Probing the unit of translation in time: Aspects of the design and development of a web application for storing, annotating, and querying translation process data

Abstract

This paper presents some aspects of a web application designed to store, annotate, and query translation process data. Examples sharing comparable and representative patterns that can be subject to storage, annotation, and querying have been selected to illustrate the structure of the application. The web application is an integral part of the Corpus on Process for the Analysis of Translations (CORPRAT) implemented at the Laboratory for Experimentation in Translation (LETRA) at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The paper examines the unfolding of translation units in time and proposes their operationalization on the basis of the translator’s focus of attention, identified as time intervals delimited by pauses in the translation process as registered by key-logging and/or eyetracking software. By annotating and querying translation units, the web application allows the translation process to be replayed as a moving picture whose sequentially ordered frames represent the screen output of a sequence of keyboard events. By querying larger sets of data, extracted from different case studies with different translators’ profiles, varied language combinations, and specific task constraints, the web application allows researchers to investigate the nature of the translation unit in process-oriented terms and identify patterns of text segmentation from a cognitive perspective.