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The cognitive aspect of the model
Cognitive activities refer to the mental processes involving accessing, analyzing and manipulating data during the comprehension and production phases of language (Kiraly 1995: 65).
Concerning the cognitive aspect of his model of translation processes, Kiraly uses Boekarts’s (1981) general model of language comprehension and production which first proposes the existence of a subconscious workspace and a conscious processing unit in the mind of the language user and secondly identifies three types of understanding used in text comprehension, namely input-based (bottom-up), schema-based (top- down) and context-based.
Summarizing Boekarts’s proposal about the comprehension process, Kiraly writes:
linguistic input evokes relevant schemata to allow the language user to make inferences about intended meaning. The inferences evoke or trigger schemata stored in long-term memory and combine with them to form what Tannen (1979) described as an expectation structure. (Ibid: 65)
He further adds that
comprehension in one’s native tongue takes place primarily in the subconscious workplace, and it is only when problems arise in matching input to expectations that small amounts of information will be loaded into the conscious processing unit, where the language user can focus on the perceived problem and resolve it using comprehension strategies. (Ibid)
From this discussion of language comprehension and production processes, it is obvious that the subconscious is given special importance. This stems from the observation that in fact most of the cognitive processes are “subconscious and/or subcontrol” and that “the only cognitive activities available for observation are those that enter short-term memory and remain long enough to be verbalized” (Ericsson and Simon 1980, 1984).
Wilss (1988) and Hönig (1990) have also examined the role of subconscious processes (intuitive processes) in translation. Wilss distinguishes between intuitive and analytic thinking:
Analytic thinking characteristically proceeds a step at a time. Steps are explicit and usually can be adequately reported by the thinker to another individual. Such thinking proceeds with relatively full awareness of the information and operations involved. It may involve careful and deductive reasoning, often using mathematics or logic and an explicit plan of attack.
Or it may involve a step - by - step process of induction and experiment” (Wilss 1988, 133 in Kiraly 1995: 49)
As for intuitive thinking, it
characteristically does not advance in careful well-defined steps. Indeed, it tends to involve maneuvres based seemingly on an implicit perception of the total problem. The thinker arrives at an answer, which may be right or wrong, with little awareness of the process by which he reached it. (Ibid)
Moreover, for Wilss, intuitive processes take place only after analytic processing fails to supply an adequate solution to a translation problem.
For Hönig (1990), on the other hand, intuitive processes do not come after analytic processing (or controlled cognitive processes). After observing translator trainees, it is concluded that
it was strikingly clear in every case, that regardless of the solution that was finally reached, there was no systematic cognitive path that had led to it. Cognitive and intuitive factors alternate without any observable coordination and without evidence of a progression of mental steps. (Hönig 1990: 8-9 in Kiraly 1995: 49)
Commenting on the two different views on controlled and uncontrolled processes, Kiraly states that the implications of adopting one or the other are quite serious. Thus, if one follows the view of Wilss, an analytic approach to translation processing could be taken in which “one could then develop a model that identifies correlations between translation problems encountered, translation strategies implemented to solve these problems, and translation products yielded by the strategies” (Kiraly 1995: 49). If, on the other hand, one follows the view of Hönig, it would not be easy to defend a rule-based approach to translation (Ibid).
In his model of translation processes, Kiraly appears to favour the view of Hönig which also seems to have been adopted by Boekarts (1981) in his model of language comprehension and production. For Kiraly, intuitions, or uncontrolled mental processes are taken to include
spontaneous associations between words and concepts; spontaneous determination of accuracy or equivalence where no conscious rule is invoked; and spontaneous determinations of acceptability (relative to the target community), also where no conscious rule is invoked. (Ibid)
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