Translation meets cognitive science: The imprint of translation on cognitive processing

Multilingua ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Rojo
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Translation Research ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Combined Work ◽  
Additional Role

AbstractTranslation has long played a role in linguistic and literary studies research. More recently, the theoretical and methodological concerns of process research have given translation an additional role in cognitive science. The interest in the cognitive aspects of translation has led scholars to turn to disciplines such as cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics or even neurology in search of innovative approaches and research methods. This paper reviews current issues in translation studies, and a variety of empirical studies that may contribute to enlarging our knowledge of translation. The intention is to show that the combined work of disciplines from cognitive science may be influential, not only in defining the factors that underpin the translation process and the translator’s work, but also in describing the potential impact that translation research has on communication and language processing.

scholarly journals Translation Studies and Corpus Linguistics: Introducing the Pannonia Corpus

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
Edina Robin ◽  
Andrea Götz ◽  
Éva Pataky ◽  
Henriette Szegh
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Translation Research ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Seminal Paper ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Current State

AbstractThe tools of corpus linguistics have become indispensable for research in descriptive translation studies (DTS), which aims to describe the characteristics of the translation process, and translational texts. Machinereadable corpora of translated texts are crucially important since they can yield statistically significant results that underpin the findings of empirical studies. Baker’s (1993) seminal paper gave new impetus to translation research as it has re-calibrated the goals of DTS to study and uncover the particular properties of the so-called “third code” (Frawley 1984), i.e. the language of translated texts, with the help of computerized corpora. The present study, after providing a brief overview of international and Hungarian corpus linguistic research, introduces the Pannonia Corpus Project developed by Eötvös Loránd University’sTranslation Studies Doctoral Programme, which was created to make a Hungarian translation corpus, containing millions of words, available for translation researchers. The Pannonia Corpus (PC) is a multi-modal corpus: it contains translated, interpreted, and audiovisual texts. It represents a diverse array of texts of specialized and literary genres, reflecting modern language use and the current state of the translation industry. The PC provides researchers with a vital opportunity as its multimodality, diverse textual make-up, and substantial size are unparalleled in the Hungarian context. Until now, there were no large corpora available to researchers that could have facilitated qualitative as well as quantitative research, satisfying the demands of modern translation studies research in Hungary.

A dynamic network model of translatorial cognition and action

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 151-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Risku ◽  
Florian Windhager ◽  
Matthias Apfelthaler
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Dynamic Network ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Dynamic Network Model ◽  
Individual Cognition ◽  
Process Perspective ◽  
Static Versus Dynamic ◽  
Research Endeavor

As an interdisciplinary research endeavor into the foundations of human and artificial intelligence, cognitive science has substantial contributions to offer to the field of translation studies. Like any other explanatory approach to socially embedded and organized behavior, cognitive science deals with hard-to-resolve dichotomies such as static versus dynamic approaches, lab- or field-based methods or the opposing views of individual and social explanations. To introduce current theoretical developments from cognitive science, we offer a conceptual framework that conceives these apparent dichotomies as complementary perspectives and helps us to cope with the nested and embedded nature of translatorial cognition and action. For this purpose, we specify a dynamic network analytical model which treats acts of individual cognition and (inter)action as being constitutively interwoven with their social, symbolic and material environments and combine all its elements into a coherent dynamic process perspective. In our outlook, we discuss this extended model’s potential to structure the ongoing theoretical debate on translation process research, as well as its ability to serve as a scaffold for defining and contextualizing empirical studies and thus guiding research into the complex dynamics of translation as a situated activity.

Awareness in metaphor understanding

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Stöver
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Theoretical Investigation ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Metaphor Comprehension ◽  
Reflective Reasoning ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
The Difference

This paper argues that a cognitive account of metaphor comprehension needs to include awareness of metaphoricity in order to fully explain the processes involved. In Relevance Theory as well as in other cognitively oriented approaches, much can be gained by making explicit the difference between conscious and subconscious processing: whether a communicator is aware of an expression’s metaphoricity or not may have an impact on the type of cognitive processing involved. A theoretical investigation is offered which explores the potential role of reflective reasoning in metaphor understanding. The discussion is based on the relevance-theoretic account, which explains the subconscious inferential processes involved. However, it leaves open the question of the potential impact of conscious availability of the tension between literal and figurative meaning, which is reminiscent of domain mappings in Cognitive Linguistics. Within metaphor research, a focus on awareness offers valuable findings for cognitively oriented schools of thought.

