Testing Applicability of Eye‐tracking and fMRI to Translation and Interpreting Studies: An Investigation into Directionality

The Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll and Stewart, 1994) in the fields of bilingualism and second language acquisition has argued that the task of translating/interpreting ‘single words’ into the second language is more cognitively demanding than into the first language. Past empirical studies focused mostly on the behavioral aspect of professional translators and interpreters or highly proficient bilinguals. However, there is a scarcity of neurological and physiological evidence to support the above suggestion, and the population of novice translators and interpreters has long been neglected as potential research subjects. This study aims to explore if the predictions suggested by the Revised Hierarchical Model are valid at a textual level and can be extended to a textual level by collecting physiological and neurological measures accompanying the cognitive loading caused by different translation/interpretation directions on the part of novice translators and interpreters. In order to collect such measures as data on the cognitive loading, methods of eye‐tracking and fMRI are employed; by doing so, the study also aims to test the applicability of the two methods specifically to the field of Translation and Interpreting Studies. This is an area of importance as the findings can help us understand novice translators’ physiological reactions and novice interpreters’ brain activation patterns. With this in mind, it may in future be possible to design more effective educational or training regimens to help novices improve their translating or interpreting skills. The potential findings may also be useful, if combined with software development in future research, to develop software to stimulate brain activities to help acquire a skill, e.g. translation or interpreting. This aims to lay the foundation for possible future development. Regarding the structure of this doctorial thesis, Chapter One presents the background to the study. Chapter Two surveys related literature related to the research aims and questions in the study. Chapter Three describes the methodology adopted for the two eye‐tracking experiments reported in the research program. Chapter Four details the first eye‐tracking experiment with the language combination of Mandarin (A) and English (B). Chapter Five reports the second eye‐tracking experiment with the language combination of Spanish (A) and English (B). Chapter Six describes an exploratory fMRI study with the language combination of Mandarin (A) and English (B). Chapter Seven presents a discussion regarding the entire doctorial study, limitations and recommended future work.補正完