1. Introduction
Within the field of translation studies, the investigation of translation competence, that is, translation competence that is the result of purposeful education and targeted training, has played a central role for more than half a century (Albir, 2010, p. 56). Originating in a didactic interest to support and enhance translator education, research into professional translation competence assumes that translation “is a complex activity, involving expertise in a number of areas and skills”(Adab & Schäffner, 2000, p. viii). This complexity renders the task to describe and define the construct of professional translation competence rather difficult (Albir, 2010, p. 56). Starting in the 1990s, substantial scholarly research has set out to fulfill this task. Since 1997, the PACTE group (Procés d’Adquisició de la Competència Traductora i Avaluació) at the University of Barcelona (PACTE, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005) has produced and constantly refined a componential model describing “the core competences involved in translation competence” (Albir, 2010, p. 57), for example a bilingual competence, a strategic competence and a competence pertaining to knowledge about translation. At present, the group continues to experimentally investigate these competences, enhance the model, as well as operationalize the model by developing and testing educational strategies and tools to implement into translator training.
On the basis of the PACTE model, Susanne Göpferich (2009) proposed a model which served as the basis for a longitudinal study of the development of translation competence conducted by her and her colleagues at the University of Graz between 2007 and 2010. Göpferich’s model supplements the PACTE model with contextual components like translation norms, the translation assignment, or the psychophysical disposition of the translator. Both the PACTE model and Göpferich’s model describe a conglomerate of pre-existing, rather general skills (e.g., knowledge of two or more languages) and topic-specific competences (e.g., knowledge about translation). Moreover, these models picture an interwoven system of psychological, physiological, cognitive, and linguistic sub-competences differentiating the bilingual speaker from the professional translator. Professional translation competence is thus the result of a developmental process from being bi/multilingual with a pre-existing rather general set of skills, to being a translator with a translation-specific skill set. The
2 latter skills need to be specifically implemented and strengthened through target-oriented learning processes, training and not least experience. Both the PACTE model and Göpferich’s model describe a form of final stage condition, a state or rather a composition of different competences to reach in order to have acquired professional translation competence. That does not imply that this state is static, but that the necessary competences are acquired, that is, the necessary (or expected, or required) skill set is present in a translator. Any further development is assumed to be dynamic in the sense that there is a constant interaction, possibly qualitative change, between the existing skills (Göpferich, 2013).
However, the question remains how this developmental process unfolds. So far, the components of Göpferich’s model have been investigated extensively in the aforementioned TransComp project, where 12 students were tested recurrently over a period of three years. Their translation performance was measured relative to a number of variables and compared to data collected from ten professional translators. The project has generated a number of publications and contributed widely to the methodological development within the field of translation process research (TPR). In 2013, Göpferich approached the topic anew, suggesting that the utilization of different sub-competences requires varying amounts of cognitive resources during the translation process. For example, “[t]he successful application of strategic competence requires a large amount of cognitive resources in working memory because it involves taking into account a larger context with many potential factors that may become relevant for successful decision making” (Göpferich, 2013, p. 66). From the perspective of the distribution of cognitive resources, Göpferich’s competence model can be classified as an effort model. Furthermore, Göpferich proposes that the development of translation competence may be closely related to the allocation of cognitive resources. She argues that with advancing translation competence certain routine skills are automatized and thus cognitive resources are released to be invested into more demanding non-automatic skill application operations (p. 62). The approach is, however, largely untested. The current thesis builds on this approach, assuming that the developmental process from being bi/multilingual to being a professional translator may be explored by investigating the allocation of cognitive resources, or more
3 specifically, by investigating the cognitive resources spent on specific translation tasks (i.e., cognitive effort).
In the case of the investigation of human cognitive resources, the English proverb dear child has many names appears to be appropriate. The construct of cognitive effort is referred to as, for example, mental effort, mental load, cognitive load, mental workload. Terminology appears to be dependent on the scientific discipline dealing with the subject, whether it is “cognitive, educational, and engineering psychology, human factors, human-computer interaction, and design”(Muñoz Martín, 2012, p. 171). Kahneman proposes a model of cognitive capacity which is based on three assumptions: 1) that human cognitive capacity is limited, 2) that the level of capacity demand determines the availability of cognitive capacity, and 3) that therefore the amount of cognitive capacity rises and falls in proportion to the level of cognitive demand, i.e. “a rise in the demands […] causes an increase in the level of arousal, effort, and attention”(1973, p. 13). Furthermore, Kahneman hypothesizes that “the effort invested in a task is mainly determined by the intrinsic demands of the task” (p.
15). However, Kahneman’s theory does not imply that the task-demand relation is constant, yielding comparable levels of cognitive effort for every task and every subject. One may therefore assume that task difficulty (demand) and the resulting redistribution of cognitive capacity (the allocation of cognitive effort into the task) are related to task familiarity and experience. This leads back to Göpferich’s hypothesis regarding distributional differences in the allocation of cognitive resources between novices and advanced translators. If the task-demand ratio is assumed to differ according to experience, the distribution of cognitive effort can be expected to be different between translation novices and experienced translators.
