Translating Boundaries E-Book

• Herausgeber: ibidem
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 450

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Translation Studies have traditionally been known to be interdisciplinary. What better term to sum this up than boundaries? A term that means different things in different fields and can be applied to a multitude of topics. Political, personal, symbolic, or professional boundaries, boundaries of the mind as found in psychology, or boundaries in the sociological sense where they separate different fields of knowledge. From politics to geography, boundaries are everywhere. They need to be identified, drawn, or overcome—depending on circumstances and context. What are the boundaries translators and interpreters have to deal with? How do they relate to Translation Studies in general? Boundaries and translation go hand in hand. As the discipline grows and ever more elements of interdisciplinarity come into play, the more the question of what the boundaries of translation are needs to be asked. Some of the research topics presented in this collection may well extend the boundaries of the discipline itself, while others may look at the constraints and limits under which translators and translations operate, or showcase the role translation and interpreting play in overcoming social or political boundaries. It is with this in mind that the group of young researchers presented in this book has come together to create an overview of current research in Translation Studies. The papers offer insights into the state of the discipline in various nations, often touching on under-researched topics such as the role of translation in the creation of national as well as individual identities or the translation of popular music. They look at the role of culture and, more specifically, sociocultural influences on translation. At the same time, non-linguistic, intra- and extratextual factors are taken into account with particular attention to multimodality. What unites the papers collected is the general tendency to see translation as a means of bringing people together and enabling dialog, a means of overcoming ideological and social boundaries. By looking both to the past and the future of the discipline, the authors aim to (re)define the boundaries of Translation Studies.

Leseprobe

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

List of Contributors

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Part 1 Professional Boundaries

Between Translation Process and Product: Personality and Translators’ Behaviour during Self-revision

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. The study of personality in psychology

3. Review of research on translators’ personality

4. Self-revision as a decision activity in the translation process

5. The main study

6. Conclusions and further research avenues

References

Problems and Difficulties in Simultaneous Interpreting from the Point of View of Skill Acquisition

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical background

3. Methodology

4. Results

5. Conclusions

References

Part 2 Historical Boundaries

Translating the French Civil Code into Flemish: Stakes and Limits of Interlingual, Intralingual and Legal Transfer in 19th-century Belgium

Abstract

Flemish Legal Translation in Belgian History

Translation and Transfer as Interrelated Concepts

Karel Ledeganck and the 1841 Flemish translation of the Civil Code: Het Burgerlyk Wetboek uit het Fransch vertaeld

Ledeganck’s translation as instance of interlingual, intralingual and legal transfer

Interlingual transfer

Intralingual transfer

Legal transfer

Limits of the Flemish Translation and Transfer of the French Civil Code

Acknowledgements

References

Boundaries into Bridges

Abstract

Introduction

Historians’ and translation scholars’ views of translation history

A comparison of research traditions

Conclusion

References

Part 3 Boundaries in Literature

For Children Only

Abstract

Introduction

Canadian dual address context

Finnish translation context

Adaptation in children’s literature

Didactic purification

Pedagogical cultural neutralisation

Commercial plot-driven abridgement

Conclusions

References

Representing Cultural Hybridity in Translation Paratext

Abstract

A case study on the representation of identity

Comparing the depiction of hybridity in translation paratexts

Bridging the colonial and the postcolonial: Oeroeg (1948) vs. Sleuteloog (2002)

A ‘foreigner’ in her ‘childhood home’ or a consecrated ‘colonial’ author? Expanding previous comparative paratextual studies of the two English translations of Haasse’s Oeroeg (1948)

Giving an uprooted author the right to be partial and confused. A paratextual analysis of Il lago degli spiriti (1992)

A journey through ‘the infinite labyrinths’ of truth and memory. A paratextual analysis of “L’anello della chiave” (2006)

Introducing Haasse’s generation’s hybridity as a culture-specific issue in translation

Framing hybridity in the analysed translation paratexts

The role of translators’ fore- and afterwords

Concluding remarks

Acknowledgements

References

Other sources

Literary Translation as Cultural Production: The Production, Participants and Practice of Literary Translation in Contemporary Macao

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Descriptive and sociological approaches to literary translation: a theoretical review

3. Methodology

4. The production of literary translation in contemporary Macao

5. The participants of literary translation in contemporary Macao

6. The practice of literary translation in contemporary Macao

7. Conclusion

References

Grasping and Reproducing Topical Episode Boundaries

Abstract

Introduction

Communicative activity types

Multi–turns

TEA in discourse and interaction analysis

Data and transcription

Analysis: episode structure

Participation structure of episodes and (re)production format

Enhanced para-verbal markers: role-modelling by intonation

Discussion and conclusion

References

Part 4 Boundaries in Film, Broadcasting & Music

Re-shaping Languages and Stereotypes in Dubbing

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Chicanos/as: history, language and stereotypes

3. End of Watch and the poetics of stereotyping

4. Chicano English in End of Watch

5. Dubbing End of Watch: from Chicano English to Italian

6. Discussion and concluding remarks

References

Categories and Boundaries in Interpreting Quality Perception

Abstract

I. Introduction

II. Materials and methods

III. Findings

IV. Discussion

V. Conclusion

References

Let it be Translation

Abstract

Introduction

Popular Music & Translation Studies

Descriptive Translation Studies and the Translation of Music Texts

The Sociological Dimension of Translation

The Multimodality of Music Texts

The Creation of ‘Je t’appartiens’

‘Je t’appartiens’ becomes ‘Ich gehör’ dir’

Discussion

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

Copyright

List of Contributors

Stefanie Barschdorf is a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna. She holds a BA in Transcultural Communication from the University of Vienna and an MA (with Distinction) in Translation from the University of Bristol. Her doctoral research concentrates on the translation of popular music using the example of French chansons in post-war Germany. Her research interests include postcolonial translation theory and the translation of African literature, the translation of popular music, the multimodality of texts and the sociology of translation. She is a member of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS), the European Society for Translation Studies (EST) and the Association for Translation Studies in Africa (ATSA).

