Methodological questions about translation research

Abstract

Research on the mental processes of written translation has benefited less from the findings of psycholinguistic and cognitive research than interpreting research has. This has left translation research relatively impoverished in the theoretical grounding of research methodology. While the performance speed of interpreting seems to make interpreting research closer to bilingual speech research, the shared features of interpreting and translation suggest that they are points on a continuum rather than discrete production modes. A Translation-Interpreting Continuum is proposed, which allows various production modes to be described in terms of psycholinguistic notions, and which includes a language development dimension to account for second language production. The Continuum allows some very basic questions about translation research methodology to be answered, and opens up the opportunity for a better integration of translation and interpreting research.