The psycholinguistic process and cognitive strategies in translation : empirical research

Abstract

This dissertation aims at a proposed psycholinguistic model of the translation process that shows not only the phases the translator goes through but also the strategies he chooses to solve his problem, reason and make decisions. These strategies, analyzed through observation and think-aloud protocols (TAPs), help the translator towards producing the most accurate and faithful translation. A study with the aim of collecting TAPs to analyze these strategies was conducted on ten translators, five novices, all selected from the Masters in Translation course 2008-09 at the University of Malta; and five professionals having more than three years experience in translation. The study mainly consisted of translating a technical text from English to Maltese in which the translator thinks aloud his thoughts. Thinking-aloud was used as a method for this study because the subject can verbalize his thought processes and reasons during the translation task so this gives a lot of insight into what the translator does, how and why. After evaluating the target texts and analyzing which strategies the translator uses during the translation task and from the TAPs, a model was built in order to show the process of translation from source text to target text production incorporating the strategies the translators used.