Directionality In Translation Process Research

“Mother Tongue Principle” is still regarded as a guiding principle in the code ofconduct for translation practitioners in many countries and international organizations.No wonder that few researches have been dedicated to translation into a non-mothertongue. In recent years, however, the issue of directionality has been increasinglydiscussed and studied, especially by scholars from countries where L2translation is acommon practice. Nevertheless, empirical researches on this issue are far from enough,and their findings are limited. In China, related researches are even less (especially ondifferences in translation process of the two directions), despite the fact that there is agreat demand for highly-qualified translators capable of translating from Chinese intoEnglish, and that C-E translations are more likely to be found unsatisfying than the otherdirection.This study aims at bridging the gap in the literature by exploring whether there areinherent differences between the two directions. To address the issue, it sets out to testifyfour hypotheses based on traditional conception:(1) it takes more time for translators todo C-E translation; and in this “inverse direction”,(2) translators tend to do more websearch;(3) have weaker monitoring ability; and (4) produce translation of lower quality.This study involves two experiments, a pilot study on novice translators and a mainexperiment on professional translators, to compare the performances of these two groups.The major method of data collection used in the experiments is screen recording.Retrospective reporting and post-experiment questionnaire are also used in the mainexperiment to gain a detailed understanding of what happened in professional translators’mind. The data from the above four dimensions are triangulated to form a completepicture about the subjects’ translation process and product Both qualitative andquantitative analyses are used to process the data. In particular, a quality assessmentsystem is established, allowing for valid, reliable and intersubjective assessment oftranslation quality.The results show that only the first and second hypotheses are confirmed forprofessional translators, while the third and fourth ones are not confirmed. For novicetranslators, the results are exactly opposite. The comparison of the two groups also showthat, in C-E translation, professional translators spend more time on draft translation anddo more web search with stronger monitoring skills and better quality. These findingssuggest that more processing effort and strong monitoring mechanism produces high-quality translations.The findings as well as the data collection and analysis methods are expected to beapplicable in translation training.