Measuring Cognitive Effort with Translation Process Database

Abstract

The analysis and measurement of cognitive effort could be complicated when involved in translation production. And it therefore attracts researchers’ great attention to the investigation of this topic. Different from traditional data collection methods, the Translation Process Research Database (TPR-DB) utilizes the large corpus to record the translation process, including translation process data (e.g. keystrokes, fixations, mouse movements) and translation product data (e.g. ST, TT and links between tokens in both texts) from more than ten language pairs and dozens of translation and associated studies. After reviewing the studies and some findings on measuring cognitive effort with the TPR-DB, the present study proposes that features of HTra, HCross, AUs and PWR in the TPR-DB tables are frequently used as indicators for the measurement of cognitive effort during translation and post-editing processes. The attempts to measure cognitive effort with the TPR-DB have not only yielded some interesting findings but also added fresh insights to facilitate understanding and examination of cognitive effort. The present study pointed out that the TPR-DB provides a new and effective method to measure cognitive effort. It will further support and promote the future research in this field.