Investigating Translation Strategies And Units In The Translation Process: A Think-aloud Protocol Study

This research is undertaken to investigate two major aspects of the translation process of English-Chinese translators, namely, translation strategies and unit of translation. It is one of the first research efforts to probe mental activities of Chinese translators, as research on translation process has so far focused exclusively on translations among European languages.Psycholinguistically oriented Thinking-aloud method is used to collect data from five participants through their self-reports of their problem-solving processes while translating a 240-word text from English to Chinese. The TAPs data collected from the experiment are then coded in two coding systems, i.e. the Strategy Coding System and the Unit of Translation Coding System. The coded TAPs are then analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively, with focuses on the elements and patters of translation strategies and on units of translation the participants work with in the process of translating.Findings of this research are threefold. In the first place, it reveals the Retrospective-prospective nature of the translation process. It then identifies the basic and expanded patterns of translation strategies the participants use and the principles they follow in employing these strategies. The study also finds out the features and frequency of the participants processing at different unit levels. An association is discovered between the participants' characteristic strategy patterns and their dominant unit of translation, a hypothesis to be further tested in future studies.