An Investigation into Translation of Cultural Concepts by Beginner and Advanced Students Using Think-Aloud Protocols

Finding translation problems and strategies used by translators to solve those problems is a challenging task to accomplish. This research aims at answering the questions about translation problems and strategies used by translators when translating cultural concepts. The subjects were selected voluntarily (10 translation students) and divided into two groups, as advanced (n=5) and beginner (n=5) translators. The methodology used is think-aloud protocols (TAPs). The data is analyzed both descriptively and quantitatively. The translation problems and strategies used by two groups were categorized and compared. The results of the study show that the beginners are more dependent on smaller units and advanced translators pay more attention to larger units. This point influenced to select the strategies appropriate to translation problems. Beside of this, beginner translators took a mainly form-oriented approach to the translation task and advanced translators tried to employ sense-oriented procedures. The most frequent strategies used by advanced translators were placed into inferencing categories and the most frequent strategies utilized by beginners showed that they paid more attention to textual meaning of the text.

Keywords:

translation problem , translation strategy , TAPs