Cognitive Effort and Efficiency in Translation Revision

Abstract

Empirical studies of revision are often based on either think aloud protocols, interviews, or observational methods. Eye tracking and keylogging methods are rarely applied to the study of revision behavior. The authors employ established methods from translation process research (TPR) to study the eye movement and typing behavior during self-revision (i.e., the phase in the translation process that follows a first complete draft). The authors measure the effect of behavior during the drafting phase on the relative revision duration. Relative revision duration is the time translators spend revising the first complete draft of the source text. They find that the most efficient process involves a large degree of concurrent reading and writing and few deletions during the drafting phase. The efficiency gains in terms of relative revision duration achieved by avoiding discontinuous typing, by making a larger number of deletions, pausing for longer amounts of time, and engaging in less concurrent reading and writing are outweighed by the gains in total task time by doing the exact opposite.

Behavioural indicators of translators’ decisional styles in a translation task: A longitudinal study

“…Englund Dimitrova (2005) and Hansen (2013) made a similar observation concerning individual behavioural preferences of translators regardless of their level of expertise. In a similar vein, Schaeffer et al (2019) found no effects of expertise on translators' revision behaviour. The next temporal indicator considered for analysis was the mean duration of pauses made at the stage of end revision.…”

“…Carl et al 2011), and goes contrary to some more recent studies (e.g. Schaeffer et al 2019) in which no interactions were reported between translators' expertise level and their revision behaviour. There might be at least two potential explanations for such differences.…”

“…In his previous study, Jakobsen (2002) noticed that there is a difference between the amount of self-revision done by students and professional translators, with the stage of end revision (the part of the translation process that starts when the first draft has been finished and continues till the final key in the task is pressed, Jakobsen 2002) being longer in the group of professional translators with fewer revisions introduced at this stage than in the group of translation students. Conversely, Schaeffer et al (2019) in their study on the relationship between translators' self-revision behaviour and efficiency, which was defined as the total time spent by a translator on a given translation assignment (Schaeffer et al 2019: 228), found no effects of expertise level on translators' efficiency scores. As regards the distribution of the stages of the translation process, Schaeffer et al (2019: 235) found that the more deletions were introduced at the drafting stage, the less need there was for a longer stage of end revision.…”

“…As regards the distribution of the stages of the translation process, Schaeffer et al (2019: 235) found that the more deletions were introduced at the drafting stage, the less need there was for a longer stage of end revision. Interestingly, Schaeffer et al (2019) concluded that irrespective of the participants' expertise level, a more efficient (i.e. quicker) translation process is characterised by more extensive concurrent source text reading and target text production and fewer deletions during the stage of producing the initial translation draft (Schaeffer et al 2019: 240).…”

“…On the one hand, the criteria used to define translation expertise are not the same in different empirical studies. On the other hand, Schaeffer et al (2019) analysed the data collected from a large pool of participants but, importantly, there were six languages from different language families involved in the study. Hence, it might be worthwhile to further explore the influence of language relatedness (e.g.…”