Wang Fuxiang, Xu Qingli
Center for College English Education Research, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, Shandong, Peoples' Republic of China.
College of Foreign Languages, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, Shandong, Peoples' Republic of China.
PLoS One. 2025 Apr 8;20(4):e0320809. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0320809. eCollection 2025.
This study investigates the impact of translation difficulty and translation experience on the processing of translation units (TUs) based on keylogging data. TUs are categorized into two types: production TUs (PTUs), which have linguistic equivalents in the source text (ST), and non-production TUs (N-PTUs), which lack such equivalents. N-PTUs typically include combinations of letters, morphemes, or non-text production keystrokes, such as backspaces, deletions, spaces, cursor movements, carriage returns, and mouse navigations. Data were collected from 55 fourth-year English major students and 35 semi-professional translators as they translated two STs of differing difficulty. The findings reveal no significant differences in the number of PTUs or the average size of PTUs (APTU size) between students and semi-professional translators. However, ST translation difficulty significantly influenced TU processing. For the more difficult text, the APTU size decreased notably, the number of 1-6-word PTUs increased substantially, and the frequency of ≥ 7-word PTUs remained relatively stable. Moreover, when translating the difficult text, semi-professional translators produced smaller APTU sizes, a greater number of N-PTUs, and a higher overall average number of PTUs compared to their performance on the relatively easy text. These results highlight the interplay between cognitive effort, ST translation difficulty, and translation experience in TU processing and have some implications for designing translation courses in academic contexts and developing professional translator training programs.
本研究基于按键记录数据，调查翻译难度和翻译经验对翻译单元（TU）处理的影响。翻译单元分为两种类型：产出性翻译单元（PTU），即在源文本（ST）中有语言对等物；非产出性翻译单元（N-PTU），即缺乏此类对等物。N-PTU通常包括字母、语素的组合，或非文本产出的按键操作，如退格键、删除键、空格、光标移动、回车和鼠标导航。研究收集了55名英语专业四年级学生和35名半专业译者翻译两篇难度不同的源文本时的数据。研究结果显示，学生和半专业译者在PTU数量或PTU平均大小（APTU大小）上没有显著差异。然而，源文本翻译难度对TU处理有显著影响。对于难度更大的文本，APTU大小显著减小，1-6个词的PTU数量大幅增加，7个词及以上的PTU频率相对稳定。此外，在翻译难度较大的文本时，与翻译相对简单的文本相比，半专业译者产出的APTU大小更小，N-PTU数量更多，PTU总体平均数更高。这些结果突出了认知努力、源文本翻译难度和翻译经验在TU处理中的相互作用，并对学术背景下的翻译课程设计和专业译者培训项目的开发具有一定启示意义。
