Degrees of Propositionality in Construals of Time Quantities1

The paper investigates the possible conceptual bases of differences between seemingly synonymous and easily definable temporal expressions. Looking at the usage patterns of nominal temporal phrases in reference corpora of English and Polish we attempt to relate these subtleties to the different granularity of the cognitive scales on which construals of time quantities in general are based. More specifically, we focus on a subset of nominal temporal expressions which adhere to the “number + time unit” pattern, matching what Haspelmath (1997: 26) describes as “culture-bound artificial time units”. Using the British National Corpus (BNC) and the National Corpus of Polish (NCP), we first analyse both the variation and the regularity found in naturally-occurring samples of Polish and English. Finally, we compare the patterns of use emerging from the two corpora and arrive at cross-linguistic generalisations about the conceptualisation of time quantities

Translatorische und außertranslatorische Automatizität: Eine integrative Darstellung

The paper examines empirically a subset of cognitive processes in trainee translators with the objective of gaining an insight into their decision-making. Specifically, we are interested in the nature and role of automated processing – above all, how pronounced it can be and how it influences the quality of decisions. The paper’s objective is then to come up with an integrative view of the relationship between translatorial automaticity and cognitive automaticity in general, viz. that not associated with translation. This could help us better capture some of the characteristics of translator behaviour and supplement our understanding of translation competence. Results from experiments with trainees reported in the paper show no correlation between the two dimensions of automated processing, and indicate that translatorial automaticity could be harder to override than its more general counterpart.Zweck dieser Abhandlung ist die empirische Untersuchung einer Teilmenge kognitiver Prozesse bei Übersetzern in der Ausbildung mit dem Ziel, einen Einblick in deren Entscheidungsfindung zu gewinnen. Dabei ist insbesondere die Art und Funktion der automatisierten Verarbeitung von Interesse – v. a. wie ausgeprägt diese sein kann und wie sie die Qualität von Entscheidungen beeinflusst. Ein weiteres Ziel der Abhandlung ist es, zu einer integrativen Sicht auf die Beziehung zwischen translatorischer Automatizität und kognitiver Automatizität allgemein, d. h. nicht im Zusammenhang mit Übersetzung, zu gelangen. Dies könnte zur besseren Erfassung bestimmter Merkmale des Übersetzerverhaltens beitragen und unser Verständnis der Übersetzungskompetenz verbessern. Die in der Abhandlung erläuterten Ergebnisse aus Experimenten mit Übersetzern in der Ausbildung weisen auf keinen Zusammenhang zwischen den beiden Dimensionen der automatisierten Verarbeitung hin und zeigen, dass sich die Ausschaltung der translatorischen Automatizität im Gegensatz zu der Ausschaltung ihres allgemeineren Gegenstücks als schwieriger erweisen könnte

Tracing Complex Translation Choices

A review of \u27Translating Picturebooks. Revoicing the Verbal, the Visual and the Aural for a Child Audience\u27 by Riitta Oittinen, Anne Ketola and Melissa Garavini

Tracing Complex Translation Choices

A review of \u27Translating Picturebooks. Revoicing the Verbal, the Visual and the Aural for a Child Audience\u27 by Riitta Oittinen, Anne Ketola and Melissa Garavini

Spelling errors in interlingual subtitles: do viewers really mind?

Our overarching objective is to see how unambiguous deficiencies in interlingual subtitles influence the viewing experience. To that end, we conducted a reception experiment in which participants viewed a foreign language film sample with subtitles which were manipulated across conditions for the number of spelling errors. We find that while viewers succeed in identifying spelling errors in subtitles, the presence of errors nonetheless generally has no effect on a range of viewer experience dimension like cognitive load, enjoyment, comprehension or transportation. What is more, while participants were able to make different subtitle authorship attributions (professional subtitler vs. amateur subtitler) depending on the presence of typos, deficient spelling did not shape the viewer’s perception of the subtitler in terms of their estimated amount of experience or their diligence. Critically, the findings also indicate that typos have no effect on translation quality assessment scores which remain high even when there are as many as 20 typos in subtitles for a 14-minute clip. This work therefore offers new insights into translation reception with consequences for the didactic and professional settings. By embedding spelling errors in a dynamic and multimodal context where processing is not self-paced, the study importantly expands our understanding of how spelling errors are received, which has implications beyond translation studies as well

Translation and Cognition: Cases of Asymmetry. An Editorial

This editorial outlines the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the current special issue, signalling some of the practical implications of the problems investigated. As the title of the collection highlights the convergence of “translation” and “cognition”, emphasis is here first placed on what “cognitive” can be taken to stand for in translationcentred research. I then discuss the other identifying idea of the issue - that of asymmetry - i.e. the observation that conceptual-semantic content is variably partitioned as it gets coded in different languages. Special attention is paid to cross-linguistic conventionalisation misalignment which requires sensitisation to translation scenarios where the symmetry of the source and target structures is only illusory

Processing Fluency and Decision-Making: The Role of Language Structure

This paper models conventionalisation of language structure as constitutive of processing fluency. I postulate that the difference in conventionalisation of linguistic forms used for communication significantly influences our reasoning about linguistically-expressed problems. Two studies are reported that tested this hypothesis with the use of variably conventionalised - fluent and disfluent - formulations of problem-solving tasks. Th e findings indicate that even in tasks requiring analytic reasoning, the degree to which the linguistic forms employed to communicate are conventionalised is correlated with the subjects’ performance success rate. On a more general level, this paper seeks to empirically address the nature of links between linguistic form and meaning construction

On the (im)precision in temporal magnitude representation: a corpus-based contrastive account

The paper examines the use of precision and approximation devices in a subset of English and Polish temporal expressions. Specifi cally, the corpus-based study reported here employs the Cognitive Linguistics analytic construct of “construal” to look into the variable degrees of precision and propositionality as it is coded linguistically in naturally-occurring data. We fi nd that approximation marking in the temporal magnitude representations under scrutiny is more pronounced than precision marking, and there are further conspicuous use asymmetries across languages (Polish vs. English), construal types (cumulative vs. fractional) and granularity levels (seconds/minute vs. minutes/hour)