Abstract

The present study researches the correlation between translators’ creative personality and their behaviour by using a combination of psychological, key-logging and screen-recording methods as well as the evaluation of participants’ translation output. Participants were asked to translate a literary text without knowing that it posed the additional challenge of transferring manner of motion verbs into Spanish. The experiment correlated the participants’ scores on a validated creativity test (i.e., CREA, Corbalán Berná et al., 2003) with their scores on process indicators of fluency as one of the key dimensions of creativity as well as product indicators of flexibility, novelty, and accuracy. To this purpose, the logging tool Inputlog was used to measure dwell ratio, total translation time, time interval between ST processing and TT production and time devoted to revision. The screen recording software CamStudio was also used to analyse participants’ creativity in searching and retrieving information. Although few significant statistical results were found, our study suggests that creative translators’ potential can be traced both in their translation product and process.

Highlights

  • By the end of the 20th century, acknowledgment of translation as a problem-solving activity points to the need to define the processes and strategies associated with translational creativity

  • Most of these studies combined the use of product- and process-based methods; for instance, Kußmaul (1991) developed the first typology of cognitive shifts and used TAPS to prove that the strategies of brainstorming and visualization are useful to promote creativity in the translation classroom

  • No relation has been found among their levels of creative intelligence and the novelty or originality of their solutions, or between their creative intelligence scores and TT accuracy, suggesting that creative potential might not always lead to novel solutions or higher translation quality

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Summary

Introduction

By the end of the 20th century, acknowledgment of translation as a problem-solving activity points to the need to define the processes and strategies associated with translational creativity. To date, Bayer-Hohenwarter (2009, 2010, 2011, 2013) has provided the most detailed and extensive method to measure creativity in translation by combining both product- and process-based methods of analysis. We analyse the influence of translators’ creative potential on both the product and process of the translation of a literary text highly rich in manner of motion descriptions, a highly demanding challenge which might benefit from creative problem-solving. In order to do so, we firstly build our theoretical framework on the concept of creativity and its relation to translation (section 2.1), focusing on the translation of motion verbs, a special challenge for translators which might benefit from a creative problem-solving potential (section 2.2).

Creativity and translation
The challenge of translating motion verbs
The studies
Aims and hypotheses
Participants
Task and materials
Procedure
Analysis of results
Hypothesis 1
Hypothesis 2
Hypothesis 3
Findings
Final discussion and conclusions

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