THINK ALOUD PROTOCOL IN TRANSLATOR TRAINING
Think Aloud Protocol
In translator training
5/8/2013
DR, Faghih
Kobra, Heydarali
THINK ALOUD PROTOCOL IN TRANSLATOR TRAINING
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Think-Aloud Protocol In Translator Training
Kobra, Heydarali
Advisor: DR, Faghih
Translator Training Methodology
Islamic Azad University of Literature &Foreign languages, South Branch
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Aims and purposes of think aloud protocol
Introduction
Analysis of think aloud protocol (TAPs) in translation studies began in Europe in
the late 1980s.The models presented until then usually described what ideally
happened or rather what should happen, in translating. It was people like Krings,
Konigs and Lorscher in germany, Dechert and Sandrock in Britain, Jaaskelainen
and Tirkkonnen – Condit in Finland, and some others, who were no longer happy
with this state of affairs. They began to ask what actually happens when people
translate.
Purposes
According to Kussmaul and Tirkkonen-Condit in ‘THINK- ALOUD PROTOCOL
ANALYSIS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES’ in addition to increasing our potential for
describing and explaining the processes of translation, and thus our theoretical
understanding, these analyses have at least two pedagogical purposes:
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1. The strategies observed in the TAPs may serve as models for successful
translating. This implies that the translators serving as subjects possess some
degree of professionalism and expert behavior. Naturally, one would not
expect beginner students to exhibit this kind of behavior.
2. If students training to become translators are used as subjects, TAPs may be
used to find out where they have problems.
The results of the analysis can then form a basis for translation pedagogy. One
might argue that teachers of translation already know which strategies to
recommend to their students. From years of experience they know what their
students need. This may be true to some extent, but teaching experience shows
that we sometimes draw the wrong conclusion from our students’ translations.
We may, for instance, have the impression that students have problems with text
– comprehension while, when we talk to them, we find that they actually have
problems expressing what had understood. TAPs can help us to see matters more
clearly.
Think aloud protocol (TAPs): Is a method that allows researchers to
understand at least in part, the thought process of a subject as they use a
product, device, or manual. The researcher observes while the user attempts to
complete a defined task. By thinking aloud while attempting to complete a task,
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Users can explain their method and illuminate any difficulties they encounter in
the process.
According to Kussmaul in TRAINING TRANSLATOR in order to avoid errors we
should prescribe “therapy”.
1. We can advise our students to take courses in mother tongue usage in
order to become more sensitive to the way they use their own language.
2. We can also prescribe a remedial course in the foreign language in order to
improve their foreign language competence.
3. We can prescribe a course in text analysis in order to improve their
understanding of source text and help them with their decisions when
translating it.
However, therapies of this sort would be like trying to get someone to find
their way through a fog unless we can guide their steps clearly, that is point out
more precisely how students produced their errors.
A new process - oriented approach has been developed recently in order to
gain more immediate access to that notorious black box, the translator’s mind.
Carried out in which translators were asked to utter everything that went on in
their minds while they were translating and this monologues are referred to as
think – aloud protocols (TAPs).
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Such protocols have been analyzed in order to classify translation strategies,
with the pedagogical (diagnostic) aim of observing difficulties encountered by the
Students. Although by using TAPs we are “closer” to the translators’ mind we still
to some extent have to infer what goes on, as we shall see when analyzing the
protocols because there is no direct access to mental processes; but there is an
improvement by degree when analyzing protocols instead of errors (Kussmaul
1995).
Konigs (1993), for instance, mentions a number of types of actions that can be
identified, such as macro-planning, corrections, identification of problems,
solution of problems, association, corrections, the use of dictionaries,
translator’s focus of attention, comprising both problematic and unproblematic
processing, And Kiraly (1986 a, b) points out, the think – aloud monologue
method is very well suited for translation process research because there is a
close affinity between translation and thinking aloud. Since translation is by its
very nature a linguistic process, the verbalizations externalize linguistically
structured information available in short – term memory, And also House (1988)
in TALKING TO ONESELF OR THINKING WITH OTHERS believes that monologue
protocols still predominantly is the main tool for gaining access to the translation
process.
The artificiality that still remains has led some researchers to get subjects to talk
to each other. In a small – scale experiment, House compared Monologue and
dialogue protocols and found that monologue protocols contained a large amount
of trivial data and that the process of selecting target language items, weighing
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Alternative one against the others, and deciding in favor of one particular
translation equivalent remained unverbalized.
In contrast, when talking in pairs, solutions to translation problems were
negotiated and all partners in the pair thinking aloud sessions benefited in terms
of incidental clarification of their own thoughts, and each individual’s thoughts
appeared to have been consistently shaped through the necessity of having to
verbalize them (House, 1988, p.93)
.
