A Cognitive Study Of Strategies In C-E Translation Process

From the perspective of cognitive psychology, a translation strategy refers to a potentially conscious procedure for the solution of a problem which an individual is faced with when translating a text segment from one language into another. The empirical research of translation strategy has always been one of the basic elements in translation process research (TPR), which has witnessed great achievements in western world since the 1980s by borrowing thinking-aloud from cognitive psychology. Due to the increasing interest attached to the process-oriented research, the research focus shifts gradually from macroscopic descriptions of translating process to microscopic explorations into variables as translation units, translation briefs, time pressures, revisions, and strategies. The research method has developed from think-aloud-based means to multi-technological means. Recently wide employment of keystroke logging and eye tracking label a great leap forward of process-oriented research in the western translation world. In China, however, the significance of technological-supported observation of translational behavior was not realized by most translation researchers until the end of 20th century. In the following 15 years or so, the new-developed theories and research method with reference to western TPR were successively introduced to Chinese researchers and readers. Translation studies (TS) in China began to arouse strong curiosity toward this newly emerging research approach. However, compared with the development of TPR in Western countries, TPR in China is still in its infancy for being lack of research organization on a large scale and of advanced research techniques.This study, aimed at investigating features of strategy use displayed by translators at different levels during C-E translation process, endeavors to explore the answers to the following three questions:(1) What are the general features of strategy use when C-E translation is done by groups of translators with different translation proficiency? (2) Are there tendencies and differences of strategy use when C-E translation is done by groups of translators with different translation proficiency, and if so, in which aspects and why? (3) Are these tendencies and differences affected by text types, and if so, in what ways do text types affect strategy use between groups?A triangulation technique was adopted combining multi-sourced data from concurrent TAPs, Translog files, Camtasia files, questionnaires, interviews and translated texts, of which TAPs combined with questionnaires and interviews served as the bases for descriptions of participants’perceptions and translation processes. In the meanwhile, transcribed TAPs were used as the main source for the analysis of general features, tendencies and discrepancies of strategy use, cross-referenced with other sources of data. In the process of checking the degree of cognitive effort, pauses (longer than five seconds) from Translog 2006 were used as the primary data sources, while interviews and concurrent TAPs provided supplementary information to cross check the results.The participants in this study were divided into three groups (six participants in each group) according to their translation proficiency:the novices (male=2; female=4; mean age=21; range=20-22), the advanced learners (male=2; female=4; mean age=25; range=24-27) and the professional translators (male=3; female=3; mean age=36; range=31-43). The criteria of group classification were as follows:The professional translators must have at least five years of translating experience and over 1,000,000 words of translation, with more than 70% of their income coming from translation activities. All of them had passed Test for English Majors (TEM) Band 8, with the grade of "good" or better. Each of them had at least 15 hours of translation training per week. The average score of their translation performance in prior training was 83. The advanced learners were MTI students from Shandong University. All of them had passed TEM Band 8 test, with the grade of "pass". Their translation training time span lasted 2 to 5 hours per week for each participant in this group. The average score of their translation performance in prior training was 79.61. The novices were from Shandong University of Finance and Economics in their junior years with different majors but all minored in English. All the novices had passed College English Test (CET) Band 6 but they did not attend TEM Band 8. Their translation training time span was no more than two hours per week for each participant in this group. The average score of their translation performance in prior training was 70.22. All participants are native speakers of Chinese.Translation tasks consisted of an operating instruction (217 characters), a poem (45 characters) and an advertisement (119 characters), representing the informative text, the expressive text and the operative text respectively according to the categorization of text types by Reiss. Participants were required to translate three types of Chinese texts into English without time limit.The results were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Firstly, thick descriptions were made in the following aspects in relation to three groups of translators:their backgrounds in translation, beliefs about the nature of translation, perceptions of problem-solving patterns, perceptions of text type awareness, perceptions of translation strategies and strategy use, as well as their translation processes of 18 participants. Secondly, in light of their TAPs and statistical data, cross-group comparisons with regard to translation strategies were represented as follows.Irrespective of text types, general features of strategies used by translators at different levels involved the following three aspects. (1) Three groups had the same problem solving procedures during C-E translation. (2) Based on problem solving procedures, strategies were categorized into representing strategies, constructing strategies, avoidance strategies, executing strategies, monitoring strategies and evaluating strategies, of which constructing and executing strategies were dominating. (3) According to ways of translators’ initial reactions to problems, strategies used by three groups were generalized into analysis pattern, instrumental pattern and intuitional pattern. Strategy discrepancies used by translators at different levels were mainly manifested as follows. (1) In terms of strategy kinds and frequency, there appeared a general rising-descending tendency, from the least proficient novices to the most proficient professional translators. The novices used less variety of strategies and most of them were local-oriented. Compared with the novices, the professional translators used wider range of strategy kinds but approximate frequency. (2)Non-professional translators (inclusive of the novices and the advanced learners) relied too much on the strategy of dictionary lookup. (3) The consciousness of monitoring target version corresponded to translation proficiency:the higher the translation proficiency, the more monitoring strategies.With consideration of text types, strategy tendencies and discrepancies employed by translators at different levels were generalized into the following three points. (1) All groups of translators realized the peculiarity of each text. Global strategies (the translator’s general principles and preferred modes of action) excluding local strategies (specific activities in relation to the translator’s problem-solving and decision-making) used by all the groups were influenced by text types. (2) The poem had the least influence on strategy discrepancies by translators at different levels, followed by the operating instruction. The advertisement had the greatest influence on translators’strategy discrepancies. (3) Checking the average pause duration and the average pause ratio found that the poem cost all groups the most efforts and the operating instruction, the least. It was presumed that the discrepancies of translators’ strategy use were affected by text types. Over-challenging or under-challenging texts had less influence on strategy differences.Based on the results regarding three groups’ translation processes and features of strategy use in three types of texts, this study made attempts to interpret and discuss the main findings and compared them with those of previous studies by referring to problem space theory in cognitive psychology. The aspects involved the structures and stages of problem solving in translation processes, tendencies and discrepancies in strategy use, tendencies and discrepancies in translation strategy use due to text types, as well as discrepancies of translators’ cognitive effort due to text types.This study concluded that these findings would provide pedagogical implications for translation training. Tentative suggestions for teachers covered constructing process-oriented translation teaching mode, cultivating students’ global view of translating, training students for specialized text materials, and controlling students’ overuse of dictionaries. Limitations of this study and recommendations for future studies were finally presented.The main contributions of this study are stated as follows:(1) It has been found that the influences of translation proficiency on translators’mental processes and strategy use follow some patterns, which can be acquired through translation training; (2) The degree of aforementioned influences caused by translation proficiency varies with text types; (3) This is one of the empirical studies investigating tendencies and differences of C-E translation strategies, which enriches international TPR. Though far from perfect, this study provides reference and guidance for improving C-E translation training.