Lucille Chevalier completed her Master’s degree in translation studies at ESIT in 2013. She graduated as a translator from ISIT in 2008 and as a conference interpreter from ESIT in 2012, and now works as a staff conference interpreter for the European Union. She is currently a PhD student in translation studies at ESIT – Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her ongoing doctoral project explores the perception of interpreting quality by listeners.

Laura Leden is a PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki and holds an MA in Swedish Translation Studies and a BA in Scandinavian Literature. Her dissertation examines adaptation in Swedish and Finnish translations of girls’ books published in 1945–1965. She has published papers in the children’s literature journals The Lion and the Unicorn and The Looking Glass and presented at interdisciplinary conferences such as the L.M. Montgomery conferences and Translation Studies and Children’s Literature. Her research interests include translation of children’s literature, girls’ books and adaptation studies. She also works as a medical translator.

Olha Lehka-Paul is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Psycholinguistic Studies, Faculty of English at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. She received her Master’s degree at the Department of Translation Studies and Contrastive Linguistics at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, Ukraine, and then continued to work there for two years as an assistant lecturer. Her research interests embrace Translation Process Research, Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Studies, Translator Studies and Personality Psychology. One of Olha’s greatest achievements as a PhD student is her participation at the 28th CETRA Research Summer School in Translation Studies in Antwerp, Belgium, and the opportunity to discuss her PhD project and share ideas with the Translation Studies community. In her PhD dissertation she explores the role of the translator’s personality in the translation process and product with a special focus on the decision-making processes involved in self-revision. Her professional activities include freelance translation and interpreting with English, Ukrainian and Polish as her working languages, and teaching English as a foreign language at university level.

Dalia Mankauskienė is a conference interpreter of English/Lithuanian. She has worked as an interpreter trainer at Vilnius University since 2012 and is one of the key contributors to the Lithuanian resources for the EC funded ORCIT project (Online Resources for Conference Interpreter Training). Dalia's PhD thesis deals with problems and difficulties of simultaneous interpreting from English into Lithuanian and is due to be defended in spring 2018.

Bieke Nouws holds an MA in History from the University of Antwerp and is currently preparing a PhD on translation politics in the Long Nineteenth Century (1830-1914) in Belgium. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Reine Meylaerts (KU Leuven), she studies the role of translation and translators in a new, liberal and proto-democratic country with two language groups of approximately the same size, using mother tongues with a different socio-political and international status (French and Dutch). The study focusses on the translation of legislative texts and translation in legal settings (e.g. court interpreting), and on problems addressed with regard thereto by different stakeholders: policy makers, civil servants, legal experts, partisan press and citizens, especially those not proficient in French, the lingua franca in higher level public institutions throughout the 19th century. This research is part of a larger project at KU Leuven that intends to write a translation history of Belgium: a novelty.

Cristina Peligra is an AHRC funded (Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership) PhD candidate in Translation Studies at Newcastle University, UK. Now in the final year of her doctoral degree, she is currently working on a project comparing textual and paratextual translation strategies in Italian and English to transpose issues of culture, identity, hybridity and colonial relations as depicted in Hella S. Haasse’s first two East-Indian novels. She holds a Bachelor’s (cum laude) and a Master’s degree (cum laude) in Modern Languages (Dutch and German) from the University of Padova, Italy, and a PG Certificate in Research Training from Newcastle University. She is interested in Dutch and postcolonial literature, literary translation, and issues of culture, identity and hybridity, and multilingualism in translation.

Elisabeth Poignant holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Germanic and Slavonic languages. She is a conference interpreter, language teacher and interpreter trainer at the Institute for Translation and Interpreting Studies of Stockholm University. Elisabeth is currently doing research in dialogue interpreting of public conversations on translated literature.

Dora Renna is a PhD candidate in Modern Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Verona, with a thesis on the audiovisual translation of Chicano gangster movies. She graduated in Media Studies at the University of Bari and has a Master’s Degree in Language and Cultural Mediation from the University of Salento. Her main research interests concern translation and audiovisual translation, non-standard varieties of English (in particular Chicano English and African American Vernacular English), media studies, migration. She is a teacher of Translation at the University of Bergamo, of English Language at the University of Mantua and member of the Editing Staff of the online scientific magazine Iperstoria, directed by Professor Roberto Cagliero and Professor Roberta Facchinetti from the University of Verona.

Heleen van Gerwen is a PhD researcher in Translation Studies at KU Leuven (Campus Kulak Kortrijk). As a member of the research group Translation and Intercultural Transfer, she is interested in the cultural role of translation and transfer in specific historical contexts. Her PhD, supervised by Prof. Lieven D’hulst, is part of a larger interdisciplinary research project on the emergence and evolution of translation policies in 19th-century Belgium. In her research, she focuses on the translation and transfer practices in the legal and administrative domains in 19th-century Belgium and their influence on the development of a Flemish legal language and culture.

Tenglong Wan is currently a PhD candidate in Translation Studies at the Centre for Translation Studies, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, UK. He holds an MA in Translation Studies from the University of Macau, and a BA in English from Xiamen University, PRC. Tenglong’s PhD research looks at literary translation and cultural identity in contemporary Macao. His research interests include translation and interpreting theories and practice, literary translation, discourse analysis, cultural and identity studies, with a focus on the social and cultural implications of translation/interpreting practice. Prior to undertaking his PhD research, Tenglong had worked as an in-house professional translator and interpreter for more than five years. He has also been a freelance translator over the past ten years. He is a member of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies, the Translators Association of China, and the Federation of Translators and Interpreters of Macao.

Foreword

Jeremy Munday

University of Leeds, UK

It is a great pleasure to write the foreword for this volume, a product of the 2016 CETRA Research Summer School, held at KU Leuven in Antwerp. I was surprised and honoured to be invited to take part as CETRA Chair professor, a huge honour in the field of Translation Studies, as can be attested by the list of distinguished names who have occupied the chair since the inauguration of the summer school by José Lambert in 1989. Recognition in such a context is very valuable indeed, all the more so for me as it came at the end of a difficult year for my health. I also view it as recognition for the discourse analysis and translator intervention approaches which formed the basis of my lectures.

