The effects of working memory, inhibitory control, academic training, and professional experience on the translation of self-directed motion by English-Spanish translators, translation novices, and non-translator bilinguals
Creators: name: Gonzalez Darriba, Patricia
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2019

description: This dissertation explores the translation of self-directed motion expressions (such as "The boat floated into the cave"/"La barca entró en la cueva flotando") from Spanish into English by bilinguals, novice translators, and professional translators from a psycholinguistic point of view. It provides a theoretical model, the SPaM Translation Model, that draws from Kroll and Stewart (1994) and Jackendoff (1997, 2009, 2011, 2015) to account for the under-representation of the English satellite-framed expression in translated texts and investigates the effects of working memory, inhibitory control, academic training, and professional experience on the translation of these expressions.Previous research on the effects of working memory and inhibitory control on the linguistic performance of bilingual individuals indicates that subjects with higher cognitive abilities tend to do better in second language tasks and processes (Mackey and Sachs, 2012; Sagarra and Herschensohn, 2010; Dussias and Piñar, 2010; French, 2006; Alptekin and Erçetin, 2010; Mercier et al., 2014; Blumenfeld and Marian, 2011; Abutalebi and Green, 2007; Korko and Williams, 2017; Pivneva et al., 2012). However, no research has tested how these cognitive individual differences affect the translation performance of professional translators or non-translator bilinguals. On the other hand, Translation Studies research evaluating the influence of educational and professional experience on translation performance has yielded inconclusive, contradicting results (Ronowicz et al., 2005; Jääskeläinen, 1990, 1996, 1999; Tirkkonen-Condit, 1987, 1992; Jakobsen, 2000, 2003; Göpferich, 2013; Kiraly, 1990; Cifuentes, 2015; De Rooze, 2003; Flores et al., 2012; Massey and Ehrengsberger-Dow, 2011; Ehrengsberger-Dow and Massey, 2013).In order to test the SPaM Translation model and examine how the aforementioned factors affect the translation performance of translators and non-translators alike, three experimental groups (English-Spanish bilinguals without translation training, English-Spanish translation students, and English-Spanish translators) completed two translation tasks. The first task was presented as a self-paced reading task to emphasize memory and inhibition efforts. The second one was a traditional translation task designed to explore academic training and professional experience effects. Additionally, the participants' working memory was measured with the Letter-Number Sequencing Task, and their inhibitory control was assessed with the Flanker Test. Statistical analyses show that translation students and professional translators perform very similarly while significantly outperforming the bilinguals in both translation tasks. Additionally, working memory was not a significant covariate in either task, but Flanker test total score was significant in the self-paced reading translation task, and Flanker test no-go trial score was significant in both tasks.These results translate into three main findings: (1) Translation students can perform as professional translators in regard to this structure after a short period of training; that is, professional experience did not seem to determine translation performance but training did; (2) working memory capacity does not appear to play a role in translation tasks; and (3) inhibitory control, in particular, the ability to refrain from responding to a prepotent stimulus, may modulate the translation product in the case of self-directed motion. These findings may have implications in how translation training is designed and underscore the need for cognitive training in translation classes.