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Article published In: Translation, Cognition & Behavior
Vol. 2:1 (2019) ► pp.79–100

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In search of directionality effects in the translation process and in the end product

ORCiD logo with link | Adam Mickiewicz University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 7 March 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tcb.00020.why
Abstract
This article tackles directionality as one of the most contentious issues in translation studies, still without solid empirical footing. The research presented here shows that, to understand directionality effects on the process of translation and its end product, performance in L2 → L1 and L1 → L2 translation needs to be compared in a specific setting in which more factors than directionality are considered—especially text type. For 26 professional translators who participated in an experimental study, L1 → L2 translation did not take significantly more time than L2 → L1 translation and the end products of both needed improvement from proofreaders who are native speakers of the target language. A close analysis of corrections made by the proofreaders shows that different aspects of translation quality are affected by directionality. A case study of two translators who produced high quality L1 → L2 translations reveals that their performance was affected more by text type than by directionality.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1What we think we know about L1 → L2 translation and interpreting
    • 1.2Directionality and the problem of translation quality
  • 2.The EDiT project
    • 2.1Participants, materials, procedure
    • 2.2Data collection tools and methods
    • 2.3Research questions and data analysis
  • 3.Results
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusions and further research
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
References (37)
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