Erik Angelone

Sight translation and speech disfluency: Performance analysis as a window to cognitive translation processes

Written and sight translation share a comprehension component centered on written input. In sight translation, because of production constraints, the cognitive effort expended in a given span of time is greater than in written translation. Comprehension, transfer, and production processes occur in much shorter periods of time, and this compression of the information processing window has marked consequences for the target production. Translation problems encountered during sight translation are likely to be more disruptive to translation processing. Disruptions will manifest not just as errors or deficiencies in rendering, but as speech disfluencies in the oral performance of the translation. In this paper, we propose that the analysis of speech disfluencies occurring during sight translation performance provides significant information about cognitive phenomena associated with sight translation such as visual interference, as well as about cognitive processes associated with the solution of lexical, syntactic, and strategic translation problems.

A process-oriented approach for documenting and gauging intercultural competence in translation

ABSTRACT This article describes and contextualises how intercultural competence in translation can be empirically documented and assessed using a process-oriented dual methodology consisting of juxtaposed screen recording and think-aloud data. A discussion of how Byram’s (1997) triadic intercultural communicative competence model of knowledge, skills and attitudes maps onto directly observable translator behaviours is followed by the results of a small-scale pilot study, which exemplify how various facets of intercultural competence are manifest in contexts involving MA-level student translation of German culturemes into US English. Continuing in the spirit of previous behaviour-oriented approaches to empirically document intercultural competence in translation, this article foregrounds process-oriented training as a means by which to glean insight into learner strengths and weaknesses with the objective of fostering growth in this domain, thereby optimising a still largely elusive area within translation pedagogy.