PHD, Kent State University, 0, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

Translation Process Research (TPR) has long explored the cognitive processes underlying translation and what might cause translation difficulty. In recent years, several studies have greatly contributed to measuring and understanding cognitive effort in translation (Alves, 2003; Carl, 2009; Dragsted & Carl, 2013; Sun & Shreve, 2014; Lacruz et al., 2016; Sun, 2019; Vieira, 2014). However, most research assumes uniform motivation among translators and post-editors in expending cognitive effort, leaving a gap in understanding individual differences. This study examines whether the Need for Cognition (NFC) – defined as "an individual's tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavors"(Cacioppo et al., 1996) – has an impact on cognitive effort and translation errors and how NFC interacts with text difficulty to influence cognitive effort and translation errors. Borrowed from cognitive psychology, NFC has been widely studied across disciplines to predict behavior and cognitive engagement. Twenty-one participants completed the 18-item NFC scale (Cacioppo et al., 1984) and translated six informative texts of varying difficulty from English to Arabic using Translog-II. Cognitive effort was measured using eight variables: total production time (Dur), pause-to-word ratio (PWR), total number of fixations on the source segment (FixS), total number of fixations on the target segment (FixT), total reading time on the source segment (TrtS), and total reading time on the target segment (TrtT), in addition to total error count in a segment (TotErrCount). Robust linear mixed-effects regression models and Mann-Whitney U tests were used to analyze the data. Findings revealed that high NFC participants exhibited greater cognitive effort, particularly in challenging texts, as reflected by longer production times, more fixations, and higher engagement overall. Text difficulty amplified these effects, highlighting NFC's role i (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Isabel Lacruz Ph.D. (Advisor); Gregory Shreve Ph.D. (Committee Member); Loubna Bilali Ph.D. (Committee Member); Ryan Miller Ph.D. (Committee Member); Kenneth Bindas Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Foreign Language; Language; Linguistics; Psychological Tests; Psychology; Statistics

PHD, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

This dissertation investigates the cognitive processes and performance in human-ChatGPT interaction during machine translation post-editing (MTPE), with a focus on how student translators and expert translators interact with GPT-4 generated translations. The research examines how different post-editing guidelines (light vs. full post-editing) and search conditions (termbase vs. internet search) affect the translation process and quality. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative analysis of keystroke logging and eye-tracking data with qualitative assessment of translation quality through manual error annotation. The experimental design simulates a professional translation environment using SDL Trados Studio, involving 46 participants (30 student translators and 16 expert translators) post-editing English-to-Chinese translations generated by GPT-4. To ensure ecological validity, a new research tool, Trados-to-Translog-II, was implemented to integrate keystroke data collected within Trados and eye-tracking data with the CRITT Translation Process Research Database (TPR-DB). The findings reveal that syntactic complexity metrics significantly correlate with translation quality across GPT-4, student translators, and expert translators. GPT-4's output shows greater susceptibility to errors as syntactic complexity increases compared to human translators, with expert translators demonstrating the highest resilience to complex structures. The complexity of GPT-4 output has a more pronounced influence on student translators' performance compared to experts, highlighting the enduring value of expertise in handling difficult translation tasks. The study also finds that students' post-editing performance decreases when conducting tasks with internet search compared to working with a specific termbase. Analysis of students' post-editing interventions reveals significant variations across different tasks, suggesting the need for enhanced training i (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michael Carl (Advisor); Isabel Lacruz (Committee Member); Françoise Massardier-Kenney (Committee Member); Masaru Yamada (Committee Member); Ryan Miller (Other) Subjects: Linguistics

PHD, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

Scholars in Translation Studies (TS) have attempted to define and categorize different kinds of translation difficulty in various ways. In Translation Process Research (TPR), a subfield of TS, some researchers operationalize translation difficulty as the amount of cognitive effort one needs to expend during a translation task. They often adopt behavioral measures derived from cognitive psychology (e.g., gaze duration, fixation counts, etc. in eye-tracking) to evaluate cognitive effort, but new quantification methods, unique to TPR, have also been developed in recent years. However, while numerous types of translation difficulty have been proposed in TS, cognitive effort is generally considered to be a uniform entity no matter which measure is utilized in TPR. This exploratory study attempts to refine the discourse on translation difficulty from a cognitive point of view. It first discusses some terminology issues regarding translation difficulty, and provides a more systematic view by operationalizing it as amount of cognitive effort expended. Then, associations of sixteen characteristics (five from the source text, five from the target text, and six from the translator) with nine measures of cognitive effort are statistically examined in the context of English-Japanese translation. For each of the forty-eight significant associations observed, possible explanations are explored as to why a certain characteristic is associated with a given measure of cognitive effort in a particular way. Finally, the differences among different measures are discussed. For English-Japanese translation, this study suggests that the product-based measures developed in TPR, which are calculated from different target texts produced from a single source text, may better serve as a predictor of cognitive effort, rather than a measure of cognitive effort.

