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Article published In:
Translation, Cognition & Behavior
Vol. 6:1 (2023) ► pp.29–59

Text-production tasks at the keyboard

Linguistic and behavioral contrasts

ORCID logo | Università di Bologna,
One of the main process features under study in Cognitive Translation & Interpreting Studies (CTIS) is the chronological unfolding of writing tasks. This exploratory, pilot study combines pause- and text-analysis to seek tendencies and contrasts in informants’ mental processes when performing different writing tasks, analyzing their behaviors, as keylogged. The study tasks were retyping, monolingual writing, translation, revision and a multimodal task—monolingual text production based on an infographic leaflet. Task logs were chunked with the Task Segment Framework (Muñoz & Apfelthaler 2022).
Several previous results were confirmed, and some others were surprising. Time spans in free writing were longer between paragraphs and sentences and, in translation, much more frequent between and within words, suggesting cognitive activities at these levels. The infographic was expected to facilitate the writing process, but most time spans were longer than in both free writing and translation. These results suggest venues for further research.
Keywords: translating, writing, keylogging, pause analysis, Task Segment Framework, Inputlog
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Pauses in typing tasks
    • 1.2The Task Segment Framework
    • 1.3Text variables
    • 1.4Research question
  • 2.Materials and methods
    • 2.1Tasks
      • Retyping
      • Free writing
      • Translation
      • Revision
      • Multimodal task
    • 2.2Data processing: Target texts and source texts
    • 2.3Keylogged behavior, data processing
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Textual features
    • 3.2Analysis of time spans
      • 3.2.1Linguistic approach
      • 3.2.2Behavioral time spans
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Retyping
    • 4.2Free writing
    • 4.3Translating
    • 4.4Revision
    • 4.5Multimodal task
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 June 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tcb.00075.pue
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