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Article published In: Babel
Vol. 65:2 (2019) ► pp.264–285

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The role of psychological transportation in literary translation

 | University of Murcia
Published online: 15 May 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00091.nar
Abstract
This study aims at exploring the phenomenon of psychological transportation in translation from an experimental approach. Firstly, we investigate whether the emotions depicted in source texts may influence the level of transportation experienced by translators. Secondly, we try to determine whether different levels of transportation in the texts can make a difference in terms of translation performance. Based on previous work about narrative transportation in products of fiction, as well as the phenomenon known as the “paradox of pleasurable sadness”, we depart from the hypothesis that sad texts lead to a higher degree of psychological transportation than happy texts (H1). Taking into account previous theories and empirical results about the benefits of visualization and emotional engagement in translation, we also predict that highly-transported participants will render higher-quality (H2) and more creative translations (H3) than low-transported participants. For this purpose, a pilot study was conducted consisting of two literary translation tasks with opposing-valence texts (happy vs. sad). Lack of statistically significant differences for our hypothesis suggests that some adjustments in the methodology would be needed to achieve conclusive results; however, we believe that further research on the impact of transportation in translation quality and creativity is still worthwhile.
Résumé
Cette étude vise à explorer le phénomène du transport psychologique en traduction en partant d’une approche expérimentale. Nous examinons tout d’abord si les émotions décrites dans les textes sources peuvent influencer le niveau de transport des traducteurs. Deuxièmement, nous essayons de déterminer si différents niveaux de transport dans les textes peuvent entraîner des performances de traduction différentes. En nous basant sur des travaux antérieurs sur le transport narratif dans les produits de fiction, ainsi que sur le phénomène dit du « paradoxe de la tristesse agréable », nous partons de l’hypothèse que les textes tristes conduisent à un degré de transport psychologique plus élevé que les textes heureux (H1). En tenant compte des théories antérieures et des résultats empiriques sur les avantages de la visualisation et de l’engagement émotionnel en traduction, nous pressentons également que les participants très transportés produiront des traductions de meilleure qualité (H2) et plus créatives (H3) que les participants qui le sont moins. Une étude pilote a été menée dans cet objectif. Elle consistait en deux tâches de traduction littéraire avec des textes de types opposés (heureux ou tristes). L’absence de différences statistiquement significatives pour notre hypothèse suggère que certains ajustements de la méthodologie seraient nécessaires pour arriver à des résultats concluants ; cependant, nous croyons que d’autres recherches sur l’impact du transport sur la qualité de la traduction et la créativité seraient encore utiles.
Article outline
  • 1.The phenomenon of psychological transportation in literature
  • 2.How psychological transportation can affect translation performance
    • 2.1Visualization and translation performance
    • 2.2Emotional engagement and translation performance
  • 3.Aim and hypothesis
  • 4.Participants
  • 5.Materials
  • 6.Design of the study
    • 6.1Task and procedure
    • 6.2Translation assessment criteria
  • 7.Results
    • 7.1Results for hypothesis 1
    • 7.2Results for hypothesis 2
    • 7.3Results for hypothesis 3
    • 7.4Results of the post-task questionnaire
  • 8.General discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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