During the second decade of the twenty-first century, documentation in electronic format has come to form a normal part of the workplace for all professional translators. The aim of this article is to present the results of the acquisition of the instrumental subcompetence, which is based on the use of electronic resources. These results are part of empirical-experimental research carried out by the PACTE group on Translation Competence Acquisition. In this study, the evolution of the acquisition of this sub-competence for five groups of translation students, from the first year of their degree course to their entry into the labour market, was measured using a methodological design that simulates a longitudinal study. The experiment was carried out in 2011 with 130 students on the Translation and Interpreting degree course. Five indicators related to the direct and inverse translation processes are analysed: number of resources, time taken on searches, time taken on searches at each stage, number and variety of searches. These indicators are then correlated with the quality of the final product of the translation process: translation acceptability. The results produced by the translation students are compared with those obtained in the Translation Competence experiment, carried out by the PACTE group in 2005-2006 with 35 professional translators i .

Purpose. This study investigates the use of electronic information resources to solve cultural translation problems at different stages of acquisition of the translator's cultural competence. Design/methodology/approach. A process and product-oriented, cross-sectional, quasiexperimental study was conducted with 38 students with German as a second foreign language from the four years of the Bachelor's degree in Translation and Interpreting at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and 10 professional translators. Findings. Translation students use a wider variety of resources, perform more queries and spend more time on queries than translators when solving cultural translation problems. The students' information-seeking process is generally less efficient than that of the translators. Training has little impact on the students' use of electronic information resources for this specific purpose, since all students use them similarly regardless of the year they are in. Research limitations/implications. The study has been conducted with a small sample and only one language pair from a single pedagogical context. The tendencies observed cannot be generalised to the whole population of translation students. Practical implications. This paper has implications for translator training, as it encourages the development of efficient information-seeking processes for the resolution of cultural translation problems. Originality/value. Unlike other studies, this paper focusses on a specific translation problem type. It provides information related to the students' information-seeking strategies for the resolution of cultural translation problems, which can be useful for translation training.

In this article the ability to efficiently apply internalised source-culture knowledge when solving cultural translation problems is analysed at different stages of acquisition of the translator's cultural competence by means of a cross-sectional, quasi-experimental study. Thirty-eight BA students from the first through fourth year studying Translation and Interpreting at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, as well as ten professional translators participated in this investigation. The subjects' knowledge of German culture and their knowledge of a selection of cultural translation problems in a text were measured prior to its translation. The translation strategies employed by the subjects to solve these problems were recorded and classified using PACTE's (2017b) sequences of actions. The quality of the subjects' solutions to the cultural translation problems of the text was assessed with PACTE's (2017a) acceptability index. These data were combined to compute the source-culture knowledge application index. Results show that the students in all cohorts preferred to utilise information-seeking strategies even when they possessed cultural knowledge about a specific cultural translation problem, while the professional translators in this study were able to apply their internalised source-culture knowledge. The solutions proposed by both the translation students and the professional translators were of a higher quality when internalised source-culture knowledge was applied.

This paper presents the research project the PACTE group is carrying out on "Establishing Competence Levels in the Acquisition of Translation Competence in Written Translation". A continuation of PACTE's previous experimental research on translation competence and its acquisition, the project aims to propose level descriptors as a first step towards developing a common European framework of reference for translation's academic and professional arenas, both of which are represented among its participants. The project is organized into three stages, the first of which involved the production of a first level descriptor proposal, including a three-level scale with sub-levels and five descriptive categories (language competence; cultural, world knowledge and thematic competence; instrumental competence; translation service provision competence; and translation problem solving competence). In the second stage, the proposal produced is to be evaluated by experts from the academic and professional arenas. In the third stage, the data obtained through the expert judgement process will be analysed and the proposal revised. This paper sets out the project's objectives, our grounds for undertaking it, its conceptual framework and its methodology, as well as the results obtained in the first stage and the future direction of the research.

Citation distributions vary across the board among academic disciplines, which is the reason why field-oriented normalisation is necessary to compensate for this. In this vein, the aim of this study is threefold. Firstly, to find out which document type is cited the most in translation studies (TS). Secondly, to determine the time distribution for citations and aging patterns in TS scientific literature. Thirdly, to define a disciplineweighted citation window or cited half-life, in order to establish the optimal citation window to be used in TS. Data enabling the present research will be retrieved from BITRA, which includes over 70,000 items covering the diversity of document types and languages used in TS research for all times and the citing information of over 10% of its entries. This database will thus allow us to carry out a study on citation and aging patterns in TS academic literature covering the 1960-2015 period. Both, global results, as well as a more detailed analysis focusing on different document types, will be provided. This bibliometric study aims to offer a discipline-focused approach in order to develop specific and realistic impact criteria for our discipline, while taking into account its actual research and communication practices.