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Does formal training in translation/interpreting affect translation strategy? Evidence from idiom translation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

YEH-ZU TZOU ,
JYOTSNA VAID  and
HSIN-CHIN CHEN
YEH-ZU TZOU*
Affiliation:
National University of Tainan
JYOTSNA VAID
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University
HSIN-CHIN CHEN
Affiliation:
National Chung Cheng University
*
Address for correspondence: Department of English, National University of Tainan, No. 33, Section 2, Shu-Lin Street, Tainan, Taiwan[email protected]
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Abstract

This study examined whether training in translation/interpretation leads to a reliance on a ‘vertical’ translation strategy in which the source language text is comprehended before the message is reformulated. Students of translation/interpreting and untrained bilinguals were given an idiom translation judgment task with literal (form and meaning) or figurative equivalents (meaning only). Dependent measures included the time taken to comprehend the first presented sentence and the accuracy and speed of judging if the second presented sentence was a translation of the first sentence. The groups did not differ in their speed of reading the first presented sentence but translation verification times differed by group and translation type: untrained bilinguals were significantly faster at verifying literal than figurative translations while trained bilinguals were equally fast for the two types. The pattern of findings is consistent with the view that training in translation fosters a processing-for-meaning-before reformulating, or vertical, translation strategy.

Keywords

translationidiomsvertical translation strategyprofessional interpreterstraining effects
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , May 2017 , pp. 632 - 641
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

* We thank the Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (now Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey) for access to participants. We are also grateful to Dr. Li-Jen Kuo of Texas A&M University for her careful evaluation of the stimuli.
Supplementary material can be found online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1366728915000929

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