Göpferich, Susanne, Jakobsen, Arnt Lykke and Mees, Inger M., eds. (2008): Looking at Eyes: Eye-Tracking Studies of Reading and Translation Processing. Copenhagen Studies in Language 36. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur Press, 208 p.

The first five chapters of the volume address key issues relating to the coordination of cognitive effort when reading for translation. Dragsted and Hansen (p. 9-29) use a combination of eye-tracking and keystroke logging to document patterns in the way translators coordinate comprehension and production activity, focusing on the way they segment the translation into processing units as they do so. Their findings challenge the commonly-held notion that such segmenting is primarily linear, with either exclusive source text comprehension or target text production behavior, bracketed by pauses, constituting a cognitive segment. Indeed, based on patterns of saccade sequences and gaze fixation distributions, the majority of translation segments analyzed in the study suggest that comprehension and production activity co-occur and overlap within a segment. Moreover, the authors found that coordination of comprehension and production occurs across segments. The authors propose that pauses, rather than demarcating translation segments, instead signal peaks of coordination effort. Sharmin, Špakov et al. (p. 31-51) explore how eye movements within and between the source text and target text are impacted by two paramount variables, time pressure and text complexity. Gaze plots and heat maps were used to document where translators fixed their gaze on the screen (fixation count) and for how long (fixation duration). As time pressure increased, fixation durations decreased on the source text, yet practically remained the same on the target text. This suggests a tendency for translators to adapt and “speed up” reading comprehension processes to accommodate more restrictive time constraints, while being less willing to modify production processes such as source text monitoring. The authors draw a parallel between their findings and those of earlier translation and reading studies indicating greater flexibility in processing behavior when reading a source text (another’s text) and greater rigidity when reading a target text (one’s own translation). Sjørup (p. 53-77) uses eye-tracking to assess cognitive effort in the reading of metaphorical vs. non-metaphorical language. The assumption is that when a metaphor is encountered during translation, it will need to be decoded into its context-appropriate conceptual meaning and then transferred via several possible strategies into the target language. This multi-stage process, coupled with the need for contextual scanning, should require greater cognitive effort and consequently more processing time than what is needed for non-metaphorical language translation. In her comparison of gaze durations within the two conditions, Sjørup obtained empirical evidence that metaphors do in fact take longer for the translator to read than non-metaphorical text. However, as is so often the case in process research, she encountered a significant variation in gaze duration times from one metaphor to the next. The variation was attributed to a number of confounding variables to be addressed in future studies. In Chapter 4, O’Brien (p. 79-102) presents the results of an eye-tracking study examining the cognitive processing of fuzzy matches in a translation memory system. She found, as one might predict, that as fuzzy match values decreased processing speed (as an indicator of cognitive effort) also decreased. However, pupillometric data and survey-based translator observations suggest that cognitive effort is not necessarily in strict linear correlation with fuzzy match value. A steady increase in pupil dilation, correlating with increasing cognitive effort, is found down to the 60% fuzzy match value, followed by an unexpected decrease in pupil dilation for fuzzy matches under 60%, suggesting a cognitive effort fall-off. Both processing speed and pupil dilation data seem to indicate a plateau effect, perhaps signaling the translator’s tendency to start from scratch rather than invest continued cognitive effort into resolving a proposed fuzzy match whose value is below 60%. An interesting result of the study …