Mapping unchartered territory – a roundtrip: methodological and theoretical perspectives

Riitta Jääskeläinen

TREC Seminar, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

2-3 July 2013

Mapping unchartered territory/Jääskeläinen, UEF

Contents

• The beginning• Main trends in 1990 – 2013

– Methodology– Empirical testing of models and hypotheses– Conceptual analyses

• The future

The beginning

• Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit participated in the AILA Congress in Hamburg (13-15 August 1984)

• Section dealing with process research (e.g. Gerloff, Krings, Lörscher) Gerloff’s paper inspired Riitta Jääskeläinen to do her MA thesis on student translation processes

• TAP experiments with students in 1985-1986: two sets of tasks (one for Sonja’s research, the other for Riitta’s MA thesis)

• Summer 1986: Riitta working as a research assistant transcribing the TAP tapes

• First research reports: general descriptions of student processes: use of time & dictionaries, problem-solving, decision-making (Tirkkonen-Condit 1987, 1989; Jääskeläinen 1987, 1989)

• Research largely based on individual projects international networking

Mapping unchartered territory/Jääskeläinen, UEF

The beginning

• Early research characterised by general descriptions of what happens in the translation process collecting ideas, creating hypotheses, refining tools

• First attempts to identify e.g.– Which processing features contribute to good quality– Which processing features are typical of professional

translation– Which role do affective factors play in translation

(Laukkanen 1997)– How particular linguistic items are handled by translators

(Tirkkonen-Condit 1993)– How translators manage uncertainty (Tirkkonen-Condit

2000)

Mapping unchartered territory/Jääskeläinen, UEF

Main trends in 1990 – 2013

• After the beginning, three main trends can be identified (in the Savonlinna-based research)

1) Focus on methodology (TAPs)

2) Empirical testing of models and hypotheses

3) Conceptual analyses • Empirical research has forced researchers to specify their

categories and concepts more precisely– For example, for Krings (1986), in language students,

translation problems were the result of lacking knowledge or skill findings from translation students and professional translators showed that sometimes sensitivity to potential problems is a sign of knowledge and skill

Mapping unchartered territory/Jääskeläinen, UEF

Main trends in 1990 – 2013: methodology

• First process studies used think-aloud in data elicitation • Borrowed from cognitive psychology via SLA research • Methodological justification based on previous research in

other fields (Krings 1986; Lörscher 1991; Jääskeläinen 1999)

• Few studies focusing on think-aloud in the study of translation processes – a call for focusing on methodology (Jääskeläinen 2000)

• Not much progress on that front – however, the pool of available data elicitation methods has expanded to include key-logging, eye-tracking etc.

• A large-scale systematic methodological study still pending (see Jääskeläinen 2011)

Mapping unchartered territory/Jääskeläinen, UEF

Main trends in 1990 – 2013: empirical testing of models and hypotheses

• Interest in empirical testing of ideas, models and hypotheses proposed in TS literature

– Tirkkonen-Condit (1992): how do translators apply world knowledge and linguistic knowledge while translating

– Tirkkonen-Condit (1993): how do translators handle a typically Finnish linguistic item (the clitic particle –kin)

This line of research led to the ’unique items’ hypothesis which has been further developed and tested in relation to the proposed translation universals (see e.g. Tirkkonen-Condit 2004)

– Tirkkonen-Condit (2000): how do translators handle metaphorical expressions

Mapping unchartered territory/Jääskeläinen, UEF

Main trends in 1990 – 2013: empirical testing of models and hypotheses

• Literal translation hypothesis, Monitor model, and deverbalisation

– The Monitor model (Ivir 1981/Toury 1995):The translator begins his search for translation equivalence from

formal correspondence, and it is only when the identical-meaning formal correspondent is either not available or not able to ensure equivalence that he resorts to formal correspondents with not-quite-identical meanings or to structural and semantic shifts which destroy formal correspondence altogether.

– i.e. contrary to the deverbalisation view of the Paris school, it is proposed that translation tends to proceed literally until such a point at which literal translation does not work anymore; at that point, the Monitor steps in

– empirical evidence supporting the Monitor model (e.g. Tirkkonen-Condit 2005)

Mapping unchartered territory/Jääskeläinen, UEF

Main trends in 1990 – 2013:conceptual analyses

• ’translation strategies’ – what do we mean by them? • Jääskeläinen (1993): first attempt to operationalise

’translation strategies’ for the purposes of TAP analyses• Korhonen (1998): MA thesis pointing out the difference

between product- and process-oriented strategies • Jääskeläinen (2007): a second attempt at the elusive

concept, now on a more general level (textual operations vs. processing activities)

• Jääskeläinen (2009): the third attempt is no charm – the different definitions of ’translation strategy’ are described and discussed, but the final word is not provided … to be continued?

Mapping unchartered territory/Jääskeläinen, UEF

Main trends in 1990 – 2013:conceptual analyses

• ’professionalism’ and ’expertise’ (see Jääskeläinen 2010)• ’professional translator’ used as a self-evident category of

subjects– Pragmatic aspect: anyone who earns their living by

translating?– Quality aspect: professionals turn out good translations

(always?)– Ethical aspect: professionals follow professional rules of

conduct (if any available?) • ’expertise’ defined in many ways as well

– ‘the possession of a large body of knowledge and procedural skill’ (Chi et al. 1982: 8)

– consistently superior performance in a domain (e.g. Ericsson 2006: 3)

The importance of defining your categories in researchMapping unchartered territory/Jääskeläinen, UEF

The future• Work in progress

– Sini Immonen – pause behaviour/cognitive rhythm in translation vs. monolingual text production (PhD project)

– Minna Kumpulainen – the development of translation competence: a longitudinal study of BA-level translation students (PhD project)

• Future projects – a wish list– Joint projects & international collaboration welcome, e.g.

• Large-scale methodological study • Nature of expertise in translation • Development of translation competence

– NB! Finnish in the language combination may offer valuable insights cooperation with the Crossling network:

https://wiki.uef.fi/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=16586730

Mapping unchartered territory/Jääskeläinen, UEF

Thank you for your attention I’ll be happy to answer your questions (list of references available from me)

www.uef.fi