Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Universidad Autónoma de BarcelonaUniversidad de Vigo

Universidad del País Vasco2013

Ten yearsof PETRA

Expertise & Environment in Translation

Pericia y Entorno de la Traducción

o Cognitive science is the optimal framework to develop translatological theories focused on mental processes.

o Empirical research is the touchstone for any translatological endeavor.

Founded in 2000, PETRA is a loose group of like-minded researchers sharing two basic

assumptions:

We decided we needed a first phase to gain direct insights on both

TPR and extant theoretical frameworks.

This first phase turned out to span a whole

decade!

We mistrusted introspection as a way to access mental processes and were happy to adopt Translog. We also realized we needed to get closer to cognitive psychology.

We set out to study different translation subtasks within a unified perspective, such as:

o reading & comprehensiono information search &

retrievalo problem solvingo draftingo creativityo self-correctiono evaluation

With no funding, we focused on problem solving, time pressure, and memory while we studied translatological functionalism and existing cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches to translation and interpreting based on the information-processing paradigm. We recruited young researchers

mainly from the PhD program “Translation & Interpreting

Processes” of the University of Granada. Through the years, we

welcomed distinguished guests such as Gyde Hansen, Zoltán Kövecses,

Paul Kussmaul, Amparo Hurtado, Greg Shreve and Hanna Risku.

1. Christine Lachat, on problem-solving

2. Bart de Rooze, on time pressure in the translation process

3. Celia Martín de León, on the flaws of functionalism

The first important results in our journey came out in 2003, in the form of three PhD dissertations:

By then we had already adopted situated cognition as our main referential framework.

We had also concluded that we needed to gather data that Translog could not collect and started to combine it with another keylogger, KGBSpy.

We were intrigued by the interface between bilinguals and professional translators, and started studying the notion of Natural Translation.

o explore how to profile test subjects. We started using several WAIS3 subtests to check subjects’ working memory and processing speed.

Our comparative trials of bilinguals and translation trainees led us to

o focus on translation quality and evaluation.

Maribel Gómez finished her dissertation on translation behavior and results in advanced trainees and bilinguals.

Mª Jesús Blasco finished her dissertation on listening comprehension in trainee interpreters.

And we started to apply some of what we have learned so far in class, using (socio-)constructivist approaches.

We also expanded our theoretical base with embodied cognition

We focused more on what professionalism entails and enlarged data collection with text analyses.

María Castro carried out a pilot study in Copenhagen

comparing different kinds of reading with eyetracking.

We further expanded our theoretical base with extended

and distributed cognition.

Then we moved the group headquarters and welcomed new members.

We thought we finally had a clearer picture of what a cognitive translatology should look like and started looking for appropriate parameters and ways to study them.

Tomás Conde finished his dissertation on the behavior and

results of different types of translation assessors and

evaluators.

We are now working on

o mental loado implicit beliefso text miningo improving & standardizing research

methods

Jorge Amigo started his research on the

proceduralization of culture in empirical

research

José I. Perea finished his dissertation on computer-assisted

revision

Petra Klimant started her research on mental load in translation

Shao Hui Liang started her research on implicit beliefs in novice trainees

We feel we are now nearly ready to start

our second phase

We are currently working on a

project on text profiling

We aim to combine text mining with non-invasive data collection of

translation processes

We’ll keepyou posted!

Expertise & Environment in Translation

Pericia y Entorno de la Traducción

J. Jorge Amigo Extremera

Alicia K. Bolaños Medina

María Castro Arce

J. Tomás Conde Ruano

Susana Cruces Colado

Petra Klimant

Álvaro Marín García

Celia Martín de León

Ricardo Muñoz Martín

José I. Perea Sardón

Marisa Presas Corbella

www.cogtrans.net