TransKomp: The Development of Translation Competence

The project is a process-oriented logitudinal study which explores the development of translation competence in 12 students of translation over a period of 3 years and compares it to that of 10 professional translators. The project is hoped to make an important contribution to the development of the methodology and model building in process- oriented translation studies by overcoming a number of shortcomings of previous studies. The insight into the components which make up translation competence and into its development gained in the project can be utilized for translation pedagogy and the improvement of curricula for translator training. Developing more efficient methods of translator training is a necessity which results from a shortening of degree programmes in translation as a consequence of the Bologna process. Up to the present, only one larger-scale translation-process-oriented longitudinal study in a stricter sense has been carried out: the one by the PACTE group/Barcelona (PACTE 2000, 2002, 2005). In other studies referred to as longitudinal studies in the literature (such as Hansen 2005), translation experiments were carried out over a longer period of time, but the subjects in these experiments did not remain the same, so that these studies do not give insight into the development of translation competence in its continuity. Strictly speaking, even the study carried out by the PACTE group does not fulfill this requirement, since it does not analyze the development of translation competence in students of translation from the beginning of their studies and the investigations into their translation behavior have been carried out only at a limited number of points during their translator training. As a consequence, this study, too, does not give insight into the development of translation competence in its continuity. Another drawback of studies carried out so far is that the confrontation of the subjects with translation-theoretical and translation-practical contents in their lectures and courses and thus the subjects` translation concepts and their translation-related prior knowledge at different points in their training were not considered sufficiently as parameters having an effect on their performance. Suggestions on how these parameters can be taken into consideration in process-oriented studies are provided by Orozco/Hurtado Albir (2002). These suggestions will be taken up in our project. In this project, 12 students registered for the translation programme at the Department of Translation Studies of the University of Graz will be selected as subjects whose translation competence will be analyzed at the beginning of each of the 6 first semesters and at the end of the sixth semester of their programme. Selection criteria will be very good or good grades in German and English, which must also be the A- and B-languages they choose for the programme, and equivalent results in tests which measure the subjects` ability for semantic differentiation as well as their linguistic creativity. The subjects selected will have to take exactly the same courses in the programme. At the times specified above, the student subjects, who will be divided into two groups, will translate a total number of 10 different texts from English into German according to the scheme in Tab. 1 (cf. Proposal p. 8). Six of these texts will also be translated by 10 professional translators. The texts to be translated will offer a repertoire of different translation problems (lexical, syntactical, pragmatic, textlinguistic, culture-specific, creativity-demanding and comprehensibility-related problems). They will have to be translated in Translog, which registers all key strokes, mouse clicks, and the time intervals between them. To guarantee ecological validity, the subjects may use the Internet and any electronic as well as conventional resources, whose use will be registered by ClearView or observers (in the case of conventional resources). Furthermore, eye-tracking equipment will be used. During the experiment, 50 % of the subjects in both groups will have to think aloud. The other 50 % will have to comment on their translations retrospectively prompted by replays so that the two methods can be compared. The verbal-report data will be transcribed using XML-markup; the transcripts will also include the subjects` search activities. After the translation process with thinking aloud, retrospective interviews will be conducted on the basis of the Translog and ClearView recordings. The results will be triangulated, set in relation to the quality of their translation products, and used to correct and optimize the translation competence and the translation competence acquisition models of the PACTE group (2003), which have been refined by us. From the refined models research questions have been derived, which will be investigated in the study proposed. All data obtained will be made available to the scientific community in an asset management system.

The project is a process-oriented logitudinal study which explores the development of translation competence in 12 students of translation over a period of 3 years and compares it to that of 10 professional translators. The project is hoped to make an important contribution to the development of the methodology and model building in process- oriented translation studies by overcoming a number of shortcomings of previous studies. The insight into the components which make up translation competence and into its development gained in the project can be utilized for translation pedagogy and the improvement of curricula for translator training. Developing more efficient methods of translator training is a necessity which results from a shortening of degree programmes in translation as a consequence of the Bologna process. Up to the present, only one larger-scale translation-process-oriented longitudinal study in a stricter sense has been carried out: the one by the PACTE group/Barcelona (PACTE 2000, 2002, 2005). In other studies referred to as longitudinal studies in the literature (such as Hansen 2005), translation experiments were carried out over a longer period of time, but the subjects in these experiments did not remain the same, so that these studies do not give insight into the development of translation competence in its continuity. Strictly speaking, even the study carried out by the PACTE group does not fulfill this requirement, since it does not analyze the development of translation competence in students of translation from the beginning of their studies and the investigations into their translation behavior have been carried out only at a limited number of points during their translator training. As a consequence, this study, too, does not give insight into the development of translation competence in its continuity. Another drawback of studies carried out so far is that the confrontation of the subjects with translation-theoretical and translation-practical contents in their lectures and courses and thus the subjects` translation concepts and their translation-related prior knowledge at different points in their training were not considered sufficiently as parameters having an effect on their performance. Suggestions on how these parameters can be taken into consideration in process-oriented studies are provided by Orozco/Hurtado Albir (2002). These suggestions will be taken up in our project. In this project, 12 students registered for the translation programme at the Department of Translation Studies of the University of Graz will be selected as subjects whose translation competence will be analyzed at the beginning of each of the 6 first semesters and at the end of the sixth semester of their programme. Selection criteria will be very good or good grades in German and English, which must also be the A- and B-languages they choose for the programme, and equivalent results in tests which measure the subjects` ability for semantic differentiation as well as their linguistic creativity. The subjects selected will have to take exactly the same courses in the programme. At the times specified above, the student subjects, who will be divided into two groups, will translate a total number of 10 different texts from English into German according to the scheme in Tab. 1 (cf. Proposal p. 8). Six of these texts will also be translated by 10 professional translators. The texts to be translated will offer a repertoire of different translation problems (lexical, syntactical, pragmatic, textlinguistic, culture-specific, creativity-demanding and comprehensibility-related problems). They will have to be translated in Translog, which registers all key strokes, mouse clicks, and the time intervals between them. To guarantee ecological validity, the subjects may use the Internet and any electronic as well as conventional resources, whose use will be registered by ClearView or observers (in the case of conventional resources). Furthermore, eye-tracking equipment will be used. During the experiment, 50 % of the subjects in both groups will have to think aloud. The other 50 % will have to comment on their translations retrospectively prompted by replays so that the two methods can be compared. The verbal-report data will be transcribed using XML-markup; the transcripts will also include the subjects` search activities. After the translation process with thinking aloud, retrospective interviews will be conducted on the basis of the Translog and ClearView recordings. The results will be triangulated, set in relation to the quality of their translation products, and used to correct and optimize the translation competence and the translation competence acquisition models of the PACTE group (2003), which have been refined by us. From the refined models research questions have been derived, which will be investigated in the study proposed. All data obtained will be made available to the scientific community in an asset management system.