Broadening the scope of translation process research with ResearchLogger

Leipzig

Congreso; 10th Leipzig International Conference on Translation & Interpretation Studies Translation 4.0 ? Translation in the digital age; 2017

Universität Leipzig

The competencies needed to translateefficiently are acquired gradually along the academic path and are usuallysupported by the use of a wide range of tools and resources, such as onlinedictionaries, translation memories, corpus analysis tools, etc (PACTE, 2008).Moreover, cognitive and behavioral tasks are also a key component within ahighly complex process known as translation process. Many researchers on translationhave focused on product-oriented or process-oriented research in order to studyhow translators process the source text and produce the corresponding targettext. More recently, with the ease of access to new technologies and computingpower, process-oriented research has benefited from new methodologies thatrequire massive data collection and analysis. One of the widely used methods tostudy the translation process is keylogging, the action of recording keyboard andmouse activity in a computer through the use of keystroke logging software. Itmay also record keyboard event timestamps and periods of inactivity (pauses)during a translation session. The main advantage of using these tools is thatqualitative methods can be complemented with objective data analyzed quantitatively,adding robustness to translation studies. Keyloggers were developed in the90?s, and since then, several tools of the type have been created; however, themost used ones are InputLog (Leijten, 2005) and Translog (Carl, 2012). Bothprovide several functionalities to collect data including audio information(for think-aloud and verbal protocols) and to analyze data (e.g. plug-ins for MicrosoftWord or offline reconstruction of translations). In the case of Translog, italso allows the use of eye trackers. As regards their limitations, these mainlylie in the fact that both keyloggers can only be installed on a Windowsplatform. This often makes their use impossible in settings such as ours inwhich lab computers run Linux. It was this disadvantage that motivated thedevelopment of ResearchLogger (Lafuente, 2015), an adaptation of an existingkeylogger into a portable open-source software which logs detailed data (e.g.keystrokes and clicks) occurring in every open application window. Although it isstill under development, it has already proven useful in two different types ofstudies: controlled sessions and uncontrolled sessions. The former have arigorous experimental design for studying directionality in English-Spanishtranslations done by students of our School of Languages, and the latterconsist of logging students activity during technical translation exams inorder to explore which and how CAT tools and online resources are used. In thispaper, we will present these experiments and the preliminary results obtained.