One relevant translation task which may be the object of an investigation of cognitive effort with regard to competence development is the translation of metaphor. Since the beginning of the 1980s, metaphor has assumed a distinct position within cognitive linguistic research as a feature of not only literary language, but everyday language use (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980/2003). As a specific feature of human cognition, the distinction between conceptual processing and linguistic realization of metaphors has yielded a considerable body of theoretical and empirical research in a number of languages. This
4 research shows that metaphors are culture- and language-overlapping or culture- and language-specific. As such, metaphor constitutes an interesting research object for the study of translation, and professional translation in particular, as a special form of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic language use.
Over the last five or six decades, there have been a number of theoretical and empirical considerations of metaphor in translation. Discussions on the translatability of metaphor (Dagut, 1976; Van den Broeck, 1981) were closely related to prescriptive approaches proposing a number of carefully developed translation strategies (Newmark, 1983). With the emergence of the conceptual approach to metaphor within cognitive linguistics (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980/2003), the relationship between cognitive and cultural characteristics of source- and target languages and cultures, that is similarities and/or differences in conceptualizing and expressing reality, came into focus (Mandelblit, 1996).
However, although there has been a shift from a purely prescriptive to a theoretical approach to metaphor in translation, translation strategies remained the center of attention. Translator behavior in terms of specific translation strategies became the object of empirical studies. Jensen (2005) studied differences in selection between three groups of translators (novices, young professionals and experts) interpreting the results in relation to the underlying cognitive processes of specific metaphor strategies and the allocation of cognitive resources. In 2013, Anette Sjørup operationalized the construct of cognitive resources by measuring production time of metaphorical expressions in target texts, and relating them to specific translation strategies. Differences in production time duration were interpreted as differences in cognitive effort invested in the translation of these expressions, and related to different types of translation strategies. However, besides speculating that “the translator will choose the path of least resistance” (Sjørup, 2013, p. 208), that is the translation strategy requiring the least cognitive effort, the study falls short of acknowledging the cognitive mechanisms underlying metaphor processing (mono- or bilingual), which may explain the different demands of cognitive effort for different strategies as evidenced by production time differences.
Furthermore, Sjørup investigated only translations by professional translators leaving out the question of whether or not her results may differ for divergent groups of translators at different levels of development. Thus, the measurement
5 of cognitive effort in metaphor translation has not yet been operationalized for the investigation of professional translation competence development (Göpferich, 2013).
The present study intends to contribute to the process-oriented investigation of professional translation competence development by exploring the allocation of cognitive effort in the translation of metaphorical expressions related to different types of translation strategies. The participants in this study are students of translation (L1 German – L2 English, L1 Norwegian – L2 English) at different stages of their education (i.e., 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year of a translator training program). The empirical exploration of the translation process is conducted with the help of the keystroke-logging program TRANSLOG. The empirical analysis consists of a product-oriented and a process-oriented part aiming to answer the following research questions:
1. Which metaphor translation strategies do the different subject groups select?
1a. Are there differences or similarities between the groups according to their advancement in the study program (1st, 2nd, 3rd year)?
1b. Are there differences or similarities between the two different L1 groups (Norwegian, German)?
2. What is the relationship between production time and translation strategy?
2a. Do these results vary across the subject groups according to their advancement in the training program?
2b. Do these results vary across the subject groups according to the target language (Norwegian, German)?
In the product-oriented part (1), the implementation of specific translation strategies within (e.g., within a 1st year group) and across the different subject groups (across 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year groups, and across the two L1 groups German and Norwegian) is studied. In the analysis of the process data (2),
6 Sjørup’s approach is adopted: cognitive effort as indicated by production time for different metaphorical expressions is investigated and related to different metaphor translation strategies. A statistical model consisting of a number of explanatory variables in addition to the dependent variable Production Time is developed. The data is analyzed employing various statistical methods (e.g., descriptive statistics).
Theoretical considerations of the results of the previous two analyses aim at answering the following research questions:
3. What do the measurements of production time in relation to specific metaphor translation strategies disclose about cognitive effort invested during the translation process?
4. Does the distribution of cognitive effort change over time indicating some form of translation competence development?
In addition, the study has two underlying aims:
1. to investigate whether Göpferich’s proposition (2013) that professional development may be investigated via the allocation of cognitive resources is feasible
2. to develop further the theoretical and methodological approaches to the empirical study of metaphor translation taken by, for example, Jensen (2005) and Sjørup (2013)
Chapter 2 introduces the different theoretical frameworks from both translation studies and metaphor studies underlying this investigation, as well as clarify the specific use and understanding of particular terminology. Chapter 3 aims at giving an extensive overview of the methodological approaches taken, including a detailed description of the data collection process, the data material and the data analysis processes. The results of the various analyses are presented in Chapter 4. The chapter is divided into the analysis of the data for
7 the Norwegian participant group and the German participant group, before the two language groups are compared. In Chapter 5, the results are discussed in relation to the research questions outlined above and the different theoretical considerations put forward in Chapter 2. The closing chapter will assess the merits of the study as well as address problematic issues and outline future research avenues.
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