The condition under which translation is undertaken has been the subject of little empirical research. The present study aimed to determine whether time pressure would have influential effects on the quality and quantity of a translation task performed by Iranian students of Translation Studies. For this purpose, the students in two intact MA translation classrooms were selected as the participants of the study; i.e., one control group and one experimental group. The participants in the control group were allowed as much as time they needed to perform the translation task whereas the participants in the experimental group were allowed only 30 minutes to perform the task. The results of the study indicated that time pressure had significant influences on both the quality and quantity of the translation task performed by the participants. A trade-off was observed as the participants in the experimental group produced more translated materials than the participants in the control group when compared on a time-constant scale. The quality of their performance, however, lagged behind the quality of performance by the participants in the control group. These results can be explained by the competition model of cognition which hypothesizes that different dimensions of a cognitive task are in constant competition to win over attentional resources and that the competition is highly influenced by the condition in which the task is performed. The implications of the study for both translation theory and practice are also discussed.

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