The CETRA Summer School is an outstanding example of provision of research training at a forum that brings together leading international experts and exceptional young scholars to discuss key concepts of Translation Studies, with a focus on methodological issues. The interaction between the international staff and the student participants takes place in an atmosphere very conducive to learning. Projects are developed and refined, articles discussed, abstracts written, and plans made for future research.

Eleven of the best contributions from 2016 are brought together in this volume, Translating Boundaries: Constraints, Limits, Opportunities, expertly edited by Stefanie Barschdorf and Dora Renna and showcasing the work of the participants, who have benefited from the continued advice of the international staff. The quality is uniformly high and it is no exaggeration to state that these eleven articles all test the boundaries of Translation Studies. This is evident, first of all, in the contents, which cover translation, interpreting, audiovisual translation and translation of songs, history, legal translation, children’s literature and literary translation. Such diversity underlines the expansion of Translation Studies to embrace a wide range of contexts, reflected in the interests of these young scholars.

I am particularly impressed by the detail of the research, as manifested in the extensive bibliographies that accompany the articles. In this way, many of the articles may serve as starting points for literature reviews in their subject. This is the case for future studies on similar themes and for those articles which adopt either a multidisciplinary or a more scientific linguistic approach. Indeed, one of the great advances in Translation Studies in recent years has been the increased rigour of the empirical methodology and of multimethod approaches. This, surely, is the future of Translation Studies and one which continues to be enhanced by the training provided by CETRA.

I wish to end this foreword by thanking the CETRA Board for the opportunity to take part in the summer school and to all the staff participants for their contributions to an intellectually stimulating event which resonates far beyond the two weeks we spent together in Antwerp. May this volume enjoy the success it deserves.

Acknowledgements

The research presented in this book was part of presentations given during the 2016 CETRA Summer School and forms part of the annual CETRA Papers. We would, therefore, like to thank the organisers at the University of Leuven, most notably Luc van Doorslaer, for their assistance and the opportunity to showcase our work.

We would also like to express our gratitude to Jeremy Munday, who kindly provided the foreword to this volume, for all the time and energy he invested in this project and our work, as well as Daniel Gile for his great support at all hours and with lightning speed. Special thanks also go to Christina Schäffner, Franz Pöchhacker, Reine Meylaerts, Elke Brems, Arnt Lykke Jakobsen, Dirk Delabastita and Sara Ramos Pinto for their time and the willingness to review the contributions to this collection.

The editors would also like to express their gratefulness for all the hard work each and every contributor put into their papers.Thank you!

Part 1Professional Boundaries

Between Translation Process and Product: Personality and Translators’ Behaviour during Self-revision

Olha Lehka-Paul

Abstract

The present paper offers an insight into the way translators’ dominant psychological functions influence their choice of self-revision patterns in the translation process. It is assumed that the translator’s dominant mental functions navigate their translation process as a special kind of “cognitive behaviour” (Wilss 1996:37). In psychology, decision-making is believed to be related to the Thinking-Feeling dichotomy in personality typology (cf. Schweda-Nicholson 2005). Tentative findings show supportive evidence for the interaction between psychological functions and the choice of self-revision strategies. The practical implications inform translation didactics that the emergence of the final translation output might be guided by the translator’s “individual psychology” (Mossop 2007:19).

1. Introduction

The notion of the translator’s personality has frequently been referred to in Translation Studies, either implicitly or explicitly, by translators themselves or by scholars exploring various research questions. Commentaries to the early translations of the Bible and ancient texts not only reveal the difficulties that translators encountered while rendering the source text but also show the approaches adopted by translators, their decision-making processes and the emergence of translation styles. Such evidence, among other things, made it possible for researchers to build multiple translation theories and support them with real-life examples. Nowadays modern technologies have made the job of translators almost entirely dependent on computers, CAT tools, Translation Memory software, electronic dictionaries and the Internet. Despite such an omnipresent digitalization, Translation Studies scholars seem to be more than ever involved in the attempt to understand the same age-old issues like translators’ decision-making and translation styles by taking a cognitive perspective. Understanding the role of the psychological mechanisms guiding translators’ decisions during the process of translation might provide a powerful insight into what James Holmes (1972/2000) foresaw as the area of ‘translation psychology or psycho-translation studies’ (cf. Chesterman 2009, Jääskeläinen 2012), which resides within the boundaries of Translation Process Research.

The present article reports on a sample analysis proposal that aims to explore the relationship between the preferred psychological functions as defined by Jung (1921/1971) and translators’ behaviour during the process of self-revision. The stage of self-revision has been selected to analyse the psychology behind decision-making, as it is the stage of the translation process that leads to the final output through quality assurance (cf. Mossop 1982), which among other things depends on “individual psychology” (Mossop 2007:19). From a writing research perspective, self-revision is a “decision activity controlled at a metacognitive level” (Piolat 1990:186 quoted from Alamargot and Chanquoy 2001:110), and its close analysis may reveal the implicit role of internalised metacognitive processes in the decision-related “negotiation of meaning” (Jakobsen 2014) in the process of translation.

The next sections briefly outline the rationale behind the study, both from the viewpoint of Translation Studies and personality psychology, followed by the description of the present research proposal, the results and discussion of the study, tentative conclusions and further research avenues.

2. The study of personality in psychology

As observed by Tymoczko (2005), translation is per se a broad and multidimensional entity that can be classified as a “cluster” or “open concept” (Wittgenstein 1953 quoted from Tymoczko 2005), which can, therefore, be viewed and analysed in many different ways. Similarly, the concept of personality in psychology is open to multiple interpretations and approaches that depend on research aims and applications. The definitions of personality have evolved from purely conceptual ones to those based on solid empirical evidence, and so have the definitions of translation. Both translation and personality can be viewed as being of either a stable or dynamic nature, giving rise to the two major research trends. Finally, both concepts focus on the objective description and interpretation of human behaviour and its outcomes. Considering these arguments, it seems more worthwhile to examine the points of contact rather than the boundaries between translation and personality.

