School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.
PLoS One. 2022 Aug 5;17(8):e0272531. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272531. eCollection 2022.
Intralingual translation has long been peripheral to empirical studies of translation. Considering its many similarities with interlingual translation, also described as translation proper, we adopted eye-tracking technology to investigate the cognitive process during translation and paraphrase, an exemplification of intralingual translation. Twenty-four postgraduate students were required to perform four types of tasks (Chinese paraphrase, English-Chinese translation, English paraphrase, Chinese-English translation) for source texts (ST) of different genres. Their eye movements were recorded for analysis of the cognitive effort and attention distribution pattern. The result demonstrated that: (1) Translation elicited significantly greater cognitive efforts than paraphrase; (2) Differences between translation and paraphrase on cognitive effort were modulated by text genre and target language; (3) Translation and paraphrase did not differ strikingly in terms of attention distribution. This process-oriented study confirmed higher cognitive efforts in inter-lingual translation, which was likely due to the additional complexity of bilingual transfer. Moreover, it revealed significant modulating effects of text genre and target language.
语内翻译长期以来一直处于翻译实证研究的边缘。鉴于其与被称为翻译正宗的语际翻译有许多相似之处，我们采用眼动追踪技术来研究翻译和释义（语内翻译的例证）过程中的认知过程。24 名研究生被要求为不同类型的源语文本（ST）执行四种类型的任务（中文释义、英汉翻译、英中释义、汉英翻译）。他们的眼球运动被记录下来，以分析认知努力和注意力分布模式。结果表明：（1）翻译比释义需要更大的认知努力；（2）文本类型和目标语言调节了翻译和释义在认知努力上的差异；（3）翻译和释义在注意力分布上没有明显差异。这项面向过程的研究证实了语际翻译需要更高的认知努力，这可能是由于双语转换的额外复杂性所致。此外，它还揭示了文本类型和目标语言的显著调节效应。
