A Pilot Study on Undergraduate Students' English-Chinese Translation Shifts in Web-searching Process: combining screen-recording and retrospective verbalization methods
Keywords:
English-Chinese translation shifts, web-searching process, screen-recording method, retrospective verbalizationAbstract
Translation shifts (i.e. linguistic changes at lexical, syntactic and expression levels) naturally occur with the use of translation techniques in the process of translating a source text (ST) into another target text (TT). However, previous scholars mostly focused on analyzing translation products but hardly investigated translation shifts through translation process research (TPR) methods. Therefore, the pilot study combining screen-recording and retrospective verbalization methods aims to explore the causes and types of translation shifts made in three undergraduate students' web-searching process in the hope of summarizing some implications for translator training.
The preliminary findings are as follows. Firstly, the combination of screen-recording and retrospective verbalization methods could detect the causes of undergraduate students' dissatisfying translation shifts, such as their over-reliance on online dictionaries or insufficient background knowledge in the ST. The results of the pilot study also show the implications of both recalling students' application of internalized translation techniques and prompting them to reflect on how to make better translation shifts through the consultation of relevant background knowledge in the ST. Secondly, despite the usefulness of web resources, students should be taught to cross-check reliable web resources for refining TT expressions with personal translator's style as another implication of translation shift analysis.
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