TRICKLET
Translation Research in Corpora, Keystroke Logging and Eye Tracking
funded by DFG - German Research Foundation
Project start: 1 March 2014
Project duration: March 2014 – June 2018 (Phase 1), October 2018 - March 2023 (Phase 2)
Project code: 241433372
Project Description
Corpus studies have provided evidence for typical properties of translated texts. However, they do not allow claims about causes for these properties during the translation process. Using a novel combination of experimental and corpus-based methods, this project seeks a deepened understanding of the cognitive processing during translating of certain features which have been identified as displaying translation properties. The methodological combination of keystroke logging and eye-tracking established in experimental translation studies will be brought closer in line with mainstream psycholinguistic methods. To this end, three experiments with additional control over confounding factors by manipulating segments in the source text will be carried out, thus striking a new balance between ecological validity as required by translation studies and control over confounding factors ensuring reliable and valid claims. Observations will be linked to linguistic insight by deriving the manipulated features from theoretically informed concepts. The experimental data will be annotated corpus-linguistically thus facilitating a rich linguistic analysis and will be examined with respect to correlations between cognitive demand and changed complexity in the translation product, concentrating on three different forms of complexity. At the same time, classical product-based insight from translation corpora will be included in the interpretation. The research follows a strictly quantitative approach in order to yield stochastic generalisations. The project will not only provide new insight into the role of cognitive effort during translating but also narrow the methodological gap between experimental and corpus-based translation research by transforming the experimental data into a database which can then be queried as a corpus and subsequently providing causal explanations for corpus-based observations. The resulting detailed understanding of causes for specific properties of translated texts in the translation process will be conducive to the empirical modelling of translation. In a later second phase of the project this can then be elaborated towards an empirical theory of translation superseding existing impressionistic models.
See also: English Linguistics Research Lab.
Team
Visiting fellows:
Student assistants:
Celina Brost, B.A.
Former colleagues:
Dr. Daniel Couto-Vale
Dr. Arndt Heilmann
Alina Liebenberg, B.A.
Dr. Paula Niemietz
Bianca Schüller, M.A.
Research
Conference
TRICKLET Conference 2022: “Model building in empirical translation studies”, 19-20 May 2022, Aachen, Germany. Keynote Speakers: Fabio Alves (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), Michael Carl (Kent State University), Sandra Halverson (Universitetet i Agder), Haidee Kotze (Utrecht University), Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski (Universität des Saarlandes), Marie-Aude Lefer (UCLouvain), Moritz Schaeffer (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz), Gert de Sutter (Ghent University)
Workshops
25. Februar 2021. "Model building in empirical translation studies". Speakers (by session): Erich Steiner, Stella Neumann, Haidee Kotze & Sandra Halverson; Gert de Sutter, Silvia Hansen-Schirra & Moritz Schaeffer, Fabio Alves, Andrea Wurm; Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, Mario Bisiada. Chairs (by session): Marie-Aude Lefer; Tatiana Serbina / Zoë Miljanovic; Arndt Heilmann; Jonas Freiwald. Schedule and Book of Abstracts.
7. Februar 2020. Guests: Prof. Dr. Svenja Kranich, (Bonn), Prof. Dr. Fabio Alves (Belo Horizonte), Gaby Axer (Bonn), Veronika Pankova (Bonn), Elena Pleshakova (Bonn)
14. Februar 2019. Guests: Prof. Dr. Marie-Aude Lefer (Brüssel/Louvain-La Neuve), Dr. Andrea Wurm (Saarbrücken)
8. März 2018. Guest: Prof. Dr. Gert De Sutter (Gent)
7. Juli 2017. Guest: Prof. Dr. Fabio Alves (Belo Horizonte)
7. Mai 2014. Guests: Prof. Dr. Fabio Alves (Belo Horizonte), Daniel Couto-Vale (Bremen)
Publications
Heilmann, Arndt. accepted. ‘The influence of experiential aspects of meaning on the translation process’. In Empirical Evidences and Theoretical Assumptions in Functional Linguistics, edited by Elissa Asp and Michelle Aldridge. London: Routledge.
Neumann, Stella, Elma Kerz, and Arndt Heilmann. accepted. ‘Comparing contact effects in translation and second language learning’. Constraints on language variation and change in complex multilingual contact settings, edited by Haidee Kotze and Bertus van Rooy. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Niemietz, Paula, and Stella Neumann. accepted. ‘On the Process of Choosing in Translational Logogenesis’. In Empirical Evidences and Theoretical Assumptions in Functional Linguistics, edited by Elissa Asp and Michelle Aldridge, 81–97. Routledge.
Heilmann, Arndt, Jonas Freiwald, Stella Neumann, and Zoë Miljanović. 2022. ‘Analyzing the Effects of Entrenched Grammatical Constructions on Translation’. Translation, Cognition & Behavior, June. https://doi.org/10.1075/tcb.00062.hei.
Heilmann, Arndt, Tatiana Serbina, Jonas Freiwald, and Stella Neumann. 2022. ‘Grammatical Metaphor in Translation. A Corpus-Based Investigation of Nominal of-Constructions’. In Extending the Scope of Corpus-Based Translation Studies, edited by Sylviane Granger and Marie-Aude Lefer, 158–81. London: Bloomsbury.
Neumann, Stella, Jonas Freiwald, and Arndt Heilmann. 2022. ‘On the Use of Multiple Methods in Empirical Translation Studies: A Combined Corpus and Experimental Analysis of Subject Identifiability in English and German’. In Extending the Scope of Corpus-Based Translation Studies, edited by Sylviane Granger and Marie-Aude Lefer, 98–129. London: Bloomsbury.