Consistent psychological investigation of personality was initiated by Sigmund Freud in his psychodynamic theory (Freud 1910), according to which one’s personality is formed by the constant struggle with the biological instincts on the one hand and external stimuli on the other. A few decades later Gordon Allport (1937) inaugurated the study of traits as based on the “psycho-lexical hypothesis” (Galton 1884), according to which personality characteristics are encoded in language and can, therefore, be retrieved from it. Since that time the trait approach has gained great popularity and become operationalised in a series of psychometric tests, such as Cattell’s 16 Personality Factor Inventory (Cattell 1946), and Costa and McCrae’s (1985) NEO Personality Inventory (the acronym stands for the first found trait names of ‘Neuroticism’, ‘Extraversion’, ‘Openness to Experience’). Other influential personality theories include Mischel’s (1968) call for considering situational variables in predicting and explaining people’s behaviour and Eysenck’s (1990) belief in the biological and hereditary nature of traits.

Carl Gustav Jung’s psychoanalytic theory (Jung 1921/1971), which appeared as a critical response to Freud’s pessimistic views, is particularly relevant to the present study. Jung emphasised the importance of the unconscious processes and believed that people’s behaviour is guided by the internal psychological functions of sensing and intuition, thinking and feeling, which represent dichotomous dimensions (sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling). The functions of sensing and intuition form the ‘irrational’ psychological space and are believed to be responsible for the process of taking in information, whereas thinking and feeling are the ‘rational’ functions that refer to decision-making strategies. Jung claimed that each person displays a preference for one of the opposing functions in each dichotomy, thus forming a certain personality type. American psychologists operationalised Jung’s typology in the 1960s (Myers 1962) and created a psychometric test (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, further referred to as ‘MBTI’) that could identify one’s preferences for the psychological functions, constructing a qualitative personality profile. Since then the test has been extensively used in career counselling and staff recruitment, as well as for research purposes. For example, Apostal (1991) discovered that the dominant intuitive function was more typical of creative individuals, and Filbeck et al. (2005) found that people who preferred the thinking function were more risk-tolerant than those with the feeling preference. The instrument was also applied to investigate the personality profiles of interpreters and translators, and the findings of the studies will be discussed in detail in the next section.

3. Review of research on translators’ personality

Research into the non-cognitive aspects of a translator’s personality goes back to Reiss (1971/2000), who hypothesised that certain personality features could be helpful in translating certain text types. Reiss referred to Spranger’s typology of characters (Spranger 1922/1928) to further illustrate her ideas, and theorised that an aesthetic type of person (who values diversity and harmony of life) would be most successful in translating literary texts, an economic type (who values practicality of life over emotions) would be best suited for the translation of appellative texts, a theoretical type would perform best in technical and philosophical texts, and an aggressive type would most probably not be suited for the translation profession (Reiss 1971/2000:111–112). Reiss’s idea of the relationship between personality features and predisposition to translate certain text types was later reiterated by Barboni (1999), but it still remains to be empirically investigated.

Some of the early attempts at building the psychological profile of translators concentrated on comparing the personalities of translators to that of interpreters to test out, among other things, the popular myths such as translators being reserved and introvert, and interpreters being open-minded and extrovert. Henderson (1987) was the first to address the issue empirically, applying Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors Inventory (1957) to the sample of 100 professionals, 65 practising translators and 35 conference interpreters. Statistical analyses did not reach significance levels, which debunked the myth about ‘split personalities’ of those individuals who combined both professions. Nevertheless, the data suggested that translators tend to be more conscientious and controlled in their behaviour, whereas interpreters tend to be more outgoing and venturesome (Henderson 1987:125). On the introvert versus extrovert distinction, Holmes (1988) engaged in the debate. When asked in an interview about what common psychological traits translators share, he suggested that there should be “something in the introverted type that greatly enjoys being a mediator” (Holmes 1988:2). Kurz et al. (1996) continued the comparative line of approach and used Casse’s communication value orientation model (1981) to look into the differences between prevalent communication styles of translators and interpreters. The participants were 31 beginners and 39 advanced translation and interpreting students from the University of Vienna. The results pointed to a shared feature of translators and interpreters being people-oriented, whilst translators were found to be process-oriented as opposed to action-oriented interpreters (Kurz 1996:15). The finding is in line with Henderson’s conclusions about translators being more conscientious and focused on their performance, and interpreters being more concentrated on task completion (i.e. the results of their performance).

The series of comparative studies was broken by Schweda-Nicholson (2005) in her attempt to construct the personality profiles of individuals that are most frequently drawn to the profession of an interpreter. Schweda-Nicholson applied MBTI to identify the preferred psychological functions to a sample of 68 interpreting students. The results revealed a clear preference for thinking over feeling function, which Schweda-Nicholson explained by interpreters’ professional need to be quick-thinking and analytical while making decisions. In a different study, Hubscher Davidson (2009) used MBTI in a group of 20 translation trainees to gauge the relationships between the preferred psychological functions and decision-making processes, and the findings suggested that the quality of translations was much better in participants with the preference for intuitive function. The results point to the creative part of translator’s personality (cf. Apostal 1991) that reveals itself in the quality of translation performance. Karimnia and Mahjubi (2013) conducted a methodologically similar study using MBTI but supplemented it with the text type variable. Statistical analyses corroborated the positive correlation between translators’ preference for the intuitive function and higher translation quality, especially in the translation of a literary text. Better translation quality was also found to correlate positively with higher risk-taking preference in a study of 132 Iranian translation students by Shojaee and Sahragard (2012). Hubscher Davidson (2013) further investigated the role of intuition in decision-making in a case study of the think-aloud protocol of one translation trainee translating three texts. The researcher observed that whenever a translator was faced with a particularly challenging decision, intuition was preferred over strategic thinking (Hubscher Davidson 2013:223).

The most recent investigations of translators’ and interpreters’ personality profiles address the issues of Emotional Intelligence trait (Hubscher Davidson 2016) and affective dimensions (Lehr 2013, Rojo and Ramos Caro 2016, Cifuentez-Férez and Fenollar-Cortés 2017) as related to professional demands and performance. The present study rediscovers the decision-making dimension of the translation process by exploring the relationship between the translators’ preferred psychological function as measured by MBTI and the patterns of self-revision behaviour.

