Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

The psychological aspect of translation

For Kussmaul, data-based research, which is fundamental in translation teaching as it enables one to locate, explain, and remedy students’ problems, has focussed mainly on one type of data which is product- oriented. In this type of data, students’ translations are collected and then an error analysis is undertaken following three steps: describing the errors (i.e. identifying the symptoms), finding the reasons for their occurrence (i.e. diagnosis) and finally, providing pedagogical help (i.e. remedy). This error analysis according to Kussmaul is not enough because it stops short from telling us how students produced these errors: it is not sufficient, for example, to tell students that they have made an interference error and then advise them to do something about it by following a course in the usage of their mother tongue or a remedial course in the foreign language or even to take up a course in text analysis for a better text comprehension. He, therefore, argues for the need to supplement this product-oriented research by one that is process-oriented, using Think-Aloud Protocols (TAPs).
Think-aloud protocols refer to a data-collection technique during which translation subjects are asked to verbalize their thoughts while translating. In the process, their verbalizations are recorded and then analyzed so as to find out what kinds of problems are encountered and what sorts of strategies are used.
This process-oriented data analysis, according to Kussmaul constitutes an improvement by degree when compared to the product-oriented data analysis because it brings us closer to the translator, despite the fact that, like the latter, the process-oriented data analysis remains basically speculative; one still has “ to infer what goes on” in the translator’s mind (Ibid: 7).
When analyzing the TAPs, Kussmaul looks at the errors and thus tries to trace the mental processes which have caused them, relying in this operation on psycholinguistic models of comprehension (e.g. the interplay between bottom-up and top-down processes). However, he also sometimes invokes another linguistic model, namely, Fillmore’s scenes and frames, which, he says, is similar to the psycho-linguistic model mentioned except that it, at times, “helps us see things in greater detail” (Ibid: 13).

On the basis of the analysis of students’ TAPs, Kussmaul has found that these do not only present information regarding mistranslation errors, such as interference and faulty-one-to-one correspondence (resulting from being unaware of polysemy), but also shed light on some deficiencies such as the misuse of bilingual dictionaries, the misuse of world knowledge and incomplete paraphrasing. These errors and deficiencies are attributed by Kussmaul to the implementation of unsuccessful mental processes, especially the predominance of top-down processes and the neglect of bottom-up processes. To remedy this imbalance between top- down and bottom-up processes, Kussmaul very strongly recommends that students should be made aware of the psycholinguistic processes of understanding in their minds so that they could rationalize their comprehension and translation processes. More specifically, they should be told that words in a text acquire meaning by virtue of their meaning potential on the one hand, and by virtue of the context which determines, limits and activates this meaning potential. Top-down knowledge, in other words, has to be counter-balanced by bottom-up knowledge (Ibid: 22).

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