A study of trainee translators’ justifications for decisions in the simulated setting

Maggie Hui

Research output: Chapter in book / Conference proceedingConference article published in proceeding or bookAcademic researchpeer-review

Abstract

This study looks into nine Chinese Mandarin-speaking MA student translators’ justifications for strategies while encountering problems when rendering an English marketing text into Chinese, and explores their risk disposition – habitual use of risk strategies. A list of “justifications” has been detected based on Englund-Dimitrova’s (2005) “evaluation” model and Pavlović’s (2010) “argument” model. Experiment-group and control-group translators were employed in a simulated setting to test the effects of the main variable of the translator’s peer-group interaction with colleagues and non-Chinese clients. Subjects’ screen activities and verbalization of thoughts while translating were recorded. Additional data were collected through the pre-experiment questionnaire and retrospective interviews. Qualitative and quantitative results suggest
that use of peer-group interaction does not seem to have brought about much difference in subjects’ use of risk-taking/averse/transferring strategies. The “client-based” justification is crucial for trainees with practical translation experience regardless the amount of the experience and the group they belonged to.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe 2nd International Conference on Linguistics and Language Studies (ICLLS) 2016 E-proceedings
Pages95-107
Number of pages12
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Keywords

  • risk disposition, risk management; translation process; translators’ justifications

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