A Comparative Analysis Of The Translation Processes Of Professional And Student Translators

This thesis reports an exploratory case study of the processes Chinese professional and student translators typically involved when doing translation. Using the method of think-aloud protocols (hereafter abbreviated to TAPs), the research is intended to detect the differences between the aforementioned two groups of translators in capabilities and/or ways of identifying linguistic and extralingual problems and ways of tackling translation problems when completing assigned translation tasks.Two professional translators and three student translators were selected as the subjects of this research. The method of TAPs was used to collect data while each subject was translating into Chinese (the subjects’first language) an excerpt of about 450 English words from the novel A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck (2000). The subjects were required to verbalize everything and anything that came to their minds when translating. Their verbalizations were recorded with a digital voice recorder.Subjects’target texts were collected and carefully checked against two references: 1) the published Chinese translation of the novel (Ke Ping & Wang Yukuo, Trans., 2003); 2) a detailed and increasingly complete system of classification for categorizing typical translation errors developed by Professor Ke Ping over the years of his teaching career. The results of the checking showed that the translations of professional translators were generally better than those of student translators, as we always expect.To discover why translations of professional translators were better than those of student translators will both help teachers to better arrange and teach translation courses and help students to find the root causes of their problems in translating. Accordingly, the researcher faithfully transcribed the recordings by taking down everything that could be heard. If there was anything unclear, the researcher would contact the corresponding subjects and ask them to clarify it. The researcher developed a set of codes that could indicate pause, stress, etc. to ensure that the transcriptions were standardized and easy to process afterwards. After transcribing, the researcher read the raw data repeatedly, segmented the data and displayed them in a table so that the translation processes of the two groups of translators could be compared with a focus on their capabilities and/or ways of identifying linguistic and extralingual problems and ways of tackling these problems when they were completing assigned translation tasks.The focused comparison produced the following findings:(1) Professional translators identified most of the major translation problems while student translators failed to identify them.(2) Professional translators identified many types of translation problems while student translators usually only identified problems of how to understand the meaning of words in the source text and how to put the source text into idiomatic Chinese.(3) Professional translators devoted more efforts than student translators to the planning of how to complete the translation task (collecting information about the author and the source text in order to better understand the author’s life experience, the social setting in which the story happened, the main idea of the story, etc.) and understanding the meaning of the source text before putting the source text into Chinese.(4) Professional translators tended to consult monolingual dictionaries (although they occasionally consulted English-Chinese dictionaries), while student translators relied heavily on English-Chinese dictionaries.(5) Professional translators took definitions of words and expressions dictionaries provide in a more critical attitude than student translators.(6) Professional translators used resources on the Internet more skillfully than student translators and were more likely to double-check the reliability of the results returned by Internet search engines.(7) Professional translators were more likely to resort to contexts when addressing translation problems than student translators.The researcher analyzed the above findings and drew the following conclusions: professional translators identified translation problems of a wider range and a larger quantity than student translators; they also tackled translation problems more skillfully than student translators. There are at least three causes behind such differences:(1) Student translators assumed a less serious attitude towards translating.(2) Student translators were not fully aware of what made a good translation.(3) Student translators lacked skills at effectively tackling translation problems.In light of the findings of the present research, some useful implications can be obtained for research into translation process and pedagogy. The findings support Lorscher’s (2005) conclusion. Besides theoretical implications, the findings have some methodological implications. The method of TAPs was rarely used in conducting empirical researches on translation processes in the Chinese context. The researcher of the present study explores to use this method to probe into the mental processes of Chinese translators. The findings also shed some light on pedagogy. Teachers should make students be aware of what translating is and what makes a good translation. Teachers can use TAPs to demonstrate in class their own processes of translation, or ask students to report their translation processes using TAPs so as to help students find their problems in translating. Due to the time limit and the small sample size, many aspects that lead to the differences between translators have not been thoroughly investigated in the present study. Future researchers may investigate such aspects as translators’motives, attitudes, psychological conditions, socio-cultural backgrounds, the way they get trained as well as genres of the source text in order to discover more differences between translators in the process of translation. To overcome the limitations inherent in the method of TAPs, future researchers may combine a variety of methods like introspective report, retrospective report and interview to capture more data on mental processes of translators in order to detect more differences between translators in the process of translation.