Cognitive Translation Studies (CTS)

One of the directions of research under the aegis of CIM is revisiting interlingual translation from the perspective of cognitive translation studies. This area of research has developed alongside the emergence of translation process research in continental Europe in the mid-1980s. The two territories, i.e., psycholinguistics of translation and translation process research, though not identical, are often intertwined and overlapping in our research. According to Holmes’ (1972/2000) “founding statement”, process-oriented descriptive translation studies concerns the process or act of translation which takes place in the “little black box” of the translator’s mind. Holmes hoped that this problem would be systematically investigated under laboratory conditions using psycholinguistic approaches.

Research projects on CTS are directed by Dr Binghan Zheng and using research methods such as think-aloud protocols, key-logging, eye-tracking, event-related potentials (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Dr Zheng’s current research team include 6 scholarship awarded PhD researchers working on different aspects of CTS: Rachel Yu Weng on “Translation and Time Pressure”, Scarlett Yixiao Cui on “Translation and Consultation”, Bella Kuang on “Note-taking in Consecutive Interpreting”, Faustino Dardi on “Processing Linguistic Metaphors in English-Italian Translation”, Dariga Baktygereyeva on “Cognitive load in sight translation, simultaneous interpreting and simultaneous interpreting with text”, and Mingqing Xie on “Predictive processing in simultaneous interpreting”.

Dr Zheng’s recent edited book Empirical Studies of Translation and Interpreting: The Post-Structuralist Approach, is forthcoming in May 2021 published by Routledge.