Directionality And Cognitive Load In Translation:An Eye-tracking And Key-logging Study

Directionality-whether translation is done into the translators' first language(L1 translation)or from the first language into their second language(L2 translation)—is an important topic in translation studies(e.g.,Beeby,1998;Gile,2005).Traditionally,translating into an L2 is considered to be more cognitively effortful.It is also thought to lead to products of insufficient quality compared with translations into L1(e.g.,Newmark,1988;Grosman,2000).Since the 1990s,there have been opposing opinions on this matter(e.g.,McAlister,1992;Campbell,1998)and yet there has been scant empirical evidence to support them.This study explores the relationship between directionality and cognitive load.Sixteen graduate students of translation with Chinese as their L1 and English as their L2 were invited to do L1 and L2 translations.Each translated two English and two Chinese texts of about 125 words;the test texts were at two difficulty(or readability)levels,with one English text paired up with one Chinese text of about the same difficulty level.Their behaviors during the translation process were recorded by a Tobii TX300 eye-tracker and Translog ?,a key-logging program.An adapted version of NASA Task Load Index(NASA-TLX)was used to elicit subjective assessment of the translation difficulty levels from the participants.Their translation products were evaluated as to the quality.The data of interest were statistically analyzed with linear mixed effects models(LMEs).Also,translation process graphs(TPGs)were qualitatively analyzed.The results show that:(1)cognitive load in translation is significantly influenced by translation direction;the relationship between directionality and cognitive load changes as a function of source text difficulty;(2)with source texts of low difficulty,cognitive load in Chinese-English translation(in this case,L2 translation)is higher than in English-Chinese translation(in this case,L1 translation);(3)with source texts of high difficulty,the cognitive load in L2 translation is not necessarily higher than in L1 translation;(4)more cognitive effort is expended in the orientation phase(i.e.,reading the source text before the first keystroke)of LI translation than in that of L2 translation;(5)the translation direction has a significant influence on the quality of target texts;the quality of L1 translation products,however,is not necessarily higher than that of L2 translation products.