4. Self-revision as a decision activity in the translation process

As already mentioned, Holmes anticipated the rise of ‘translation psychology or psycho-translation studies’ (Holmes 1972/2000) with evidence from translation process research in order to tap into the cognitive activities that take place in the ‘black box’ of the translator’s mind. A few years earlier, Lévy (1967) referred to the translation process as a decision-making and problem-solving activity, thus emphasising the cognitive effort that translation requires. With reference to Holmes’s “translation psychology” (Holmes 1972/2000), the statement soon generated a growing body of empirical research into translators’ decision-making strategies by borrowing methods from psychology (e.g. think-aloud protocols), as well as devising new ones (e.g. key-logging).

In the online version of Translation Studies Bibliography,1 the search for entries containing the phrase ‘decision-making’ returns 130 hits. Among the major research problems, Tirkkonen-Condit (1992) analysed the types of knowledge that translators preferred while making decisions, looked for the traces of professionalism in translators’ decision process (Tirkkonen-Condit 1996), explored the role of self-esteem and subjective translation theories in decision-making (Tirkkonen-Condit and Laukkanen 1996) and tracked translators’ decisions in translating metaphors (Tirkkonen-Condit 2001). Wilss (1994) sought to build a coherent framework of translators’ decision-making behaviour, and Toury (1995) encouraged a thorough analysis of interim versions that appear in the translation process and lead to the final ones. Piotrowska (2007), Kelly (2010), Hansen (2013) and Atkinson (2014) emphasised the role of translation and interpreting training in building the decision-making profiles of future professionals.

Shih (2015) used think-aloud protocols to evaluate translators’ problem-solving and decision-making strategies as observed in self-revision, which also occupies the central place in the present case study. In fact, the entries on ‘self-revision’ in the Translation Studies Bibliography seem to be rather scarce, returning only eleven hits (including two editions of Mossop’s Revising and editing for translators, 2001 and 2007), although in some of the studies the term ‘revision’ was used to refer to ‘self-revision’ (cf. Robert 2008). Mossop (1982) made an early distinction between ‘self-revision’ and ‘other-revision’ and proposed a three-step experience-based self-revision procedure applicable to translation training. However, he later admitted that whatever revision strategy one assumes, “everything depends on individual psychology” (Mossop 2007:19) and can hardly be immediately correlated with translation quality. The present sample analysis explores one of the possible ways of defining the role of ‘individual psychology’ in the decision-making process observable in self-revision behaviour.

Detailed empirical investigation of self-revision became possible with the development of Translog (Jakobsen 1999), the key-logging programme. Using the method to analyse the translation process of four translation students and four professional translators, Jakobsen (2002) found that professionals spent more time on post-draft revision, but introduced fewer changes than students at that stage. In a different study comparing key-logging with think-aloud protocols, Jakobsen (2003) looked at the impact of think-aloud on translation speed, segmentation and the amount of self-revision in a group of four semi-professionals and five expert translators. The findings showed that the first two variables (speed and segmentation) were affected by think-aloud, whereas self-revision was not, which seems to indicate that self-revision behaviour might be a part of one’s individual translation style which remains unaffected by external factors (cf. Hansen 2013). Combining think-aloud and key-logging, Englund Dimitrova (2005) conducted a detailed analysis of revision behaviour of nine translators with different degrees of expertise in translation. The researcher observed that revision behaviour changed with growing professional experience, e.g. more expert translators made fewer changes at the post-draft revision stage and often used literal translation as an intermediate step, which was either mentally planned or written down and immediately revised. In her analysis of the types of revisions, Englund Dimitrova found that if any changes were to appear at the post-draft revision stage, these would most frequently be lexical and syntactic corrections. In her conclusions, Englund Dimitrova referred the results to Krings’s (2001) ideas about some of the translators being ‘correctional planners’ (who revise the text as they go along with drafting the translation) and others being ‘anticipatory planners’ (who tend to come back and reassess their prior versions at a later stage) in their self-revision behaviour.

Buchweitz and Alves (2006) analysed recursiveness, i.e. non-linear text production, as a part of translators’ cognitive adaptation procedure. The researchers measured the variable by means of “revision keystrokes” (Jakobsen 2003) (total text eliminations, navigation keystrokes and mouse activities added together, divided by the total number of keystrokes and multiplied by 100) and suggested that segmentation and revision keystrokes increased with the increasing level of translation task difficulty. Buchweitz and Alves compared recursiveness with “a spindle or a spinning frame” (Buchweitz and Alves 2006:6), which does a repetitive job but appears to be an indispensable instrument for ‘untangling’ the difficult bits of the source text and therefore adapting to the rising needs of the task. Ferreira (2014) in her analysis of recursiveness also found that it might be considered one of the indicators of translation task difficulty.

Carl et al. (2011) and Dragsted and Carl (2013) aimed at profiling translators according to their translation styles, i.e. certain recurrent tendencies observable in the translation process. As regards self-revision, Carl et al. (2011) offered to differentiate the profiles of ‘online revisers’ (translators who tend to revise while drafting the target text), ‘end revisers’ (translators who tend to spend more than 20% of the total translation time on revising the text after the first draft has been finished), and ‘constant revisers’ (translators who combine both patterns of behaviour). The findings also suggested that professionals generally preferred end revision whereas novices chose online revision more often. Triangulating the data from eye tracking and key-logging, Dragsted and Carl (2013) confirmed the results of Carl et al. (2011) with regard to self-revision patterns and concluded that some translators displayed a local orientation and others preferred a more global orientation. The former type was characterised by a “head-start or quick planning in the initial planning phase and narrow-context planning at the drafting phase” (Dragsted and Carl 2013:149) and a preference for online revision. Conversely, the latter showed the features of “systematic planning or scanning in the initial planning phase and broad-context or sentence planning in the drafting phase” (Dragsted and Carl 2013:149), as well as a tendency for more extensive end revision.