Cognitive Processing of Miscommunication in Interactive Listening: An Evaluation of Listener Indecision and Cognitive Effort

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Roche ◽  
Arkady Zgonnikov ◽  
Laura M. Morett
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Mouse Tracking ◽  
Computer Mouse ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Computer Mouse Tracking ◽  
Listening Task ◽  
Processing Effort

Purpose The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the social and cognitive underpinnings of miscommunication during an interactive listening task. Method An eye and computer mouse–tracking visual-world paradigm was used to investigate how a listener's cognitive effort (local and global) and decision-making processes were affected by a speaker's use of ambiguity that led to a miscommunication. Results Experiments 1 and 2 found that an environmental cue that made a miscommunication more or less salient impacted listener language processing effort (eye-tracking). Experiment 2 also indicated that listeners may develop different processing heuristics dependent upon the speaker's use of ambiguity that led to a miscommunication, exerting a significant impact on cognition and decision making. We also found that perspective-taking effort and decision-making complexity metrics (computer mouse tracking) predict language processing effort, indicating that instances of miscommunication produced cognitive consequences of indecision, thinking, and cognitive pull. Conclusion Together, these results indicate that listeners behave both reciprocally and adaptively when miscommunications occur, but the way they respond is largely dependent upon the type of ambiguity and how often it is produced by the speaker.

The Opposition of Surprisal and Semantic Similarity in the Prediction of Language Processing: Evidence from Eye-tracking Data

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kun Sun
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Semantic Similarity ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Reading Time ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Tracking Data ◽  
Dynamic Approach

Expectations or predictions about upcoming content play an important role during language comprehension and processing. One important aspect of recent studies of language comprehension and processing concerns the estimation of the upcoming words in a sentence or discourse. Many studies have used eye-tracking data to explore computational and cognitive models for contextual word predictions and word processing. Eye-tracking data has previously been widely explored with a view to investigating the factors that influence word prediction. However, these studies are problematic on several levels, including the stimuli, corpora, statistical tools they applied. Although various computational models have been proposed for simulating contextual word predictions, past studies usually preferred to use a single computational model. The disadvantage of this is that it often cannot give an adequate account of cognitive processing in language comprehension. To avoid these problems, this study draws upon a massive natural and coherent discourse as stimuli in collecting the data on reading time. This study trains two state-of-art computational models (surprisal and semantic (dis)similarity from word vectors by linear discriminative learning (LDL)), measuring knowledge of both the syntagmatic and paradigmatic structure of language. We develop a `dynamic approach' to compute semantic (dis)similarity. It is the first time that these two computational models have been merged. Models are evaluated using advanced statistical methods. Meanwhile, in order to test the efficiency of our approach, one recently developed cosine method of computing semantic (dis)similarity based on word vectors data adopted is used to compare with our `dynamic' approach. The two computational and fixed-effect statistical models can be used to cross-verify the findings, thus ensuring that the result is reliable. All results support that surprisal and semantic similarity are opposed in the prediction of the reading time of words although both can make good predictions. Additionally, our `dynamic' approach performs better than the popular cosine method. The findings of this study are therefore of significance with regard to acquiring a better understanding how humans process words in a real-world context and how they make predictions in language cognition and processing.

Agricultural Trade and Ultra-Poor in Pakistan: An Application of CGE Model

2021 ◽  
pp. 097639962110106
Author(s):  
Saud Ahmad ◽  
Muhammad Aamir Khan ◽  
Usman Mustafa
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Real Income ◽  
Agricultural Trade ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Trade Policies ◽  
Agriculture Sector ◽  
Lower Extent ◽  
Potential Impact

In the modern integrated world, the synthesis of countries for trade is often viewed as a crucial source of income and growth disparities across nations. Well-known channels of economic theory can trace the growth effects of trade. However, there is a substantial conflict among empirical studies regarding gains from agricultural trade. Therefore, this study examines the economy-wide impact of agriculture trade liberalization/protection on agriculture production, agriculture trade, income redistribution and public welfare. An extension of the GTAP model known as MyGTAP is employed and the world economy is disaggregated into 20 regions and 11 sectors with Pakistan as a home country. Further, results explore greater gains from an increased level of liberalization towards the agriculture sector in terms of agriculture production, real factors’ wage, terms of trade and household welfare. Rural households enjoy relatively higher real income and income inequality declines in Pakistan in the case of liberalization and protection. However, comparatively protectionism reduces inequality by the lower extent, and said study also points out that neither change in real gross domestic product nor public welfare turns out to be a good indicator of assessing potential impact of trade policies on income inequality.