Committee: Isabel Lacruz (Advisor) Subjects: Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, East Asian Languages and Literatures

This study researches the emerging CFL paradigm changes in America (1870s-2017), investigates the concepts of knowledge transmission in the East and West, and makes implications for teacher training at the college-level. Drawing theoretical concepts on paradigm and paradigm shift by Thomas Kuhn, the author argues the Grammar Translation Paradigm, the Army and Audiolingual Paradigm, and the Proficiency Paradigm treat the learning process of Chinese as being the same as many common European languages. However, the Performed Culture Paradigm has rationally absorbed advantages and discarded disadvantaged components of the previous paradigms, treated Chinese as a non-cognate language to English and addressed learning Chinese from the perspective of culture. The Confucius Institute Paradigm uses Chinese language instruction as a brand for promoting Chinese achievement and informational culture, and thus is not an agent for rigorously training Chinese language skills. As two ways of thinking about knowledge that can complement each other, the discussions on knowledge transmission from cognitive science and The Analects of Confucius reveal that learning is not directly transferred by instruction but a natural response of brain to changes in signaling produced by experience. The examination of emerging CFL paradigm and the view of knowledge transfer from both Western cognitive scientific as well as Eastern philosophical traditions give rise to a revised design of teacher training for CFL that takes advantage of both the micro level techniques and macrolevel theories. Suggestions are made for current and new CFL practitioners to recognize where they are and what routes are possible for developing their Chinese language programs.

Committee: Galal Walker (Advisor); Mari Noda (Committee Member); Xiaobin Jian (Committee Member) Subjects: Pedagogy

MA, Kent State University, 2014, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Anthropology

The translation industry currently has several technological options available that have the ability to reshape the translation process. These new technologies are computer-assisted translation, machine translation, and crowdsourced translation. These three technologies are contested by translators who must decide if the technology can be harmful or helpful to the translation process. Ultimately, the translator must accept or reject the technology for his or her personal use, thereby driving the future success or failure of each technology. Using methods and theories from several schools of thought on the anthropology of technology, this thesis seeks to understand how each of the three technologies has entered into the translation process by examining its historical developments and current use. It examines the cognitive models that translators create to test and judge new technologies. This thesis proposes two potential models to explain the behaviors of translators who chose to either accept or reject new technologies.

Committee: Richard Feinberg Dr. (Advisor); Marilyn Norconk Dr. (Committee Member); Gregory Shreve Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Linguistics; Technology

PHD, Kent State University, 2014, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

Drawing on empirical research methods and design from cognitive psychology and translation studies, this dissertation focuses on cognitive effort during the translation process when translation memory is used. More specifically, two questions are addressed by means of an experimental study. The first question is whether the use of translation memory affects the cognitive effort of the translator during the process of translating segmented texts compared to translation without the use of a TM. The second research question addressed in this study is whether translators perceive translation memory proposals as useful to the translation task. Both of these questions are experimentally investigated in an attempt to illuminate the effects resulting from the use of translation memory. This study first provides an overview of translation technology, and outlines key concepts, such as translation memory, post-editing, working memory, and cognitive effort. These concepts are explored within the context of professional translation and the existing literature is reviewed. Next, a novel, Web-based data collection method is proposed to elicit translation process data from Spanish-to-English translators with four to seven years of professional experience. Following this description, the results are presented in light of the two overarching research questions. Moreover, the results are examined in light of Angelone's (2010) notion of triadic metacognitive bundles, consisting of problem recognition, solution proposal, and solution evaluation behaviors. The dissertation concludes by suggesting implications for translation pedagogy, research design, and translation tool design. Finally, the economics ramifications are highlighted, and potential avenues for future research are proposed.

Committee: Keiran Dunne (Advisor); Gregory Shreve (Committee Member); Erik Angelone (Committee Member); Jonathan Maletic (Committee Member); William Merriman (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language; Language; Linguistics

PHD, Kent State University, 2012, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

Accurate assessment of a text's level of translation difficulty is critical for translator training and accreditation, translation research, and the language industry as well. Traditionally, people rely on their general impression to gauge a text's translation difficulty level. If the evaluation process is to be more effective and the results more objective, an instrument needs to be developed. In order to develop an instrument to measure translation difficulty, two basic research questions must be answered: what to measure and how to measure it. The potential sources of translation difficulty include translation factors (i.e., text difficulty and translation-specific difficulty [i.e., translation problems in a task]) and translator factors (i.e., translation subcompetences). Accordingly, to measure translation difficulty, we need to measure text difficulty, recognize translation-specific difficulty, and assess translation difficulty (i.e., mental workload) for the translator. NASA Task Load Index (TLX), a multidimensional scale for measuring subjective workload, can be used to assess translation difficulty for the translator, and it was proved to be reliable in this study. Performance measures are often used to derive an index of difficulty, and two commonly used indicators are speed (i.e., time-on-task) and accuracy. In this study, it was shown that time spent on a translation was significantly, but weakly, related to translation difficulty level as measured by NASA-TLX. The translation difficulty level self-assessed by high scorers was not consistently lower or higher than that by low scorers, and this indicates that accuracy (i.e., translation quality score in this case) may not be a reliable indicator of difficulty level. Readability formulas are for measuring text difficulty, and are based on such measurable factors as average sentence length and percentage of difficult words. It was hypothesized that they might be able to measure translation difficulty. T (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gregory M. Shreve PhD (Committee Chair); Carol Maier PhD (Committee Member); Erik B. Angelone PhD (Committee Member); Jocelyn R. Folk PhD (Committee Member); Andrew Barnes PhD (Other) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Composition; Education; Educational Software; English As A Second Language; Experiments; Foreign Language; Language; Linguistics; Modern Language; Pedagogy; Teaching