Zhou Xiangyan, Wang Xiangling, Liu Xiaodong
College of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Changsha, China.
School of Foreign Studies, Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology, Loudi, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Nov 3;13:911850. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.911850. eCollection 2022.
Previous studies that explored the impact of task-related variables on translation performance focused on task complexity but reported inconsistent findings. This study shows that, to understand the effect of task complexity on translation process and its end product, performance in translation tasks of various complexity levels needs to be compared in a specific setting, in which more factors are considered besides task complexity-especially students' translating self-efficacy belief (TSEB). Data obtained from screen recording, subjective rating, semi-structured interview, and quality evaluation were triangulated to measure how task complexity influenced the translation performance of Chinese students with high and low TSEB. We found that the complex task led to significantly longer task duration, greater self-reported cognitive effort, lower accuracy, and poorer fluency than the simple one among students, irrespective of their TSEB level. Besides, the high-TSEB group outperformed the low-TSEB group in translation accuracy and fluency in both tasks. However, the interaction effect of task complexity and TSEB was not significant, due possibly to weak problem awareness among students. Our study has implications for effectively designing task complexity, getting the benefits of TSEB, and improving research on translation performance.
以往探讨任务相关变量对翻译表现影响的研究聚焦于任务复杂性，但研究结果并不一致。本研究表明，为了解任务复杂性对翻译过程及其最终成果的影响，需要在特定情境下比较不同复杂程度翻译任务的表现，在此情境中，除任务复杂性外，还需考虑更多因素，尤其是学生的翻译自我效能信念（TSEB）。通过对屏幕录制、主观评分、半结构化访谈和质量评估所获数据进行三角互证，以衡量任务复杂性如何影响不同TSEB水平的中国学生的翻译表现。我们发现，与简单任务相比，复杂任务导致学生的任务时长显著延长、自我报告的认知努力更大、准确性更低且流畅性更差，无论其TSEB水平如何。此外，在两项任务的翻译准确性和流畅性方面，高TSEB组均优于低TSEB组。然而，任务复杂性和TSEB的交互作用并不显著，这可能是由于学生的问题意识薄弱所致。我们的研究对有效设计任务复杂性、利用TSEB的优势以及改进翻译表现研究具有启示意义。
