońska, D.
(2016) Problems
of literality in French-Polish translations of a newspaper
article. In M. Carl, S. Bangalore, & M. Schaeffer (Eds.), New
directions in empirical translation process research: exploring the CRITT
TPR-DB (pp. 279–291). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Pym, A.
Robert, I.
(2008) Translation
revision procedures: An explorative study. In P. Boulogne (Ed.), Translation
and Its Others. Selected Papers of the CETRA Research Seminar in Translation Studies 2007. Retrieved
from [URL]
Robert, I., Ureel, J. J. J., Remael, A., & Rigouts Terryn, A.
(2017) Conceptualizing
translation revision competence: a pilot study on the ‘fairness and tolerance’ attitudinal
component. Perspectives: Studies in
Translatology, 18(1), 1–22.
Rosa, A. A.
(2000) The
negotiation of literary dialogue in translation: Forms of address in Robinson Crusoe translated into
Portuguese. Target, 12(1), 31–62.
Saldanha, G., & O’Brien, S.
(2013) Research
methodologies in translation studies. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
Schaeffer, M., & Carl, M.
(2013) Shared
representations and the translation process: A recursive model. Translation and Interpreting
Studies, 81, 169–190.
(2014) Measuring
the cognitive effort of literal translation processes. In U. Germann, M. Carl, S. O’Brien, P. Koehn, G. Sanchis-Trilles, F. Casacuberta, & R. Hill (Eds.), Proceedings
of the Workshop on Humans and Computer-assisted Translation
(HaCaT) (pp. 29–37). Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.
Schaeffer, M., Dragsted, B., Hvelplund, K. T., Balling, L. W., & Carl, M.
(2016) Word
translation entropy: Evidence of early target language activation during reading for
translation. In M. Carl, S. Bangalore, & M. Schaeffer (Eds.), New
directions in empirical translation process research: Exploring the CRITT
TPR-DB (pp. 183–210). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Serbina, T., Hintzen, S., Niemietz, P., & Neumann, S.
(2017) Changes
of word class during translation-Insights from a combined analysis of corpus, keystroke logging and eye-tracking
data. In S. Hansen-Schirra, O. Czulo, & S. Hofmann (Eds.), Empirical
modelling oftranslation and
interpreting (pp. 177–208). Berlin: Language Science Press.
Shih, C. Y.
Tirkkonen-Condit, S.
(2005) The
monitor model revisited: Evidence from process
research. Meta, 50(2), 405.
Tirkkonen-Condit, S., Mäkisalo, J., & Immonen, S.
(2008) The
translation process – interplay between literal rendering and a search for sense. Across
Languages and
Cultures, 9(1), 1–15.
Toury, G.
Valdez, S.
(2019) Perceived
and observed translational norms in biomedical translation in the contemporary Portuguese translation market: a quantitative
and qualitative product- and process-oriented study. Phd
diss., University of Lisbon and Ghent. Retrieved
from [URL]
WHO