En busca de la palabra exacta. Observación del proceso traslativo

Abstract

The purpose of this observational study is to describe the problem-solving strategies employed by a group of Spanish students in order to resolve lexical problems that arise from the translation of a text from their mother tongue into German. It is a qualitative study motivated by previous research on translation processes using introspective and retrospective methods in order to describe the cognitive processes involved in translation and, especially, to represent and verbalize problem-solving strategies, which are evidenced to be crucial for learning how to translate into a foreign language. The experimental design is based on a combination of different data-eliciting techniques in order to overcome the intrinsic limitations of each of them. Concurrent data are collected by means of group think-aloud protocols (TAP) and the ongoing translation process is registered using the analysis tool Translog, as well as video recording. These empirical data are completed by retrospective data concerning the experimental task.