Article published In: Culture & Society issue
[Translation Spaces 4:2] 2015
► pp. 310–340
Cognitive Translation Studies and the merging of empirical paradigms
The case of ‘literal translation’
Published online: 28 January 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.4.2.07hal
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.4.2.07hal
The current reintroduction of the concept of ‘literal translation’ is an important development for two main reasons. Firstly, it has led to a range of intriguing empirical findings. Secondly, this revival exemplifies a more profound development in the field. This paper argues that the trajectory of this concept is one example of how cognitively oriented explanatory models are driving an integration of product- and process-based approaches to translational phenomena. In order to better understand this development and to investigate its potential to change Translation Studies, the paper first provides a brief historical overview and then proceeds to decompose the concept into key constituent parts. Two constituent concepts will be used as the basis for identifying the alternative ways in which product and process-oriented approaches have studied the same phenomenon. As a way of moving forward, pertinent theoretical tools from bilingualism research are identified, and concluding remarks focus on implications for the field.
References (85)
Alves, Fabio, Adriana Pagano, Stella Neumann, Erich Steiner, and Silvia Hansen-Schirra. 2010. “Translation Units and Grammatical Shifts. Towards an Integration of Product - and Process-Based Translation Research. In Translation and Cognition, edited by Gregory Shreve and Erik Angelone, 109–142. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Arppe, Antii, Gaëtanelle Gilquin, Dylan Glynn, Martin Hilpert, and Arne Zeschel. 2010. “Cognitive Corpus Linguistics: Five Points of Debate on Current Theory and Methodology. Corpora 5 (1): 1–27.
Baker, Mona. 1993. “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications. In In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, edited by Mona Baker, Gill Francis, and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, 233–250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Balling, Laura Winther, Kristian Tangsgaard Hjelpelund, and Annette C. Sjørup. 2014. “Evidence of Parallel Processing During Translation. Meta 59 (2): 234–259.
Bernardini, Silvia, and Adriano Ferraresi. 2011. “Practice, Description and Theory Come Together: Normalization or Interference in Italian Technical Translation? META 56 (2): 226–246.
Brownlie, Siobhan. 2003. “Investigating Explanations of Translational Phenomena. A Case for Multiple Causality. Target 15 (1): 111–152.
Brysbaert, Marc, Eef Ameel, and Gert Storms. 2014. “Semantic Memory and Bilingualism: a Review of the Literature and a New Hypothesis. Accessed 3 April 2014. [URL].
Campbell, Stuart. 2000. “Choice Network Analysis in Translation Research. In Intercultural Faultlines. Research Models in Translation Studies I. Textual and Cognitive Aspects, edited by Maeve Olohan, 29–42. Manchester: St. Jerome.
. 1999. “A Cognitive Approach to Source Text Difficulty in Translation. Target 11 (1): 33–63.
Carl, Michael. 2012. “The CRITT TPR-DB 1.0: A Database for Empirical Human Translation Process Research. In Proceedings of the AMTA 2012 Workshop on Post-Editing Technology and Practice (SPTP 2012), edited by Sharon O’Brien, Michel Simard, and Lucia Specia, 9–18. Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA).
Carl, Michael, and Barbara Dragsted. 2012. “Inside the Monitor Model: Processes of Default and Challenged Translation Production. Translation: Computation, Corpora, Cognition 2 (1): 127–145.
Carl, Michael, and Moritz Schaeffer. Forthcoming. “Processes of Literal Translation and Post-editing. In Translation in Transition, edited by Arnt Lykke Jakobsen and Bartolomé Mesa Lao. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Catford, J.C. 1965. A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics. London: Oxford University Press.
. [1965] 2000. “Translation Shifts. In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, 141–147. London: Routledge.
Chesterman, Andrew. 1998. Contrastive Functional Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2000. “A Causal Model for Translation Studies. In Intercultural Faultlines. Research Models in Translation Studies I. Textual and Cognitive Aspects, edited by Maeve Olohan, 15–27. Manchester: St. Jerome.
. 2011. “Reflections on the Literal Translation Hypothesis. In Methods and Strategies of Process Research, edited by Cecilia Alvstad, Adelina Hild, and Elisabet Tiselius, 23–35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Christoffels, Ingrid, and Annette de Groot. 2005. “Simultaneous Interpreting: A Cognitive Perspective. In Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Approaches, edited by Judith F. Kroll and Annette M.B. de Groot, 454–479. New York: Oxford University Press.
Delaere, Isabelle, and Gert De Sutter. 2013. “Applying a Multidimensional, Register-Sensitive Approach to Visualize Normalization in Translated and Non-translated Dutch. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 271: 43–60.
