Work

Awareness of Linguistic Ambiguity and Translator Training

Year: 2021

Type: article

Abstract: As a first step toward understanding the relationship between conscious awareness of linguistic knowledge and translation performance, this study investigated whether enhancement of trainee translators’ awareness of linguistic ambiguity helped them increase their awareness of ambiguity in translation and whether the effects were correlated with the participants’ language proficiency. Forty-six first-year undergraduate students from a translation program received a multiple-choice pretest, a 20-minute awareness-raising lecture focusing on linguistic ambiguity immediately after the pretest, and the same multiple-choice posttest a week later. The results indicated that the participants detected more items with linguistic ambiguity in translation after their awareness of linguistic ambiguity had been increased. However, the participants also judged a higher number of unambiguous sentences as ambiguous in the posttest. Additionally, the increases or decreases in participants’ scores in the posttest were not correlated with their English proficiency. The findings could be accounted for by Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis. The implications for the curriculum design of translation programs as well as directions for future studies are discussed.

Source: SAGE Open

DOI: 10.1177/21582440211068467

Authors: Chin-Ting Liu, Yuan-shan Chen

Institution: National Chin-Yi University of Technology

Language: English

Topic: Translation Studies and Practices

Subfield: Language and Linguistics

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,200