The impact of process protocol self-analysis on errors in the translation product

Abstract

This paper presents the initial results of an exploratory study examining the efficacy of Integrated Problem and Decision Reporting (IPDR) logs, recorded verbalizations, and screen recordings when used by translation students as revision tools for purposes of recognizing problems and mitigating errors in their translations. Students were given the task of creating one of these three process protocol types in conjunction with nine translations. They were then asked to self-reflect on their problem-solving performance while paying particularly close attention to a series of concrete problem indicator types found in the respective protocols during a post-task retrospective session. The students had the chance to make any desired revisions to their translations as a result of analyses before submitting a final version. The revised versions were marked up for punctuation, spelling, lexical, syntactic, stylistic, and mistranslation errors. The frequency of errors for each of these types was calculated for each student in conjunction with the process protocol utilized. The total number of errors in conjunction with each process protocol type used, regardless of textual level, was also calculated. Screen recording consistently proved to be the most efficacious process protocol type in mitigating errors. This paper concludes by positing several possible explanations for the greater success rate of screen recording as a revision tool and calls for screen recording to be implemented as a core component of a process-oriented translator training curriculum.