Abstract
Research into the role of implicit theories in decision-making covers a broad area ranging from personal to political relationships, and from private to professional life. To date, translation studies have paid little attention to the influence of translators’ knowledge and beliefs in the translation process, and even less to the role of implicit theories. In a pilot study with translation trainees, we attempted to reconstruct their theories about translation and discern to what extent these theories influence both the translation process and the translated text. Our results so far show that trainees do entertain initial implicit theories, which can be modified through experience and formal instruction. These initial implicit theories mainly focus on the notions of transfer and change, and do not reflect the complexity of translation phenomena. With regard to the translation process, our analysis of corrections as well as the length and structure of text-production segments suggests that the informants approach translation at a micro level, which may be partly due to the influence of their concept of translation as transfer. This pilot study is part of a broader research project that analyzes the evolution of initial implicit theories about translation as a result of experience and formal training, and to what extent changes in the theoretical framework of translation trainees can bring about changes in the way they translate.
Highlights
In the 1970s, research into problem-solving processes showed that people may make decisions without necessarily taking into account rational factors and, more to the point, that people do not seem to be aware of what they know or the basis of their decisions (Reber 1993: 13)
This was the case in modern translation studies, which frequently used metaphors to describe and explain translation processes (Martín de León 2008, 2010). It seems to be true in our informants’ discourses, where we identified 1,046 metaphorical expressions, which we ascribed to 37 conceptual metaphors
The analysis of the informants’ texts and interviews shows that metaphors were used to explain translation and other related phenomena, most instances revolved around translation. This predominance is very likely due to the setting and to the very aim of the questionnaires, but the use of conceptual metaphors may point to the difficulty of conceptualizing translation processes
Summary
In the 1970s, research into problem-solving processes showed that people may make decisions without necessarily taking into account rational factors and, more to the point, that people do not seem to be aware of what they know or the basis of their decisions (Reber 1993: 13). Implicit theories may be described as networks of mental representations derived from experience (Mandl 1998) They are basically unconscious, complex systems of conceptual knowledge (Reber 1993: 5) with an if/ structure (Groeben 1988) that can be modified through experience (Dann 1990) as well as through verbal instruction (Pozo 2003). Research into the acquisition processes of scientific theories shows that students mostly use bottom-up, implicit, and additive mechanisms in order to modify their initial theories These mechanisms work unconsciously and over an extended period of time, and they often give rise to so-called synthetic models (Vosniadou et al 2008) that unveil students’ attempts to merge two incompatible pieces of information or concepts: one from their previous knowledge, the other one acquired during the formal instruction process
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