Consultation behaviour with online resources in English-Chinese translation: an eye-tracking, screen-recording and retrospective study

Abstract

This paper investigates the interaction between translators’ perceived translation problems and their online consultation behaviours, and how different consultation behaviours affect translation acceptability. Previous studies indicate that online consultation includes various types of complex information-searching behaviours which, to a great extent, depend on the personal preferences of the web users. In this study, 38 MA translation students translated two 100-word texts from English (L2) into Chinese (L1) using Translog II, with their translations and consultation processes being registered by a Tobii TX300 eye-tracker. The main findings are as follows: (1) an increase in perceived translation difficulty leads to an increase in both the time spent on online consultation and the complexity of the consultation, but does not lead to an increase in the cognitive load expended on consultation; (2) general translation problems, which involve more resource types and longer search times, require more consultation time than specific translation problems; (3) two sub-types of consultation behaviour, information-seeking and information relevance evaluation, are purpose-driven and (4) longer consultation time results in higher acceptability of individual translation solutions, while higher consultation complexity does not.