TRICKLET - Translation Research in Corpora, Keystroke Logging and Eye Tracking

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Stella Neumann
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2013 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 241433372

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

TRICKLET aimed at contributing to an empirically grounded model of translation that describes observable facts of the translation process and its final product and explains how these come about under the influence of a range of linguistic, cognitive, social and workflow-related factors that result in specific translation outcomes. To this end, we carried out analyses of corpora, i.e., large collections of translated and non-translated texts, in the language pair English-German as well as experiments with professional translators, during which participants’ gaze behaviour and writing activity on the computer was recorded with the help of eye-tracking and keystroke logging. The experiments show that operations resulting in a change in the linguistic make-up between the source text and the translation are not necessarily cognitively demanding for the translator, even if the source feature is complex. Even when such a linguistic change is coerced by a linguistic feature in the source language that does not have a corresponding equivalent in the target language, translators choose from a range of linguistic solutions. This choice happens at various speeds, with the most straightforward change requiring least effort. What is often linked to automaticity can thus be more adequately characterised by the gradient concept of routinisation. The outcome of the immediate translation process is, however, not to be equated with the translation product finally published and available in the receiving target culture. Our experimental studies confirm previous corpus studies in that editors apply changes to translations that had been previously attributed to the translators. Moreover, our corpus studies reveal that the extent to which translations display linguistic similarities with the source language can be attributed to the prestige of the languages involved. This finding is important in that it rejects a purely cognitive explanation of interference of the source language. By embedding our research in a functional theoretical framework, we can explain our findings in light of the adaptive, probabilistic character of language: Translations differ significantly, yet in subtle ways from non-translated texts under the specific setting of the above-mentioned interacting factors. In addition to these substantive findings, the project yields a range of methodological results from computational solutions for processing experimental data to designing, testing and reflecting on research designs. The project thus produced empirical findings revealing the multiple dimensions that probabilistically constrain translation as a cultural artefact.

Publications

• 2 The impact of translation direction on characteristics of translated texts. A multivariate analysis for English and German. Empirical Translation Studies, 47-80. De Gruyter.
  Evert, Stefan & Neumann, Stella
  
• Processing of grammatical metaphor. Translation, Cognition & Behavior, 1(2), 195-220.
  Heilmann, Arndt; Serbina, Tatiana & Neumann, Stella
  
• Shorter than a text, longer than a sentence. Target, 31(1), 98-124.
  Heilmann, Arndt; Serbina, Tatiana; Couto, Vale Daniel & Neumann, Stella
  
• Automatization in Translation Behavior. New Empirical Perspectives on Translation and Interpreting, 179–212.
  Freiwald, Jonas; Heilmann, Arndt; Serbina, Tatiana & Neumann, Stella
  
• Translation: Enriching our understanding of language use. [Invited Youtube talk]. Abralin Ao Vivo – Linguists Online
  Neumann, S.
  
• Animacy and agentivity of Subject Themes in English-German translation. Lingua, 261, 102813.
  Heilmann, Arndt; Serbina, Tatiana; Freiwald, Jonas & Neumann, Stella
  
• Contesting Epistemologies in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies. Routledge.
  Halverson, Sandra L. & García, Álvaro Marín
  
• Linguistic profiles of translation manuscripts and edited translations. Proceedings for the First Workshop on Modelling Translation: Translatology in the Digital Age, 34–45.
  Serbina, T., Bisiada, M. & Neumann, S.
  
• Analyzing the effects of entrenched grammatical constructions on translation. Translation, Cognition & Behavior, 5(1), 110-143.
  Heilmann, Arndt; Freiwald, Jonas; Neumann, Stella & Miljanović, Zoë
  
• Extending the Scope of Corpus-Based Translation Studies. Bloomsbury Academic.
  Granger, Sylviane & Lefer, Marie-Aude