Delaere, Isabelle, Gert De Sutter, and Koen Plevoets. 2012. “Is Translated Language More Standardized than Non-Translated Language? Using Profile-Based Correspondence Analysis for Measuring Distance between Language Varieties. Target 24 (2): 203–224.
De Groot, Annette. 2011. Language and Cognition in Bilinguals and Multilinguals. An Introduction. New York: Psychology Press.
Dong, Yanping, Shichun Gui, and Brian MacWhinney. 2005. “Shared and Separate Meanings in the Bilingual Lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 8 (3): 221–238.
Englund Dimitrova, Birgitta. 2005. Expertise and Explicitation in the Translation Process. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Finkbeiner, M., K.I. Forster, J. Nicol, and K. Nakamura. 2004. “The Role of Polysemy in Masked Semantic and Translation Priming. Journal of Memory and Language 511: 1–22.
Francis, Wendy S., Natasha Tokowicz, and Judith Kroll. 2014. “The Consequences of Language Proficiency and Difficulty of Lexical Access for Translation Performance and Priming. Memory and Cognition 421: 27–40.
Geeraerts, Dirk. 2006. Words and Other Wonders. Papers on Lexical and Semantic Topics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Gries, Stefan Th. 2010. “Useful Statistics for Corpus Linguistics. In A Mosaic of Corpus Linguistics: Selected Approaches, edited by Aquilino Sánchez and Moisés Almela, 269–291. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Gries, Stephan Th., and Dagmar S. Divjak. 2010. “Quantitative Approaches in Usage-Based Cognitive Semantics: Myths, Erroneous Assumptions, and a Proposal. In Cognitive Linguistics Research: Quantitative Methods in Cognitive Semantics: Corpus-Driven Approaches, edited by Dylan Glynn and Kerstin Fischer, 333–353. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Grosjean, François. 2012. “Bilingual and Monolingual Language Modes. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, edited by Carol A. Chapelle. London: Blackwell. Accessed June 10, 2015.
Halverson, Sandra. 1997. “The Concept of Equivalence in Translation Studies: Much Ado about Something. Target 9 (2): 207–233.
. 2003. “The Cognitive Basis of Translation Universals. Target 15(2): 197–241.
. 2009. “Elements of Doctoral Training: The Dynamics of the Research Process. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 3 (1): 79–106
. 2010. “Cognitive Translation Studies: Developments in Theory and Method. In Translation and Cognition, edited by Gregory Shreve and Erik Angelone, 349–369. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2011. “Schematic Networks in Translation: Bringing Together Process and Corpus Data. Paper presented at Text-process-text, Stockholm, 17-19 November 2011.
. Forthcoming a. “The status of Contrastive Data in Translation Studies. Forthcoming in Across Languages and Cultures.
. Forthcoming b. “Developing a Cognitive Semantic Model: Magnetism, Gravitational Pull and Questions of Data and Method. Forthcoming in New Ways of Analysing Translational Behaviour in Corpus-Based Translation Studies, edited by Gert de Sutter, Isabelle Delaere, and Marie-Aude Lefer. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Hareide, Lidun. 2014. Testing the Gravitational Pull Hypothesis in Translation. A Corpus Based Study of the Gerund in Translated Spanish. Doctoral dissertation, University of Bergen.
Hartsuiker, Robert J., and Martin J. Pickering. 2008. “Language Interaction in Bilingual Sentence Production. Acta Psychologica 1281: 479–489.
Hartsuiker, Robert J., Martin J. Pickering, and Eline Veltkamp. 2004. “Is Syntax Separate or Shared Between Languages? Cross-linguistic Priming in Spanish-English Bilinguals. Psychological Science, 15 (6): 409–414.
Heylen, Kris, José Tummers, and Dirk Geeraerts. 2008. “Methodological Issues in Corpus-Based Cognitive Linguistics. In Cognitive Sociolinguistics. Language Variation, Cultural Models, Social Systems, edited by Gitte Kristiansen and René Dirven, 91–127. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Ivir, Vladimir. 1981. “Formal Correspondence vs. Translation Equivalence Revisited. In Theory of Translation and Intercultural Relations, edited by Itamar Even-Zohar and Gideon Toury, 51–59. Tel Aviv: Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University.
. 1997. “Formal/Contrastive Correspondence and Translation Equivalence. Studia Romanica et Anglica Zagreviensa XLII1: 167–180.
Jääskeläinen, Riitta. 1993. “Investigating Translation Strategies. In Recent trends in Empirical Translation Research, edited by Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit and John Laffling, 99–120. Joensuu: University of Joensuu.
Koppel, Moshe, and Noam Ordan. 2011. “Translationese and its Dialects.
Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
, 1318–1326. Portland, OR: Association for Computational Linguistics.
Kroll, Judith F., and Erika Stewart. 1994. “Category Interference in Translation and Picture Naming: Evidence for Asymmetric Connections between Bilingual Memory Representation. Journal of Memory and Language 331: 149–174.
Kroll, Judith F., and Natasha Tokowicz. 2005. “Models of Bilingual Representation and Processing: Looking Back and to the Future. In Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Approaches, edited by Judith F. Kroll and Annettee M.B. de Groot, 531–553. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kruger, Alet, Kim Wallmach, and Jeremy Munday. 2012. Corpus-based Translation Studies. Research and Applications. London: Bloomsbury.
Kruger, Haidee, and Bertus van Rooy. 2012. “Register and the Features of Translated Language. Across Languages and Cultures 13 (1): 33–65.
Krzeszowski, Thomas P. 1990. Contrasting Languages. The Scope of Contrastive Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Langacker, Ronald. 1987/1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volumes I and II. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Laviosa, Sara. 2011. “Corpus-based Translation Studies: Where Does it Come From? Where is it Going? In Corpus-based Translation Studies. Research and Applications, edited by Alet Kruger, Kim Wallmach, and Jeremy Munday, 13–32. London: Bloomsbury.
. 2009. “Universals. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 306–310. London: Routledge.
Laxén, Jannika, and Jean Marc Lavaur. 2010. “The Role of Semantics in Translation Recognition: Effects of Number of Translations, Dominance of Translations and Semantic Relatedness of Multiple Translations. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 131: 157–183.
Levý, Jiří. 1967. “Translation as a Decision Making Process, In To Honor Roman Jakobson, Vol. 21, 1171–1182. The Hague: Mouton.
Malmkjær, Kirsten. 2011. “Universals. In The Oxford Handbook of Translation Studies, edited by Kirsten Malmkjær and Kevin Windle, 83–93. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mauranen, Anna, and Pekka Kujamäki. 2004. Translation Universals: Do they Exist? Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Matthiesen, Christian. 2001. “The Environments of Translation. In Exploring Translation and Multilingual Text Production: Beyond Content, edited by Erich Steiner and Colin Yallop, 41–117. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
. 2012. “Just a Matter of Scope. Mental Load in Translation Process Research. Translation Spaces 11: 169–188.
. 2014. “Situating Translation Expertise: A Review with a Sketch of a Construct. In The Development of Translation Competence: Theories and Methodologies from Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Science, edited by John Schwieter and Aline Ferreira, 2–57. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Paradis, Michel. 1994. “Toward a Neurolinguistic Theory of Simultaneous Translation: The Framework. International Journal of Psycholinguistics, 101: 319–335.
Pavlenko, Aneta. 2009. The Bilingual Mental Lexicon. Interdisciplinary Approaches. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Pavlović, Nataša, and Goranka Antunović. 2013. “The Effect of Interpreting Experience on Distance Dynamics: Testing the Literal Translation Hypothesis. Translation and Interpreting Studies 8 (2): 233–252.
Pickering, Martin J., and Victor S. Ferreira. 2008. “Structural Priming: A Critical Review. Psychological Bulletin 134 (3): 427–459.
Pym, Anthony. 1995. “European Translation Studies, Une Science qui Dérange, and Why Equivalence Needn’t be a Dirty Word. TTR 8 (1): 153–176.
. 2008. “On Toury’s Laws of How Translators Translate. In Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies, edited by Anthony Pym, Miriam Schlesinger, and Daniel Simeoni, 311–328. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Risku, Hanna, Florian Windhager, and Matthias Apfelthaler. 2013. “A Dynamic Network Model of Translatorial Dognition and Action. Translation Spaces 21: 151–182.
Schaeffer, Moritz. 2013. The Ideal Literal Translation Hypothesis: The Role of Shared Representations During Translation. Doctoral dissertation, University of Leicester.
Schaeffer, Moritz J., and Michael Carl. 2013. “Shared Representations and the Translation Process. A Recursive Model. Translation and Interpreting Studies. 8 (2): 169–190.
. 2014. “Measuring the Cognitive Effort of Literal Translation Processes. Workshop on Humans and Computer-Assisted Translation, 29–37. Gothenburg Sweden: Association for Computational Linguistics.
Schaeffer, Mortiz J., Kevin Paterson, Victoria A. McGowan, Sarah J. White, and Kirsten Malmkjær. Forthcoming. “Reading for Translation. Forthcoming in Translation in Transition, edited by Arnt Lykke Jakobsen and Bartolomé Mesa Lao. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Schoonbaert, Sophie, Walter Duyck, Marc Brysbaert, and Robert J. Hartsuiker. 2009. “Semantic and Translation Priming from a First Language to a Second and Back: Making Sense of the Findings. Memory and Cognition 37 (5): 569–586.
