Translation, Cognition & Behavior - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2021

This article uses the Digital Opinions on Translated Literature (dioptra-l) corpus to study readers’ perceptions of and responses to translation in a naturalistic setting, focusing on the normative constructs or cognitive-evaluative templates they use to conceptualise, evaluate and respond to translations. We answer two main questions: (1) How visible, or salient, is the fact of translation to readers reading a translated literary text, and are there differences in the degree and nature of this visibility for different languages and translation directions? (2) What are the main concepts, and emotional and evaluative parameters that readers use to describe translated literary texts, and are there differences in these concepts and parameters when considered by different translation directionalities and genres? We make use of computational methods, including collocational network analysis, keyword analysis, and sentiment analysis to extract information about the salience of translation, and the networks of emotive and evaluative language that are used around the concept of translation. This forms the basis of our proposals for particular cognitive-evaluative templates.

This article aims at exploring translation competence (TC) from the perspective of higher-order thinking skills (HOTS), and developing a HOTS-oriented TC model accordingly. The underlying assumption is that the translation competence needed to solve ill-structured translation problems is highly integrated HOTS in essence. Based on this assumption, a framework for HOTS-oriented TC is presented, using features from the PACTE group’s TC model, and combining it with HOTS-specific features. Subsequently, a HOTS-oriented TC model is constructed, which consists of three interrelated parts: HOTS (i.e., translation problem-solving ability, translation decision-making ability, translation creative-thinking ability, and translation critical thinking ability); translation knowledge, and translation thinking dispositions. Additionally, two other assumptions are made as scaffolding to support our HOTS-oriented TC model. Finally, implications for TC studies and translation pedagogy are provided.

Based on the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research on bilingualism, this paper firstly discusses three fundamental models and relevant central issues involved in the bilingual processing of interpreting: the selective and non-selective feature of bilingual access and control, the serial and parallel view of bilingual processing, and the coordination view of serial and parallel procedure of bilingual information processing, with the dual purpose of explicating the bilingual processing and cognitive control mechanism in the interpreting process and paving the way for further explanation of the embodied nature of bilingual processing in interpreting from the embodied cognition perspective. Then with the two aspects of processing mechanism and neurolinguistic evidence, it elaborates how the interpreter’s embodied experience and skills in the profession, as a part of cognitive resources, play crucial roles in different levels of cognitive processing which coordinates the serial and parallel processing in the interpreting process. Lastly, this paper argues for viewing the translating process likewise as embodied bilingual processing using a brief comparison between translating and interpreting with a focus on the embodied nature of bilingual processing in their respective processes.

The use of captions has grown in recent years in both traditional and new media, particularly in terms of the diversity of style, content, and function. Impact captions have emerged as a popular form of captions for hearing viewers and contain rich multimodal information which is employed to capture viewer attention and enhance engagement, particularly in situations where there is competition for viewer attention. Drawing upon relevance theory, we argue how impact captions could effectively attract and hold visual attention owing to their balance between processing effort and contextual effects. This exploratory study employs a dual-task paradigm and uses authentic materials and viewing situations to further examine the ability of multimodal impact captions to attract and retain overt visual attention amongst a small sample of TV viewers. Our results provide novel insight into the apparent highly individualised efficacy of impact captions, where we identify several variables of interest in participants’ viewing behaviours. We conclude with a discussion of the study’s contributions, limitations, and an outline for future work.

This study systematically reviewed 61 experimental studies on audiovisual translation (AVT), published in academic journals between 1992 and 2020. The review examined five aspects of these studies: publication trends, research scopes, research designs, statistical procedures, and reporting practices. Major findings include: (a) there has been a slight concentration of publication outlets for experimental AVT research; (b) the focal studies could be categorized into three themes (product, process, and pedagogy), with the product theme being the most popular and subtitling the dominant AVT modality; (c) the inclusion of a comparison group was the most common design feature, and questionnaires and tests were the most popular research instruments; (d) inferential statistical analysis was favored over descriptive statistical analysis; (e) data normality information and effect sizes were not regularly reported. Based on the systematic review, suggestions are made for the future development of experimental AVT research.

How much time do viewers spend reading subtitles and does it depend on the subtitle speed? By posing these questions, in this paper we re-analyse previous data to address this issue while promoting two methodological advancements in eye-tracking audiovisual research: (1) the use of proportional reading time (PRT) as a metric of time spent on subtitle reading and (2) the analysis of data via linear mixed models (LMMs). We tested 19 Polish L1 viewers with advanced English proficiency watching two clips with English soundtrack with Polish subtitles. First, we compared PRT at two different subtitle speeds: 12 characters per second (cps) and 20 cps. Then, we used actual subtitle speed rates to better understand the speed-PRT relationship. The results showed a significantly higher PRT for 20 cps compared to 12 cps, with the models predicting a PRT of 45.24% at 20 cps. We have also found strong evidence of the advantage of LMMs over more commonly used statistical techniques.

Compared to one-line subtitles, two-line subtitles are believed to receive more attention from viewers based on previous research. Yet, in the majority of these studies, two-liners are considerably longer than the one-line subtitles. The authors argue that the findings of the previous studies could have been affected by the difference in subtitle length, and there is a need to operationally distinguish between the impact of subtitle length and line number on viewers’ attention allocation. Therefore, an SMI eye tracker was used in this study to record the eye movements of 32 Iranian viewers while reading the Persian subtitles of a short segment of a feature film, A Prophet (Jacques Audiard 2009). The results showed that the viewers’ attention to one-line subtitles was significantly greater than the attention they allotted to two-line subtitles although they were of the same length. The attention allocated to the long subtitles was also significantly greater compared to the attention paid to the short subtitles. Retrospective interviews also showed that the participants favored short and two-line subtitles.