Carl Michael
Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44240, USA.
Entropy (Basel). 2023 Jun 12;25(6):928. doi: 10.3390/e25060928.
Translation process research (TPR) has generated a large number of models that aim at explaining human translation processes. In this paper, I suggest an extension of the monitor model to incorporate aspects of relevance theory (RT) and to adopt the free energy principle (FEP) as a generative model to elucidate translational behaviour. The FEP-and its corollary, active inference-provide a general, mathematical framework to explain how organisms resist entropic erosion so as to remain within their phenotypic bounds. It posits that organisms reduce the gap between their expectations and observations by minimising a quantity called . I map these concepts on the translation process and exemplify them with behavioural data. The analysis is based on the notion of translation units (TUs) which exhibit observable traces of the translator's epistemic and pragmatic engagement with their translation environment, (i.e., the text) that can be measured in terms of translation effort and effects. Sequences of TUs cluster into translation states (steady state, orientation, and hesitation). Drawing on active inference, sequences of translation states combine into translation policies that reduce expected free energy. I show how the notion of free energy is compatible with the concept of , as developed in RT, and how essential concepts of the monitor model and RT can be formalised as deep temporal generative models that can be interpreted under a representationalist view, but also support a non-representationalist account.
翻译过程研究（TPR）已经产生了大量旨在解释人类翻译过程的模型。在本文中，我建议对监控模型进行扩展，纳入关联理论（RT）的各个方面，并采用自由能原理（FEP）作为生成模型来阐释翻译行为。自由能原理及其推论——主动推理，提供了一个通用的数学框架，用以解释生物体如何抵抗熵增侵蚀从而保持在其表型范围内。它假定生物体通过最小化一个称为[此处原文缺失具体量的名称]的量来缩小其期望与观察之间的差距。我将这些概念映射到翻译过程中，并用行为数据进行举例说明。该分析基于翻译单元（TU）的概念，翻译单元展现出译者在其翻译环境（即文本）中的认知和语用参与的可观察痕迹，这些痕迹可以通过翻译努力和效果来衡量。翻译单元序列聚类成翻译状态（稳态、定向和犹豫）。借助主动推理，翻译状态序列组合成降低预期自由能的翻译策略。我展示了自由能概念如何与关联理论中发展出的[此处原文缺失具体概念]概念相兼容，以及监控模型和关联理论的核心概念如何被形式化为深度时间生成模型，这些模型既可以在表征主义观点下进行解释，也支持非表征主义的解释。
