Differentiated measurements for fatigue and demotivation/amotivation in translation - lessons learnt from fatigue and motivation studies (2022)

Abstract: Fatigue is physical and mental weariness caused by prolonged continuity of work and would undermine work performance. In translation studies, although fatigue is a confounding fac- tor previous experiments all try to control, its detection and measurement are largely ignored. To bridge this lacuna, this article recommends some subjective and objective approaches to measuring translation fatigue based on prior fatigue research. Meanwhile, as demotivation is believed to be an emotion that confounds its accurate measurements, a discussion on how to distinguish those two states is further conducted from theoretical and methodological perspec- tives. In doing so, this paper not only illuminates on how to measure two essential influencers of translation performance, but also offers some insights into the distinction of affective and physical states during translation process.

## introduction with the flourish of experimental studies on translation process, translators' cognitive and affective states at workplaces have gained increasing attention. however, compared with intense probes into the cognitive aspect of translation, how translators' emotional states influence their translation performance remains largely underexplored. and one of essential reasons is the shortage of reliable instruments to record interested variables accurately and concurrently, especially when the ecological validity is considered. even though, recent decades have witnessed a growing number of endeavours on translators' emotion @xcite @xcite , stress (details in @xcite in particular, and motivation @xcite @xcite . of note is that most experiments adopted subjective measurements (e.g., emotional or motivation scales) to investigate translators' affective states, which somehow ignores the inevitable discrepancy between self-evaluation and actual moods. in this regard, @xcite combination of state-trait anxiety inventory and biomarkers such as heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance, and salivary cortisol is methodologically progressive. as there exist overlaps between biometrics used to measure different emotional and/or physical states, scholars have advocated the proper application of those techniques and meticulous interpretation of relevant data @xcite . in translation studies, @xcite have elaborated on how to distinguish stress from other emotions when heart rate variability and skin conductance are employed as indicators. according to their review, no compelling evidence exists to support the assumption that discrete categories of emotions uniquely correspond to specific region(s) of brain, and the same applies to other biomarkers. thus, the multiple explanations of same physiological indices are an obstacle to overcome before those cutting-edged devices are fully capitalised on. the story grows complexity when physical, cognitive, and emotional factors share one same indicator, of which pupil dilation is an example. though researchers have designed experiments conscientiously to eliminate common confounding variables such as fatigue, to what extent such manipulations are successful remains unknown. as fatigue is a universally concerned influencer in translation experiments, this article proposes some measurements for translation fatigue with reference to previous literature on fatigue theories and measurements. afterwards, a comparison between demotivation and fatigue is conducted from the perspective of conceptualisation and measurement. in doing so, it suggests on how to distinguish two phenomenologically similar states in translation scenarios and offers some methodological insights into differentiating physical states from affective states. ## definition of (de)motivation and its measurement motivation is a topic of interdisciplinary discussion for which multitudes of theories and models (e.g., self-determination theory, motivational intensity theory) have been established to explicate its operating mechanism. some treat motivation as a trait which exercises long-term effects on work and learning performance @xcite , while others regarded it as a state that have direct influences over task effort and outcomes @xcite . to illustrate how motivation as a trait and a state play their role in cognitive and physical activities, emphasis have been placed on its measurement. theoretically speaking, trait motivation composes of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, which stem from the satisfaction of competence, relatedness, autonomy, and external rewards or regulations @xcite . contrarily, a failure to meet those requirements entails amotivation/demotivation. though relatively steady, trait motivation can be domain specific as one's motivation to work is no equivalence of that to learning or entertainments. moreover, trait motivation is so implicit that its measurement largely relies on established scales. in translation studies, a typical example is interpreter trainers' learning (de)motivation scale @xcite . in comparison, state motivation is temporary and task-specific, whose intensity is believed to have detectable cognitive, behavioural and physiological outcomes @xcite @xcite . defined strictly, state motivation is regulated by the biological structure of basal ganglia and its intensity can shift even within one single task @xcite . in practice, state motivation is always interchangeably used with task motivation and operates as a multi-component structure @xcite . as such, the more prudent measurement is a combination of self-report and biometric data. regarding self-report data, factors such as self-efficacy, autonomy, task meaning, utility, enjoyment, and difficulty, as well as output satisfaction are theoretically presumed as reflections of task motivation @xcite . as to biomarkers, motivational intensity theory @xcite proposes task effort as an indicator of task motivation which can be measured by sympathetic system responses in systolic blood pressure and pre-ejection period. ideally, task motivation would increase as tasks get more complicated if task accomplishment is possible and justified. and enhanced motivation is indicated by a higher level of systolic blood pressure and shorter pre-ejection period. by contrast, when task difficulty exceeds one's competence, a sense of demotivation would entail a sharp decline in task effort, thus lowering systolic blood pressure and lengthening pre-ejection period. empirical evidence from varied cognitive and physical tasks have lent adequate validity to those assumptions @xcite . although sbp and pep are most suitable measures of motivational intensity from a biological angle, alternative indices such as diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, pupil size and skin conductance are also utilised in many experiments in case one indicator may be insensitive to certain stimuli. of note is that current practice measures task motivation holistically and focuses on differences in selected parameters between pre-task and during-task conditions rather than subperiods in one lengthy task. specifically, task motivation is calculated as the mean level of biological data over the whole task deducted by baseline data collected at the resting condition. more recently, eeg has also been applied to record motivational states (gergelyfi et al., 2015) since changes of band power in the prefrontal cortex proved to be modulated by emotion and motivation @xcite . specifically, approach motivation leads to more activations