Syntactic Variance and Priming Effects in Translation

Bangalore, Srinivas; Behrens, Bergljot; Carl, Michaël; Ghankot, Maheshwar; Heilmann, Arndt; Nitzke, Jean; Schaeffer, Moritz; Sturm, Annegret

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-20358-4_10

Cited by 20 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The literal translation hypothesis simply states that initially formal features of the source text have a large effect on the (perhaps mental or "interim") translation that is being produced and that this effect decreases over the duration of the translation process. The literal translation hypothesis has received supporting evidence from translation process studies that measure the effects of literality metrics (see below) on process data (e.g., Bangalore et al, 2015Bangalore et al, , 2016Schaeffer et al, 2016b). Such experiments show that the translation procedure starts from a more literal translation, but when this is not possible due to the constraints of TL or other contextual or extralinguistic factors, non-literality must inevitably increase, which-the experiments show-goes hand in hand with a higher requirement of cognitive effort.…”

Section: Literal Translationmentioning

confidence: 97%

Comparing the Effect of Product-Based Metrics on the Translation Process

2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Characteristics of the translation product are often used in translation process research as predictors for cognitive load, and by extension translation difficulty. In the last decade, user-activity information such as eye-tracking data has been increasingly employed as an experimental tool for that purpose. In this paper, we take a similar approach. We look for significant effects that different predictors may have on three different eye-tracking measures: First Fixation Duration (duration of first fixation on a token), Eye-Key Span (duration between first fixation on a token and the first keystroke contributing to its translation), and Total Reading Time on source tokens (sum of fixations on a token). As predictors we make use of a set of established metrics involving (lexico)semantics and word order, while also investigating the effect of more recent ones concerning syntax, semantics or both. Our results show a, particularly late, positive effect of many of the proposed predictors, suggesting that both fine-grained metrics of syntactic phenomena (such as word reordering) as well as coarse-grained ones (encapsulating both syntactic and semantic information) contribute to translation difficulties. The effect on especially late measures may indicate that the linguistic phenomena that our metrics capture (e.g., word reordering) are resolved in later stages during cognitive processing such as problem-solving and revision.

show abstract

Section: Literal Translationmentioning

confidence: 97%

Comparing the Effect of Product-Based Metrics on the Translation Process

2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This indicates very clearly that the purpose of the reading task has an important impact on the processing. A generally held interpretation of this behavioral difference is that the translator co-activates both source and target language during reading, and that some (pre-)translation is going on already in the first reading of a phrase or segment (Bangalore et al 2015). With eye tracking technology, cognitive load (effort) in translation can consequently be measured based on reading times on relevant items or segments during a translation task.…”

Section: [3] P O S S E S S I V E S I N C O H E R E N T T E X T Va R ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, as already mentioned, priming is known to take place to some extent in translation, also in translation into one's L1. Observations have been made with respect to false friends (Koessler & Derocquigny 1928) as well as to syntactic priming (Bangalore et al 2015). It would therefore not be a great surprise if untrained translators are found to be primed by the source text to a greater extent than professionals, who are expected to be more consciously aware of priming.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing possessives in translation between unequal systems. An exploratory study

Behrens

2017

OSLa

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The present paper reports on results of two translation experiments conducted with eye tracking and keylogging. Norwegian and Danish professional and student translators have each translated a small English news text into their L1. The texts include possessives in different syntactic environments which affect choice between a reflexive and an irreflexive form in the targets. While native speakers are expected to make uniform choices which conform to regularities on local and non-local binding principles in Danish and Norwegian, we find disparate solutions among the participants in both groups. The study compares final products with process data, both in terms of edits and in terms of temporal measures indicative of translation effort. Results show a considerable amount of hesitation on choice in all non-finite clause constructions, although more so among students than among professionals. Questions of translation effects versus an unstable locality principle is taken up in the final discussion.

show abstract

“…The translation process is thus characterized as a mixture of early, largely automatic processes and later, relatively more strategic adjustments. Schaeffer and Carl (2013) and Bangalore et al (2016) suggest that cross-linguistic structural priming constitutes a suitable psycholinguistic mechanism to explain how the initial literal translation emerges during processing of the source sentence.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The psycholinguistics of shining-through effects in translation: cross-linguistic structural priming or serial lexical co-activation?

Jacob,

Schaeffer,

Oster

et al. 2024

Applied Psycholinguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The manuscript explores the psycholinguistic processes responsible for cross-linguistic influence in translation. In two experimental studies with professional translators-in-training, we investigate the psycholinguistic foundations of shining-through effects in translated texts, i.e., cases where the grammatical structure of a source sentence leaves traces in the translated sentence. Experiment 1 reports the results from a translation task investigating the influence of the grammatical structure of the source sentence on structural choices for its translation. The results showed a significant influence of source sentence structure, which gradually decreased with increasing translation competence scores. In Experiment 2, we investigated to what extent the effect of source structure influence found in Experiment 1 can be accounted for through cross-linguistic structural priming. In a cross-linguistic priming experiment in which the source sentences from Experiment 1 were used as primes, participants showed no evidence of structural priming. A cross-experiment comparison revealed significant source sentence influence in the translation task, but no such effect in the priming task, for matched sets of sentences. Our results cast doubt on the claim that shining-through effects in translation are caused by cross-linguistic structural priming. We suggest an alternative account which instead explains structural cross-linguistic influence in translation through serial lexical co-activation.

show abstract

Syntactic Variance and Priming Effects in Translation

Cited by 20 publications

References 30 publications

Comparing the Effect of Product-Based Metrics on the Translation Process

Comparing the Effect of Product-Based Metrics on the Translation Process

Processing possessives in translation between unequal systems. An exploratory study

The psycholinguistics of shining-through effects in translation: cross-linguistic structural priming or serial lexical co-activation?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About