Types And Thresholds Of Pauses In The Translation Process:An Empirical Study

Pause analysis is a common approach in the analysis of behavioral patterns in the translation process.It can be employed to gauge translators' cognitive effort and recognize whether they have encountered difficulty in their translation.A question is:what is the minimum duration(i.e.,threshold)of a pause for translation researchers to count an interval of inactivity as a pause?To date,there is no consensus on the answer.Previous studies in translation process research have set the pause threshold to be 3,4,or 5 seconds,and they are subjective settings.Munoz and his collaborator(2018a),based on empirical studies involving two participants,propose 3 tunes the median pause between words as the threshold.This study investigates the types and thresholds of pauses in English/Chinese translation.Twenty Chinese graduate students in an English/Chinese translation program in Beijing participated in the experiment.Each of thm translated a Chinese passage into English and an English passage into Chinese,and copied their own translations afterwards.Data from keystroke logging(Translog ?),screen recording,and retrospective interviews—mainly for recognizing translation problems-were analyzed.The results show that:(1)Pauses in the process of translation can be generally classified into three types,including translation-related pauses,typing-related pauses,and irrelevant movements.Translation-related pauses take place on the level of word,phrase,sentence,and paragraph.Typing-related pauses are related to typing errors,individual typing habits,and lack of familiarity with the keyboard(e.g.,for entering the dollar sign $).Irrelevant movements in the laboratory environment were mainly caused by physiological needs(e.g.,drinking water).(2)Typing speed has a significant effect on pauses in translation;typing-related pauses falling in 200-3000ms interfere with the identification of translation-related problems.(3)The thresholds for Chinese-English translation problems range from 1000-2000ms with a median of 1172ms;those for English-Chinese translation problems range from 800-2500ms,with a median of 1476ms.he median pause threshold for Chinese-English translation is more effective than traditional 3s and 3 times the median pause between words proposed by Munoz and Cardona Guerra on revealing problems.Thresholds should be set in accordance with the translation direction.This study finds that 1200ms is the optimal threshold for Chinese-English translation while 1500ms is the optimal one for English-Chinese translation.Furthermore,the application of thresholds to different language pairs demands more attention.