An Experimental Study Of Translation Process

Translation studies have traditionally dealt with translation products instead of translation process. Recently, however, some scholars and experts have tried to describe and explain translation process from different perspectives and within various theoretical frameworks. But due to the complexity of the inner mechanisms of the brain and lack of reliable research methods, the sub-processes of translation remain a mystery, and the psychological reality of the translator in translating is still unknown.In the past decades, cognitive science and psychology have made remarkable strides, to the extent that they offer experimental methods to research into translation process with the purpose of exploring the cognitive activities of the brain in translating. Therefore, this thesis uses an experimental method— think-aloud method—to study translation process.This research holds that translating is a special cognitive activity whose inner processes can be displayed by the protocols of the subjects. This study describes how the subjects adopt translation strategies, examines how translators at different levels differ in the use of translation units, and detects the practice of knowledge and experiences in translation process. There are 37 subjects divided into three groups: the BEN group consisting of 22 juniors majoring in English, the GRA group consisting of 11 postgraduates majoring in Linguistics, and the TEA group consisting of 4 English teachers.The results of the experiment indicate that translators with different levels of language differ in their use of translation strategies and translation units. By sorting out the results of the experiment, we get several preliminary findings, which, of course, still need further examination: (1) TEA and GRA groups employ fewer translation strategies than BEN group, which implies that the higher the language level is and the more translation experiences they have, the fewer translation strategies will be used. (2) E-C translation process adopts morestrategies than C-E translation process, which implies that E-C translation is more difficult than C-E translation. (3) The potential elements of translation strategies become less frequently used as the translator's language level rises. (4) In E-C translation, teachers are more likely to use clauses as the units of translation;while undergraduates are more likely to use phrases. In C-E translation, the three groups preferably use sentences as the units of translation, but there is, among teachers, graduates and undergraduates, a decreasing frequency of the use of sentences as translation units. This indicates that as the subjects' level of language rises and their experiences in translating grow, they tend to use larger units more frequently;and vice versa. (5) Translator's use of translation units varies in inverse proportion to the difficulty of the translation task. The more difficult the task is, the smaller the unit is, and vice versa. Besides, translation units used in E-C translation are obviously smaller than those used in C-E translation. Hence, translator's use of translation units is not fixed. (6) When dealing with lexical problems, students tend to look for lexical equivalents for the words while teachers pay more attention to the connotative meaning of the words. Besides, teachers' lexical choices in translation are much richer than those of students.