Article published in:
Interdisciplinarity in Translation and Interpreting Process Research
Edited by Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, Susanne Göpferich and Sharon O'Brien
[Target 25:1] 2013
► pp. 107–124

Investigating the conceptual-procedural distinction in the translation process

A relevance-theoretic analysis of micro and macro translation units

| Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
| Federal University of Ouro Preto, Brazil
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.
Keywords: translation process research, relevance theory, conceptual and procedural encodings, micro/macro translation units, processing effort in translation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical underpinnings
    • 2.1Relevance and translation: in search of a cause-effect relation
    • 2.2Some important relevance theory concepts
      • 2.2.1The principle of relevance and the effect-effort relation
      • 2.2.2The conceptual-procedural distinction in relevance theory
    • 2.3Revisiting the conceptual-procedural distinction in translation
  • 3.Methodological framework
    • 3.1Experimental design
    • 3.2Procedures for data analysis
    • 3.3Hypotheses
  • 4.Analyses and discussion
    • 4.1Types of macro translation units in direct/inverse translation tasks
    • 4.2Editing procedures in micro/macro translation units
    • 4.3Distance indicators of conceptual and procedural encodings
    • 4.4Processing effort in relation to conceptual and procedural encodings
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 04 March 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.25.1.09alv
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