Translation and Anxiety: A Study of Anxiety Effect on Translators’ Performance in Terms of Speed and Accuracy

Translation is a mental process needing sufficient concentration. Anxiety is mental too, but a mental disorder that makes mind busy and can lead to lack of concentration. Since translation requires concentration, the present study investigated the impact of anxiety on translation speed and accuracy. To this purpose, first a Michigan English Proficiency Test was given to one hundred M.A. students of translation to select the most proficient among them. Then, Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck 1993) was administered to forty participants who were at the same level of language proficiency in order to determine the extent of their anxiety. The selected participants were then asked to translate ten paragraphs about anxiety to estimate their translation accuracy and speed. The analysis of their performance showed that anxiety affects translation accuracy insignificantly, but there is a significant difference between translation speeds of translators with different levels of anxiety