Effects Of Logical Connectives On Cognitive Efforts In Chinese-english Sight Translation

Sight translation requires translators to transpose orally the message written in one language into another language without listening to the original speech.Differences between Chinese and English in the use of logical connectives have made a number of researchers study the translation strategies in English-Chinese or Chinese-English translation.However,few studies focus on studying the effects of logical connectives in sight translation process from the perspective of cognitive efforts.This research,with the use of eye-tracking equipment,selects two types of logical relations: additional logical relation and contrastive logical relation to study how the logical connectives influence the cognitive efforts during sight translation process.The influence of logical connectives on cognitive efforts during source texts reading and target texts production process,and the relationship between cognitive efforts and quality of target texts production are explored in this research.Thirty-six participants are asked to sight translate both types of sentences with or without logical connectives orally,and the cognitive efforts during source texts reading process are measured by indicators in eye movement,namely average fixation duration,fixation count,regression count and pupil size,while those during target texts production process are reflected by disfluency.Moreover,the quality of target texts production is reflected by accuracy and fidelity of target texts.As is found in this study: 1)During source texts reading process,texts with explicit logical connectives result in lower cognitive efforts,and for sentences without explicit logical connectives,the contrastive logical relation requires more efforts compared with additional logical relation;2)During target texts production process,more cognitive efforts are required for sentences with implicit logical relations,and cognitive efforts are higher for contrastive logical relations(reflected by pauses);3)There is a positive correlation between cognitive efforts made during source texts reading process and target texts production process,and more cognitive efforts paid during production process can lead to higher quality of target texts.The research broadens the translation research view,and its results are significant for sight translation education.