Because interpreting affords only limited opportunity for restatement or corrections, it can be seen as the practitioner's default version, with written translation representing a more polished rendition. Thus, a comparison of the target texts of interpreting and translation can shed light not only on the differences between the two modalities as such, but on the processes involved in each of the two as well. In this case, target texts from interpreting and translation were used to investigate cognate status, performance on false cognates, and cognate processing. In the first stage of this experiment, seven professional translators/interpreters interpreted an English text into their L1, Hebrew; four years later, they rendered the same ST in writing. The source text contained 51 words for which Hebrew offered true cognates and 10 for which it offered false cognates. The data show that: (a) cognate status is most often consistent across modalities; (b) noncognate synonyms are more prevalent in translation than in interpreting; (c) when a participant produces a noncognate translation in one modality and a cognate translation in the other, the noncognate is much likelier to be produced in translation, and (d) performance on false cognates is far superior in translation.

No abstract

Cognate translation is neither a simple nor a straightforward matter. Given the risk that a word that appears to be a true cognate may actually be a false cognate, and given the sometimes fuzzy boundary between true and false cognates, translators and translation students have been shown to “play it safe” by casting around for noncognate translations for true cognates, rather than choose the obvious cognate translation. Here we ask whether translation students avoid cognate translations even when the target-language cognate is both accurate and appropriate and whether this phenomenon is related to fear of false friends. The findings indicate that translation students do seek out noncognate translations and that performance on true cognates correlates with performance on false cognates.La traduction des vrais et des faux amis n’est ni simple ni évidente. Un mot paraissant être un vrai ami pouvant se révéler un faux ami et le rapport existant entre un vrai et un faux ami étant parfois flou, les traducteurs et les étudiants en traduction tentent de limiter les risques et recherchent des solutions de traductions sans avoir recours aux vrais amis, même lorsque leur usage va de soi. La présente étude cherche, d’une part, à confirmer que les étudiants évitent l’emploi de vrais amis même lorsqu’ils seraient judicieux et appropriés et, d’autre part, à explorer la possibilité que ce phénomène serait lié à la crainte de l’utilisation de faux amis. Les résultats confirment que les étudiants tendent à éviter les vrais amis et que le degré de pertinence quant à l’utilisation des vrais amis est corrélé à celui qui est observé dans le cas des faux amis

No abstract

Twenty-two translation students translated two texts using Translog keystroke-monitoring software, once at the beginning of their studies and again three semesters later. Performance on the two measures of interference, lexicalizable strings and false cognates, improved significantly among both the students working into L1 and those working into L2. Students working into L1 found the task as difficult after three semesters as they had at the beginning of their studies. For students translating into their L2, translation did get significantly easier as judged by the objective measures of time and keystrokes, but the students’ subjective assessment of difficulty and satisfaction was unchanged. This study also indicates that students appreciate the contribution of translation theory to practice.