Methodological problems with think aloud protocol
Most criticism leveled against thinking – aloud data relates, in contrast, to
those cognitive operations where non – verbal processes have to be verbalized
and there are problems with dialogue and group protocols as well. One may argue
that while our aim is to observe what goes on translator’s mind we are now not
observing one mind at work but two or more, and that we record thoughts that
would never have occurred to a single translator. This is true, but even if we use
monologue protocols, we eventually may not want to find out what went on in
one mind, but rather to draw conclusions from our observations of a sample of
minds.
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Krings and in fact many of the scholars engaged in protocol research seem to
avoid judgment altogether in their studies. There is no reason for this kind of
restraint. If the translations are of high quality, the subjects will most likely have
used appropriate strategies, and if not it is problematic. The aims of investigation
is to isolate such processes in order to find out where the students have problems
and then to help them. This means that in any analysis of the various solution –
finding processes he shall always link up process and product, that is evaluate the
translations eventually decide on by the subject and use the model of
communicative error analysis and translation quality assessment.
The obvious thing to do, therefore, seems to apply these introspective
methods to students training to become professional translators, i.e. semi –
professionals. There have been a number of studies of both recently, and in some
of these, professional situations have been at least simulated. It was observed
that there are indeed differences between professionals and semi – professionals
on the one hand and non- professionals on the other in the way they produce
their translations. Actually there is no big difference between professionals and
semi- professionals. If subjects have been provided with translation strategies
there is a greater chance that they will arrive at good solutions (Krings 1987).
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Arguments
One of the arguments has been raised against monologue protocols with
increasing cognitive load, that is, when the subjects are deep in thought “they
tend to stop verbalization or they provide less complete verbalizations”. In TAPs
this is reflected in pauses. On the other hand, subjects seem to stop verbalizing
when they have to do little thinking, i.e. with decreasing cognitive load. This is the
case when they perform routine tasks. Since problem solving often has become
routine for professional translators, protocols produced by them tend to contain
few verbalizations. They do not talk about translating , they just translate, even
without much pausing. If we think of cognitive load as a quantitative notion, it
seems that at either end of the scale (much verbalized thinking and little
verbalizable thinking) there is no access to the translation process.
Conclusion
Dialogue protocols may provide a way out of this dilemma. Thought may be
brought to light by the questions subjects ask, by explanation, by arguing for or
against solutions, by criticizing and defending solutions etc., in short by the very
nature of a normal communicative situation. And “TAPs as methods of empirical
research into translation process proper have proved to be a bold step in the right
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direction and the results gained were often unexpected and sometimes
surprising” (Kussmaul, 1995).
Kiraly (1995) discusses about the distinction between thinking aloud and talk
aloud. Think aloud should ideally represent subjects’ unmonitored verbalization
of their thoughts, while talk aloud suggests the subjects verbalize something
about their cognitive activities, whether simultaneously or introspect. The use of
introspective data for the investigation of mental processes has been roundly
criticized by a few language researchers, notably Nisbett and Wilson (1977) and
Seliger (1983).Nisbett and Wilson argued that conscious awareness is limited to
the products of mental processes and cannot reflect the processes themselves.
According to extensive research review by Ericsson and Simon (1984), subjects do
given the right conditions, have access to considerable data about their own
mental processes.
Translation processes of professional translators have been investigated by
Krings (1987) and Lorscher (forthcoming). Their common observations, some of
which are corroborated by the studies conducted in Finland, are that the units of
translation are larger among professionals than among foreign language students.
This is in line with the professionals’ global way of handling problems, i.e. their
observance of larger sections of a text, whereas the language – learners solve
problems in “linear” way and are concerned with problems of local kind.
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Furthermore, professionals take a mainly “sense-oriented” approach rather
than the “form-oriented” approach preferred by learners. The professional
translators mainly, though not exclusively, check their production with regard to
stylistic and text-type adequacy. It, therefore, seems that the processes observed
in professional translators are very much in line with the strategies recommended
by many teachers in translator training institutions.
THINK ALOUD PROTOCOL IN TRANSLATOR TRAINING
Contents
1. Aims & purposes of think aloud protocol
Introduction
Purposes
TAPs
Monologue & Dialogue protocol
2. Methodological problem with TAPs
Professionals & semi-professionals
Arguments & solutions
3. Conclusion
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References
Kiraly,Donald.(1995) Pathway to Translation.Pedogogy and Process. Kent, ohio:
Kent University Press.
Kussmaul, Paul (1995) Training translators. John Benjamin B.V.
Kussmaul, Paul. &Condit, Sonja Trikkonen.(1995) Think aloud protocol in
translation Studies . Retrieved from http://www.erudit.org/037201ar
Krings, Hans p. (1987) The use of introspective data in translation. Retrieved from
http://www.citeseerx.ist.psu.edu
House, juliane. (1988). Talking to oneself or thinking with others.Fremdsprachen L
Lehren und lernen, FLUL 1988