Department of Linguistics
Translation Competence
Project leader:
A/P Eddie Ronowicz
Assistant researchers:
TRAN 827, Research Methods in T&I students
Research on the translation process and translator competence is relatively new and was pioneered by scholars like Borsch, Gerloff, House, Jääskeläinen, Krings, Lorscher, Seguinot and Tirkonen-Condit – bibliographical information. After a period of fascination with the Think Aloud Protocol technique, towards the end of the nineties came the realization that it has shortcomings and scholars became more cautious in both using the technique itself and interpreting the results. New techniques of observing the translator at work were developed, notably TRANSLOG, a software recording all the activity on the keyboard (cf. Jakobsen 1999), and combinations of several techniques at the same time (see Ronowicz et al 2005 for more extensive discussion). The results of many past studies of both process and product of translation were summarized by Hurtado (2003), the leader of the PACTE group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona currently involved in a large longitudinal project of translator competence.
Over the last 6 years Ronowicz and his students have been experimenting with several different research methods and, since 2004, on translators’ linguistic competence. The project is continuing and in the current phase, the focus is on grammatical competence of professional and trainee translators. Research completed between 2000 and 2006 resulted in several publications and one Masters dissertation using TRANSLOG listed below.
Publications resulting from the Translator Competence project:
Ronowicz, Eddie (2003): Source Language Text Processing in Translation, The Translation Quarterly No 29.
Ronowicz, Eddie, Kyoko Imanishi (2003): A Comparison of Task Management and Lexical Search Mechanisms in Novice and Professional Translators/Interpreters, Interpretation Studies No 3 (December), pp 16-34, Japan Association for Interpretation Studies.
Higuchi, Aiko (2004) Task Management in Translation: Time Management and Productivity, Unpublished masters dissertation, in: CTIR Working Papers.
Ronowicz, Eddie, Joanna Hehir, Toshihiro Kaimi, Keiko Kojima, and Deok-shin Lee (2005): Translator’s Frequent Lexis Store and Dictionary Use as Factors in SLT Comprehension and Translation Speed – a comparative study of professional, paraprofessional and novice translators, Meta, Vol 50 No 2, pp 580-596.
Ronowicz, Eddie (2005): A Report from a Pilot Study of Lexical Competence of Novice and Professional Translators.CTIR Working Papers.
Ronowicz, Eddie (2007): Lexical competence of student and professional translators., Interpreting and Translation Studies, Vol 1, 2007, HUFS, Seoul.
Lee Ji Eun and Eddie Ronowicz (2008): Interpretations of the English Definite Article among Korean Translation Students: a Study of Errors in a Writing and Translation Task, Interpreting and Translation Studies, Vol 2, 2008, HUFS, Seoul
Ronowicz, Eddie (2008): Research Based Teaching of Translation to Postgraduate Students, Proceedings, 19th FIT World Congress, Shanghai
General Bibliography on Translation Competence
TRAN 827 & Translation Competence Project
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