An Empirical Study Of Chinese Translators’ Search Behavior In Chinese-to-english Translation

Despite wide disagreement over exactly which sub-competences translationcompetence is comprised of, and how it should be defined, there is consensus amongtranslation scholars that at least three play an essential role: strategic competence,bilingual competence, and tools and research competence. Competent translators mustmake strategic use of their internal resources (linguistic ability and world knowledge)and external aids. Indeed, existing translation process researches have confirmed thata linguistically qualified translator’s strategic use of conventional and electronic tools,from reference works such as dictionaries and encyclopedias to search engines andcorpora, plays a vitally important, if not decisive, role in good translations. However,it is not clear how translators’ strategic and instrumental competence, or their strategicuse of translation aids is manifested, and how such manifestation is related to theirfinal translation performance, especially in C-E translation by native Chinesespeakers.The present research aims at partially filling that knowledge gap by investigatingthe information search behaviors of novices, semi-professionals and professionals–all native Chinese speakers–in their translation of a short generic Chinese businessarticle, which does not require a strong economic background. Specifically, this studydesires to answer these three questions: Is there any positive correlation betweentranslators’ information search behaviors and their problem awareness andproblem-solving strategy in C-E translation? Are there any specific strategicinformation search patterns that lead to better translation performance? And willtranslators perform better if they spend more time researching?A quantitative and qualitative analysis is made of data gathered through acombination of pre-translation survey, screen recording of translation process andretrospective TAP, conducted with three groups of participants whose command ofthe English language proves more-or-less equally good: four first-year MTI students,four second-year MTI translation students and four professional translators who have over five years of experience. An independent evaluator is engaged to rate theparticipants’ translations using a widely accepted translation assessment model.Screen recordings and TAP data are transcribed, sorted and described in accordancewith certain parameters. The findings cast interesting light on the translators’translation process and their information search behaviors, such as the types oftranslation problems they encounter, the kinds of external resources they use toaddress them, and their strategic use of or tendency to use certain types of resourcesmore than others. The findings reveal a strong correlation between participants certaininformation search patterns–such as search intensity and sophistication–and theirtranslation performance.