The review of literature on translators’ self-revision shows that self-revision is a rich source of information about translators’ decision-making behaviour characterised by certain well-traced individual variations, which can be grouped to form translation styles (Dragsted and Carl 2013) or process profiles (Englund Dimitrova 2005) related to the translators’ “individual psychology” (Mossop 2007:19).

5. The main study

The present sample analysis forms part of the main experiment conducted by the author for her PhD thesis. Therefore, the description of the main experiment is provided first, and then the areas relevant for the present report are outlined.

5.1 Participants

Two groups of participants took part in the main study. The first group consisted of 30 1MA translation students (M age=23.4 years, SD=1.1) at the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. By the time of the experiment, the participants had obtained an average of six months of training in translation (M training=6.4 months, SD=0.8). The trainees’ language proficiency was not further examined since a language test is one of the components of the recruitment procedure for the MA programme at Adam Mickiewicz University. The second group was composed of 16 practising translators (M age=37, SD=8.1) with at least three years of experience (M experience=12.7 years, SD =8.6). All of the participants had Polish as their native language (L1), and English as their first foreign language (L2).

The present report provides a detailed analysis of the data received from four participants, two translation students and two practising translators with different personality profiles as measured by a psychometric test in the course of the experiment. The small number of participants makes it hardly possible to generalise about the results of the experiment, but the aim of the present sample analysis is to point to some potential areas of further investigation and prepare the ground for the main study. Based on the participants’ preferred decision-making function (thinking or feeling), a thinking type student and a feeling type student, a thinking type practising translator and a feeling type practising translator were randomly chosen for analysis in the study reported here. Both students were 23 years old and stated that by the time of the experiment they had had about six months of university training in translation, and both added that they have been practising translation elsewhere for approximately one year. The thinking type professional was 34 years old at the time of the experiment and stated that s/he had been practising translation for approximately twelve years, and the feeling type translator was 39 years old with 16 years of experience in translation.

5.2 Hypotheses

The hypotheses for the main study as well as for the present study derive from the description of the decision-related psychological functions and the overview of individual variations frequently reported in translation process research. The literature on Jung’s personality types and the MBTI instrument describe individuals showing a preference for the feeling function as subjective, compassionate and concerned with “how or to what extent a thing is important or unimportant for us” (1987:15). Individuals with a thinking preference tend to be objective, analytical and driven by “the process of cognitive thought” (Sharp 1987:14). Therefore, it is hypothesised that the feeling type translators will immediately evaluate each decision in their attempt to please both the author and the reader, which goes in line with their value- and people-orientation. On the other hand, the thinking type translators will strategically reconsider the choices at the final stage of the translation process, which matches their usefulness- and task-orientation. Consequently, the feeling types will introduce more changes at the drafting stage than the thinking types, who will postpone the final quality judgment until the end revision stage. To sum up, the following hypotheses have been suggested:

The feeling types spend less time on end revision than the thinking types.

The feeling types eliminate more during the drafting stage and less during the end revision stage as opposed to the thinking types.

The thinking types produce more meaning-related changes at the end revision stage than the feeling types.

5.3 Experiment design

The first step towards conducting the main experiment consisted of selecting the source texts and testing them in a pilot study. Two texts of different types, expressive and informative2 (Reiss 1971/2000) were chosen since one of the aims of the main experiment was to investigate the relationship between the preferred psychological functions and self-revision behaviour in different text types. The texts were tested in a pilot study, which showed telling results(Lehka-Paul and Whyatt 2016), so the same texts were later used in the main experiment. The presently reported study shall concentrate on an in-depth analysis of the participants’ translation of the expressive text type. According to the Flesch-Kincaid readability index, the extract from Maugham’s short story received the score of 71.2, which means that it is “fairly easy to read” (Flesch 1979). The extract describes an international group of guests at a Riviera party, so it is easy to understand without additional context.

The procedure of the experiment was as follows:

1) The participant was provided with guidelines and instructed about the tasks s/he would have to deal with in the experiment;

2) A brief guide on how to use Translog-II User was given;

3) The participant was invited to translate the first extract when s/he felt ready. No time constraints were imposed. The texts were counterbalanced so that the order of texts could not influence translation performance. Once the participant finished translating the first text, s/he was asked to proceed to the second one. The Internet was allowed as a source of reference. The participant was asked to translate in a way that met his/her own quality standards.

4) After the translation task, the participant had to fill out a retrospective questionnaire to report on his/her translation performance.

5) The last step involved completing two psychometric tests: first the Polish paper version of HEXACO Personality Inventory,3 then the English online version of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.4

5.4 Tools and methodology

As the study is of interdisciplinary character, a multi-method approach was adopted. As regards Translation Process Research (further referred to as TPR), Translog-II, the key logging software, was used. As regards personality psychology, the online version of MBTI, a psychometric test based on Jung’s personality typology, was used.

Translog-II (Carl 2012), a Windows-based key-logging version of Jakobsen’s (1999) programme, was used to record participants’ translation process data. The programme enables the researcher to replay the whole process of target text production, as well as to obtain such useful statistics as total text production time, total production units, total user events and the number of eliminations, with an additional opportunity to look into certain areas of interest by selecting translation units or ‘segments’ of the text and running the analysis. The top-to-bottom layout was chosen so that the source text appeared at the top part of the window, and the space for writing the target text was left in the bottom half of the Translog window.

The short online version of MBTI measuring psychological functions was chosen for the study due to its accessibility, the ease of administration and collection of results, as well as the fact that it had been previously used for research purposes, with the aim to investigate translators’ and interpreters’ personality (cf. Schweda-Nicholson 2005, Hubscher Davidson 2009).