in the left hemisphere whereas withdrawal motivation activates the right hemisphere more @xcite . and more motivating tasks produce greater magnitude eeg alpha and beta band power in the left prefrontal cortex @xcite . with the growing application of eeg, channels corresponding to attention, emotion, motivation, and fatigue were further identified. moreover, using residual-to-residual cnn algorithm, beta waves proved to outperform alpha waves in the accurate predication of motivation for game-playing @xcite . as shown in table2, in translation studies, previous investigators have adopted theories and models in the learning domain to develop their scales and confined their targets on language learners. however, as professional translators' motivation has been found to shape their performance @xcite , trait and state motivation measurements dedicated to translation are in urgent demand if further exploration of the underlying mechanism were conducted. in this sense, pre-existing generic scales (e.g., work preference inventory, bas/bis scale), though not directly applicable, lay the foundation for translation scholars to build their measurement toolkits. take wpi as an example, the general expression that "i love tackling problems completely new to me" can be situationalised by adding "translation" before "problems". moreover, as exploratory factor analysis in previous studies on employers' motivation has generated structures different from the original ones, it is essential to validate the modified scales with adequate sample size before their implementation. regarding state motivation, psychological metrics (e.g., blood pressure, heart rate variables, skin conductance) widely applied in other cognitive tasks are worthy of consideration if confounding factors (e.g., emotional valence of source texts) were meticulously controlled. another two cautions are: 1). when the attentional and emotional aspects of translation are concurrently examined, eye-movement indicators such as pupil size may not be a rigorous biomarker; 2). in practice, some biomarkers may not be so sensitive to motivational alteration, for which a combined use of indexes are recommended. ## how to differentiate fatigue and demotivation in translation in theory, demotivation and fatigue is easily distinguishable. the former is a physical and mental state out of personal control, while the latter is more related to one's willingness and are thus largely self-determined. however, concerning their measurements, the boundary becomes less clear-cut. not only fatigue can be a source of demotivation, but also demotivation and fatigue share some cognitive (less focused) and behavioural (underperformance) signals. the theoretical premise that the amount of deliberate effort, efficiency of attention allocation and information processing can index one's motivation fails to discriminate demotivation from fatigue which could lead to same outcomes, albeit at an unconscious level. in this regard, the employment of traditional scales, though at the risk of inaccuracy and latency, seems more helpful in differentiating physical states from emotional states than biomarkers of attention and effort. however, a perusal of theoretical and biological underpinnings for their measurements sheds more lights. first, fatigue is an exhausting state due to protracted work, which means long time-on-task is a requisite to its occurrence. differently, lack of motivation can happen at any stage of task performance, either because of one's unwilling to take the task (in the very beginning), a growing understanding of task difficulty (in the middle of task) or gradually getting bored. second, as one subdimension of fatigue, muscle fatigue has physical features undetectable in the case of demotivation. biologically speaking, human beings are unlikely to control their muscles in a conscious way, especially in cognitive tasks where skeletal muscle does not play a noted role. in this sense, biometers for measuring muscle fatigue such as emg and eog are effective in distinguishing fatigue from demotivation. third, as far as the mental aspect of both states is concerned, bio-signals of drowsiness (e.g., increased activities in alpha band power) are peculiar to fatigue as motivation is more self-controlled and operates consciously in most of time. meanwhile, neuroscience scholars have mapped out some brain regions correspond to motivation and fatigue respectively @xcite , which paves the way for applying eeg to tell fatigue from demotivation that may occur at the similar stage. finally, physiological indices of parasympathetic and sympathetic activities are also useful. based on motivational intensity theory, demotivation is associated with decreased arousal in sympathetic activities (indicated by lower sbp and longer pep), which has gained ample empirical supports. contrarily, fatigue was discovered to be linked to increased sympathetic arousal @xcite and decreased parasympathetic nervous activities @xcite . hence, the opposite reflections of those two states in the autonomic nervous system speaks to the applicability of heart rate and blood pressure related parameters for their distinction. @xcite have employed a series of neural, autonomic, psychometric, and behavioural signatures to dissociate effects on working memory performance of mental fatigue (measured by ecg, eye blink, and multidimensional fatigue inventory) from that of motivation (measured by eeg, pupil diameter, skin conductance response, and self-rated task interest, efficacy, effort, and value). and their results showed participants' subjective feeling of fatigue is positively related to their eye blink rate and heart rate variability. while reward-induced eeg, pupillometric and skin conductance signal changes (indexes of motivation) did not correlate with subjective and objective indices of mental fatigue. tentative as their findings are, this research nevertheless indicates the differentiable manifestations of amotivation and fatigue. ## conclusion in summary, although fatigue is a confounding factor that previous translation experiments all try to control, no objective or subjective approaches have been adopted to detect its occurrence. to bridge this gap, this article, based on the fatigue literature, proposed some methods for monitoring and measuring translators' fatigue, which cover self-report scales and various physiological biomarkers. to avoid the impacts of emotional states that share similar cognitive and behavioural consequences with fatigue on its accurate measurement, demotivation was taken as an example to illustrate how to distinguish affective and physical states in translation activities. in doing so, this paper not only illuminates on the measurement of two essential influencers of translation performance, but also cautions on the meticulous employment of biomarkers in translation studies. for future experimenters with an eye on translation (de)motivation and fatigue, it is advised to incorporate objective and subjective measures for the sake of data triangulation. specifically, pep and s/dbp, heart rate and skin conductance can be useful indicators of (de)motivation. while muscular activities (in face or body) recorded by emg, eog or cameras can help detect translation fatigue. meanwhile, a combination of biomarkers serves as a safeguard to potential "insensitivity" issue. on the other hand, when scales or self-reports are employed, their relevance to translation tasks, translation (if not phrased in participants' mother tongue) and validation (for both newly developed and established scales) are things to consider.