Translating in times of crisis: A study about the emotional effects of the COVID19 pandemic on the translation of evaluative language

Abstract

This study explores the emotional impact of contextually-relevant source texts (STs) and their influence on student translators' behavior. During the first weeks of the Spanish COVID-19 lockdown, an experimental study was carried out in which 69 Spanish translation students were instructed to translate two English STs with different evaluative attitudes (i.e. optimistic vs. pessimistic) toward the COVID-19 crisis. The study explored whether the different optimistic vs pessimistic framing of the crisis would influence the students' use of translation strategies (h1), their levels of anxiety (h2) and their levels of affect (h3) after both reading and translating the STs. Results revealed statistically significant differences between the two translation strategies analyzed (i.e. emphasis and attenuation), with more emphasizing strategies than attenuating ones, regardless of the group. Moreover, a significant effect of the interaction between text and group was also reported, which indicated an overall stronger inclination to alter —either mitigating or emphasizing— evaluative language in the pessimistic text. A significant increase in participants' levels of anxiety and negative affect was also found after the pessimistic framing as compared to the optimistic one. Data also pointed to differences between reading and translating in terms of the participant's anxiety levels, with statistically significant higher anxiety scores after reading than translating.