5.5 Variables

The independent variables in the study were: 1) experimental group membership (translation students and practising translators), 2) the preferred decision-related psychological function (“Thinking” or “Feeling”) as measured by MBTI, and 3) the two texts for translation. Four dependent variables were selected for analysing participants’ self-revision behaviour: 1) the duration of end revision, which Dragsted and Carl (2013) concluded to be probably the most telling parameter for investigating the issue, 2) the number of deleted characters during the drafting stage, 3) the number of characters deleted during the end revision stage, and 4) the types of revision introduced at the drafting and end revision stages as based on Faigley and Witte’s (1981) classic taxonomy widely used in writing process research, which has been adapted to the needs of this study. The fourth variable has been chosen to supplement purely quantitative data with the ‘quality’ of changes introduced while revising the text, with the final aim to answer both the question of ‘how many deletions took place?’ and ‘what purpose did they serve?’ (e.g. to correct typos, provide synonyms, rephrase or rearrange words in an utterance). Jakobsen (2003) suggested that “only detailed ‘manual’ scrutiny of the log files, however, would make it possible to find out how much text revision was a mere correction of typos, and how much was the result of second thought about the translation”. In view of this comment, Faigley and Witte’s (1987) taxonomy appeared to be helpful in classifying the types of revisions.

5.6 Results and Discussion

Hypothesis 1: Each of the four log files was analysed in line with Jakobsen’s (2003) division of the translation process into three stages: orientation, drafting and end revision. Orientation is the period of time from the moment the Translog User interface is opened for the participant to the moment when the first click on the keyboard is made. From the first keystroke onwards until the last word of the source text is translated for the first time (i.e., until the creation of the first complete draft) is considered to be drafting. End revision is the time spent on proofreading and editing the target text after the first draft has been finished until the Translog User interface is closed.

The division of each of the participant’s log files into three stages is presented in Table 1. The unit of time is a second (s). Student participants’ code names start with ‘PS’, which stands for ‘participant’ and ‘student’, and practising translators’ code names start with ‘PT’, which stands for ‘participant’ and ‘translator’. Letters ‘F’ and ‘TH’ denote the preferred psychological function, feeling or thinking respectively. The digits in the code names represent participants’ numbers as they appeared in the experiment.

Table 1. 1 The duration of each stage of the participants’ translation process in seconds

Participant / Stage

Orientation

Drafting

End revision

PS9_F

18.6

2341.3

165.2

PS7_TH

36.1

2088.5

410.0

PT7_F

90.8

1470.8

184.3

PT9_TH

156.1

1929.8

735.9

The duration of the end revision stage is of particular interest for the case study. According to Hypothesis 1, feeling types are expected to spend less time on end revision than thinking types due to the fact that they are considered to be more spontaneous and base their decisions on the feeling of the moment, so they are more ‘locally oriented’ (cf. Carl & Dragsted 2013), as opposed to the more analytical and potentially ‘globally oriented’ thinking types. To better illustrate the differences in the duration of participants’ end revision stages, the pie charts are provided (Figures 1 and 2). The segments represent the percentage of time spent on each of the stages, and the segment showing end revision time has been pulled out to make it more visible. The codes are the same as above.

Figure 1. 1 Students’ duration of translation process stages in %

Figure 1. 2 Practising translators’ duration of translation process stages in %

There is a clear tendency for both the feeling type trainee and the practising translator to spend less time on end revision (6% and 11% respectively) than their thinking counterparts (16% and 26% respectively). It is worthy of notice that practising translators as opposed to translation trainees spent more time on end revision irrespective of the preferred psychological function, which might be explained by the fact that self-revision has become part of their professional habit and an indispensable part of the translation process. In general, some of the professionals have a tendency to integrate revision in the process of drafting, and others prefer improving the text extensively after the first draft has been finished, and the suggestion is that such individual variations may well be rooted in their personalities. This finding seems to illustrate that some translators may be considered ‘online revisers’ and others ‘end revisers’, or some ‘locally oriented’ and others ‘globally oriented planners’ (Carl et al. 2011, Carl & Dragsted 2013).

Hypothesis 2: The second hypothesis suggests that feeling types tend to eliminate more during the drafting stage and less during the end revision stage than the thinking types. The number of deleted characters during the drafting and end revision stages for the translation trainees (a Thinking type and a Feeling type) and practising translators (a Thinking type and a Feeling type) are shown in Figures 3 and 4 respectively. ‘Online deletions’ refer to the number of characters deleted during the drafting stage, and ‘post-draft deletions’ refer to the characters deleted during end revision stage.

Figure 1. 3 Translation trainees: a Thinking type (PS7) and a Feeling type (PS9): Number of deleted characters

Figure 1. 4 Practising translators: a Thinking type (PT9) and a Feeling type (PT7): Number of deleted characters

As shown in the Figures, student participants produced a lot of deletions during the drafting stage, with the feeling type outnumbering the thinking type by 192 characters. The feeling type student, however, did not introduce any changes at the end revision stage, although the trainee devoted 6% of the total translation time on reviewing the text after it had been finished. It probably means that the student was either rereading the translation or inserting some text. The analysis of the third variable, the type of changes, will show whether the student introduced any other corrections at the final stage.

Both practising translators introduced fewer deletions while drafting their translations than students, and the difference between the number of online deletions with respect to the translators’ preferred psychological function does not seem considerable (123 and 161). At the end revision stage, however, the thinking type made almost twice as many deletions as the feeling type. In fact, the thinking type practising translator produced a comparatively similar number of deletions at the drafting and end revision stages, which provides additional support for the idea that some of the translators tend to roughly divide the whole of their translation process into the preparation of the first draft and its careful revision, whereas others prefer working in the online fashion (cf. Carl et al. 2011). The data suggest that such differences may be partially due to the dominant decision-related psychological function.

Hypothesis 3: The third hypothesis seeks to answer the question of what type of changes were introduced at the drafting and end revision stages. To address the issue, Faigley and Witte’s (1987) taxonomy of revisions has been adopted from writing research and reformulated to meet the needs of translation process research. The original taxonomy differentiated between ‘formal’ and ‘meaning-related’ revisions, but the terms might be misleading for the Translation Studies community. For example, the term ‘formal’ may subconsciously allude to Nida’s “formal equivalence” (Nida 1969), and the term ‘meaning-related’ does not seem to embrace all types of changes that a translator needs to introduce in the process of translation, such as style-related changes or revisions introduced for pragmatic purposes. Therefore, the terms ‘surface’ and ‘deep’ revisions have been suggested, the former referring to rather mechanical (therefore, ‘surface’) corrections of typos, morphological errors, grammar mistakes, and punctuation (phonological and morphological levels), and the latter relating to the more complex (therefore, ‘deep’) cases of adding or deleting units, exchanging for synonyms, rephrasing, rearranging word order, breaking up clauses or putting them together (lexical, syntactic and pragmatic levels). Moreover, the terms ‘surface’ and ‘deep’ can be associated with Chomsky’s (1965) ‘surface and deep structure’, which supports the borrowing of the terms for the taxonomy of revisions that refer either to the form (‘surface’), or content (‘deep’).

