How Do Translation Students’ Cognitive Efforts Vary? - An Answer in Consideration of Pauses

Abstract

Note: This paper has been derived from the author’s doctoral dissertation, which is titled “Assessment of Translation Trainees' Translation Competencies within the Scope of Specialized Translation” and was financially supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Fellowship#: 1059B141401063).

Abstract

Cognitive dynamics of translators as a translational phenomenon have drawn much scholarly attention over the last three decades and this non-physical phenomenon has been investigated in view of textual and non-textual observable data. The present study operationalizes pauses as observable non-textual data to investigate cognitive effort that translation students invest in as they translate. To this end, the author utilized a keylogger – Translog II – to obtain pause-related data, i.e. number of pauses and length of pauses. The sample consists of 78 first-, second-, third-, and fourth-year translation students studying in the Department of Translation and Interpreting in English at Istanbul University. The data were collected from the participants in two sessions, October 2013 and May 2014, in which they were invited to translate two excerpts from two different user’s manuals. The results revealed that translation students tend to invest not only higher levels of but also varying degrees of cognitive efforts during translation as they are more exposed to translation training.

Keywords: Number of pauses, Length of pauses, Cognitive effort, Translation students, Keylogging,

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-2-05

Publication date: January 31^st 2020