A Survey on Document-level Neural Machine Translation

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Sameen Maruf ◽  
Fahimeh Saleh ◽  
Gholamreza Haffari
Keyword(s):  
Machine Translation ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Current State ◽  
Evaluation Strategies ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Document Level

Machine translation (MT) is an important task in natural language processing (NLP), as it automates the translation process and reduces the reliance on human translators. With the resurgence of neural networks, the translation quality surpasses that of the translations obtained using statistical techniques for most language-pairs. Up until a few years ago, almost all of the neural translation models translated sentences independently , without incorporating the wider document-context and inter-dependencies among the sentences. The aim of this survey article is to highlight the major works that have been undertaken in the space of document-level machine translation after the neural revolution, so researchers can recognize the current state and future directions of this field. We provide an organization of the literature based on novelties in modelling and architectures as well as training and decoding strategies. In addition, we cover evaluation strategies that have been introduced to account for the improvements in document MT, including automatic metrics and discourse-targeted test sets. We conclude by presenting possible avenues for future exploration in this research field.

Simple and complex cognitive modelling in oblique translation strategies in a corpus of English

Target ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Sandra Peña-Cervel ◽  
Carla Ovejas-Ramírez
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Cognitive Modelling ◽  
English Drama ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Cognitive Operations ◽  
Translation Techniques ◽  
Peninsular Spanish

Abstract This article provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the translation of English drama film titles into Peninsular Spanish, drawing on cognitive modelling and following preliminary findings in Peña-Cervel (2016). Our study is consistent with the epistemological and ontological grounding of Cognitive Linguistics (Samaniego-Fernández 2007) and contributes to satisfying one of the major challenges Rojo-López and Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2013a, 10) identify for present-day Translation Studies: To reveal the conceptual substratum that guides the translation process. Our approach does not rely on an exhaustive classification of clear-cut and well-defined translation techniques, but rather on a broad distinction between direct and oblique strategies. We demonstrate how the notion of cognitive operation, as proposed by Ruiz de Mendoza-Ibáñez and Galera-Masegosa (2014), can help elucidate the sometimes seemingly arbitrary relationship between original English titles and their counterparts in Spanish, especially in cases of traditionally so-called free translations. Stands-for relations, such as expansion and reduction, are shown to play a fundamental role in the translation process and the fruitful combination of cognitive operations into conceptual complexes is explored. Our study attempts to go beyond descriptive adequacy in order to achieve explanatory adequacy.

Translator and translation research: general descriptions of concepts

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darian Jancowicz-Pitel
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Method ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Translation Research ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
The Third ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Translation Errors ◽  
Multiple Languages

The presented paper aimed for exploring the translation process, a translator or interpreter needs equipment or tools so that the objectives of a translation can be achieved. If an interpreter needs a pencil, paper, headphones, and a mic, then an interpreter needs even more tools. The tools required include conventional and modern tools. Meanwhile, the approach needed in research on translation is qualitative and quantitative, depending on the research objectives. If you want to find a correlation between a translator's translation experience with the quality or type of translation errors, a quantitative method is needed. Also, this method is very appropriate to be used in research in the scope of teaching translation, for example from the student's point of view, their level of intelligence regarding the quality or translation errors. While the next method is used if the research contains translation errors, procedures, etc., it is more appropriate to use qualitative methods. Seeing this fact, these part-time translators can switch to the third type of translator, namely free translators. This is because there is an awareness that they can live by translation. These translators set up their translation efforts that involve multiple languages.

scholarly journals Vital Energy and Afterlife: Implications for Cognitive Science of Religion

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (61) ◽  
pp. 145-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maira Monteiro Roazzi ◽  
Carl N. Johnson ◽  
Melanie Nyhof ◽  
Silvia Helena Koller ◽  
Antonio Roazzi
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
Science Of Religion ◽  
Culture And Development ◽  
Supernatural Agency ◽  
Intuitive Theory

Literature investigating people’s concepts of supernatural agency (such as ghosts and deities) points to an intuitive theory of mind underlying such ideas, however, recent studies suggest that intuitive ideas over vital energy could also be involved. The present paper focuses on examining the culture and development of people’s conceptions on vital energy. A search was made using the keyword vital energy targeting literature from Anthropology, Psychology and Cognitive Science. A literature review over this topic was made yielding reflections over the development of vital energy concepts. Results suggest that an intuitive biology, grounded on ideas of biological energy (vital energy), may underlie an understanding of soul, spirit, and supernatural energy. Future empirical studies should target the development of vital energy intuitive theories with different age ranges and cultures.

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