Each log file has been carefully examined and the figures (5 and 6) below show the distribution of the types of revisions (online and post-draft) in thinking and feeling type participants. The abbreviations in the graphs that start with the letter ‘S’ refer to surface revisions, and those that start with the letter ‘D’ denote deep revisions. The abbreviations stand for the following: Ssp – corrections of typos and orthographic mistakes, Smor – morphological and grammar errors; Sp – punctuation, Dadd – addition of a word or phrase, Ddel – deletion of a word or phrase, Dsub – substitution of a unit by a synonym, rephrasing, Dper – (permutation) rearrangement of the word order, Ddis – (distribution) division of a complex sentence into shorter sentences, Dcon – (consolidation) bringing short sentences together to make complex ones.

Figure 1. 5 All participants: The types of online revisions

Figure 1. 6 All participants: The types of post-draft revisions

Figures 5 and 6 display similar revision patterns irrespective of the personality type, the main difference being quantitative, i.e. both feeling participants (PS9 and PT7) made almost twice as many corrections of typos and orthographic mistakes (surface revisions) as both thinking types (PS7 and PT9). This might suggest that analytical, task-oriented thinking personalities tend to monitor text production more closely than the spontaneous feeling types. With respect to deep revisions, both the thinking type trainee and professional (PS7 and PT9) worked mostly on the lexical level, producing synonyms (substitutions), and so did the feeling type trainee. The feeling type practising translator (PT7) was most active in deleting the unnecessary text, which means that the first version could have been either too verbose or too literal, and synonymous expressions would not be appropriate. This is an interesting observation, as it might explain the tendency of some of the translators to save their short-term memory capacity by starting with literal translations and then immediately reformulating their ideas (cf. Tirkkonen-Condit 2005), and others being more concerned with mental discussion of meaning and only typing the decision they feel more certain about. However, the assumption needs to be tested on a larger sample of participants.

As regards end revision (Figure 6), the feeling type student-produced no corrections at this stage (PS9, so the data do not appear in the figure), which perhaps supports the idea that s/he was apparently rereading the text without introducing any changes. With the little time the feeling type professional spent on end revision, s/he managed to introduce a few deletions, additions and substitutions in the target text, working mostly at the lexical level, which fits Englund Dimitrova’s conclusions (2005).

The thinking type professional (PT9), on the other hand, produced the greatest number of synonymic substitutions and additions at the end revision stage (deep changes), which had to be supplemented with morphological and spelling corrections, as well as a few changes of word order (‘permutation’) and syntactic rearrangements (‘consolidation’). Thus, the translator was working most extensively on the lexical and syntactic levels. The thinking type student (PS7) focused mostly on finding suitable synonyms, but also made a few deletions and additions to the text, as well as morphological and spelling corrections, and syntactic rearrangements (‘distribution’). On the basis of the case study, it is possible to generalise that the participants with the dominant thinking function displayed the tendency to evaluate the text in a comprehensive and consistent manner at the end revision stage. Interestingly, the practising translator outnumbered the student in adding lexical units and rearranging word order, whereas the student was more active seeking synonyms. This may be explained as an effect of expertise since the student seemed to be still overcoming comprehension problems at the end revision stage, while the practising translator was engaged in the overall improvement of the target text. Comparing the thinking type practising translator (PT9) with the feeling colleague (PT7), there is a considerable difference between the number of post-draft revisions introduced by the former (40 revisions) and the latter (21 revisions), which shows that the variable of revision types is also a source of individual variations that should be considered when analysing self-revision behaviour.

6. Conclusions and further research avenues

The proposal of self-revision analysis with reference to the preferred decision-making function (thinking-feeling) put forward in the study offers one of the possible ways of looking at the emergence of translation styles and constructing translators’ personality profiles. The data presented support the findings of previous research into translators’ self-revision behaviour and decision-making (Krings 2011, Jakobsen 2002, Englund Dimitrova 2005, Carl et al. 2011, Dragsted and Carl 2013), and supplement them with the detailed analysis of the type of corrections introduced while moving between the intermediate versions in the translation process to the final ones that survive in the final output. The chosen variables of the duration of the end revision stage, the number of deletions at the drafting and end revision stages and the type of revisions proved to be feasible in tracking the individual decision processes that seem to be related to individual psychological preferences. Importantly, once divided on the basis of the decision-related personality function, all participants irrespective of the level of expertise displayed the hypothesised patterns of behaviour, which fits in with Hansen’s (2013) idea about the emergence of translation styles already at the beginning of translation training. The translators’ preferred decision-making function might, therefore, account for some of the earlier reported individual variations such as the tendency of some translators to revise the text immediately while drafting (‘correctional planners’, Krings 2001, or ‘online revisers’, Carl et al. 2011), and others being more likely to reassess their tentative versions at the end revision stage (‘anticipatory planners’, Krings 2001, or ‘end revisers’, Carl et al. 2011).

However illuminating and promising the findings of the present study may seem, they need to be tested in a large-scale study combining personality characteristics and self-revision behaviour, which the author is planning to do in her PhD project. In the main part of the PhD project, the author intends to compare the self-revision tendencies across different text types, as well as to test for the correlation between the dominant personality traits and the quality of the target text. Such analyses attempt to empirically investigate Reiss’s (1971/2000) idea about certain personality types being more suitable for the translation of certain text types. With regard to future research avenues, it seems worthwhile to look into the efficiency of corrections by evaluating them against source text requirements and correlating the quality of revisions with the final translation quality.

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