Sjørup, Annette C. 2013. Cognitive Effort in Metaphor Translation. An Eye-tracking and Key- logging Study. Doctoral dissertation, Copenhagen Business School.
Shuttleworth, Mark, and Moira Cowie. 1997. Dictionary of Translation Studies. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja. 2004. “Unique Items – Over- or Under-represented in Translated Language? In Translation Universals. Do they Exist?, edited by Anna Mauranen and Pekka Kujamäki, 177–184. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja, Jukka Mäkisalo, and Sini Immonen. 2008. “The Translation Process– Interplay between Literal Rendering and a Search for Sense. Across Languages and Cultures 9 (1): 1–15.
Toury, Gideon. 2004. “Probabilistic Explanations in Translation Studies. Welcome as they are, Would they Qualify as Universals? In Translation Universals. Do they Exist?, edited by Anna Mauranen and Pekka Kujamäki, 15–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2012. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tummers, José, Kris Heylen, and Dirk Geeraerts. 2005. “Usage-Based Approaches in Cognitive Linguistics: A Technical State of the Art. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1 (2): 225–261.
Vinay, Jean-Paul, and Jean Darbelnet. 1995. Comparative Stylistics of French and English. A Methodology for Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cited by (39)
Cited by 39 other publications
Hegrenæs, Claudia Förster & Sandra Louise Halverson
Hong, Wenjie
2025. Verbalisation rétrospective comme outil diagnostique dans la formation en traduction. FORUM. Revue internationale d’interprétation et de traduction / International Journal of Interpretation and Translation 23:2 ► pp. 187 ff.
Jia, Haibo & Junying Liang
Li, Jia & Yuan Gao
Weng, Yu & Binghan Zheng
Castagnoli, Sara
2023. Exploring variation in student translation. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 9:1 ► pp. 96 ff.
de Baets, Pauline & Gert de Sutter
2023. How do translators select among competing (near-)synonyms in translation?. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 35:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Lacruz, Isabel
2023. Translation in transition. In Translation in Transition [American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series, XX], ► pp. 1 ff.
Shreve, Gregory M.
2023. The strange attractions of translation. In Translation in Transition [American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series, XX], ► pp. 15 ff.
Heilmann, Arndt, Jonas Freiwald, Stella Neumann & Zoë Miljanović
2022. Analyzing the effects of entrenched grammatical constructions on translation. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 5:1 ► pp. 110 ff.
Carl, Michael
Carl, Michael
Carl, Michael
2023. The Monitor Model and its misconceptions. In Translation in Transition [American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series, XX], ► pp. 257 ff.
García, Álvaro Marín
Marín García, Álvaro
2019. The opportunities of epistemic pluralism for Cognitive Translation Studies. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 2:2 ► pp. 165 ff.
Jiménez-Crespo, Miguel A. & Joseph V. Casillas
Liu, Xiaodong
Reynaert, Ryan, Lieve Macken, Arda Tezcan & Gert De Sutter
Talavira, Nataliia, T. Andrienko, S. Potapenko & L. Slavova
Valdez, Susana
2021. Literalization in the self-revision process of novice and experienced biomedical translators. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 8:2 ► pp. 356 ff.
Vanroy, Bram, Moritz Schaeffer & Lieve Macken
Zheng, Jianwei & Wenjun Fan
Deckert, Mikołaj
Jiménez-Crespo, Miguel A.
Hatzidaki, Anna
2019. Using experimental approaches to study translation. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 2:1 ► pp. 35 ff.
Heilmann, Arndt, Tatiana Serbina, Daniel Couto Vale & Stella Neumann
Molés-Cases, Teresa
Vandevoorde, Lore
Jääskeläinen, Riitta & Isabel Lacruz
2018. Translation – cognition – affect – and beyond. In
Innovation and Expansion in Translation Process Research [American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series, XVIII], ► pp. 1 ff.
Mellinger, Christopher D.
2018. Re-thinking translation quality. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies ► pp. 310 ff.
Ferreira, Aline & John W. Schwieter
Halverson, Sandra L.
Halverson, Sandra L.
Hansen‐Schirra, Silvia
Kruger, Haidee & Jan‐Louis Kruger
Martín, Ricardo Muñoz
Muñoz Martín, Ricardo
Schwieter, John W. & Aline Ferreira
Jääskeläinen, Riitta
2016. Quality and translation process research. In Reembedding Translation Process Research [Benjamins Translation Library, 128], ► pp. 89 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