Serbina, Tatiana, and Stella Neumann. 2022. ‘Translation Product and Process Data: A Happy Marriage or Worlds Apart?’ In Contesting Epistemologies in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies, edited by Sandra L. Halverson and Álvaro Marín García, 131–52. London: Routledge.
Heilmann, Arndt, and Carme Llorca-Bofí. 2021. ‘Analyzing the Effects of Lexical Cognates on Translation Properties: A Multivariate Product and Process Based Approach’. In Explorations in Empirical Translation Process Research, edited by Michael Carl, 203–29. Machine Translation: Technologies and Applications. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69777-8_8.
Heilmann, Arndt, Tatiana Serbina, Jonas Freiwald, and Stella Neumann. 2021. ‘Animacy and Agentivity of Subject Themes in English-German Translation’. Lingua, Dynamicity and Contrast in Systemic Functional Linguistics, 261 (October): 102813. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102813.
Neumann, Stella. 2021. ‘Register and Translation’. In Systemic Functional Linguistics and Translation Studies, edited by Mira Kim, Jeremy Munday, Eddie Wang, and Pin Wang, 65–81. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Serbina, Tatiana, Mario Bisiada, and Stella Neumann. 2021. ‘Linguistic Profiles of Translation Manuscripts and Edited Translations’. In Proceedings for the First Workshop on Modelling Translation: Translatology in the Digital Age, 34–45. online: Association for Computational Linguistics. https://aclanthology.org/2021.motra-1.4.
Freiwald, Jonas, Arndt Heilmann, Tatiana Serbina, and Stella Neumann. 2020. ‘Automatization in Translation Behavior: Evidence from a Translation Experiment for the Language Pair German-English’. In New Empirical Perspectives on Translation and Interpreting, edited by Bart Defrancq, Lore Vandevoorde, and Joke Daems. London: Routledge.
Neumann, Stella. 2020a. ‘Is German More Nominal than English? Evidence from a Translation Corpus’. In New Approaches to Contrastive Linguistics, edited by Renata Enghels, Marlies Jansegers, and Bart Defrancq. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Neumann, Stella. 2020b. ‘Translation: Enriching Our Understanding of Language Use’. Online lecture presented at the Abralin ao Vivo 2020, July. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZdgCZrL0Rs.
Neumann, Stella, and Tatiana Serbina. 2020. ‘Translation, Corpus Linguistics and Cognition’. In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Cognition, edited by Fabio Alves and Arnt Lykke Jakobsen, 188–203. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315178127.
Heilmann, Arndt, Tatiana Serbina, Daniel Couto Vale, and Stella Neumann. 2019. ‘Shorter than a Text, Longer than a Sentence: Source Text Length for Ecologically Valid Translation Experiments’. Target 31 (1): 98–124. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.17122.hei.
Kerz, Elma, Arndt Heilmann, and Stella Neumann. 2019. ‘L2 Processing Advantages of Multiword Sequences: Evidence from Eye-Tracking’. In Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Multiword Expressions and WordNet (MWE-WN 2019), 60–69. Florence, Italy: Association for Computational Linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W19-5108.
Heilmann, Arndt, Tatiana Serbina, and Stella Neumann. 2018. ‘Processing of Grammatical Metaphor’. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 1 (2): 195–220. https://doi.org/10.1075/tcb.00009.hei.
Hützen, Nicole, and Tatiana Serbina. 2018. ‘Lexical Chains and Topic Continuity in the Register of Popular Scientific Writing’. Pragmatics and Society 9 (1): 8–25. https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.16025.hut.
Couto-Vale, Daniel. 2017a. ‘Text Production and Produced Texts’. In Challenging Boundaries in Linguistics: Systemic Functional Perspectives, edited by Stella Neumann, Rebekah Wegener, Jennifer Fest, Paula Niemietz, and Nicole Hützen, 20:359–79. Aachen British and American Studies. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag.
Couto-Vale, Daniel. 2017b. ‘What Does A Translator Do When Not Writing?’ In Empirical Modelling of Translation and Interpreting, edited by Silvia Hansen-Schirra, Oliver Czulo, and Sascha Hofmann, 209–37. Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing 7. Berlin: Language Science Press. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.1090970.
Evert, Stefan, and Stella Neumann. 2017. ‘The Impact of Translation Direction on Characteristics of Translated Texts. A Multivariate Analysis for English and German’. In Empirical Translation Studies. New Theoretical and Methodological Traditions, edited by Gert De Sutter, Marie-Aude Lefer, and Isabelle Delaere, 47–80. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Lothmann, Timo, and Tatiana Serbina. 2017. ‘On the Overlap of Grammatical Metaphor and Conceptual Metaphor in Political Discourse: A Reconciliatory Approach’. In Challenging Boundaries in Linguistics: Systemic Functional Perspectives, edited by Stella Neumann, Rebekah Wegener, Jennifer Fest, Paula Niemietz, and Nicole Hützen, 223–38. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Niemietz, Paula, Stella Neumann, and Jonas Freiwald. 2017. ‘Shifts in Theme and Subject Realization in English-German Translation’. In Challenging Boundaries in Linguistics: Systemic Functional Perspectives, edited by Stella Neumann, Rebekah Wegener, Jennifer Fest, Paula Niemietz, and Nicole Hützen, 331–57. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang Verlag.
Serbina, Tatiana, Sven Hintzen, Paula Niemietz, and Stella Neumann. 2017. ‘Changes of Word Class during Translation - Insights from a Combined Analysis of Corpus, Keystroke Logging and Eye-Tracking Data’. In Empirical Modelling of Translation and Interpreting, edited by Silvia Hansen-Schirra, Oliver Czulo, and Sascha Hofmann, 177–208. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Bangalore, Srinivas, Bergljot Behrens, Michael Carl, Maheshwar Ghankot, Arndt Heilmann, Jean Nitzke, Moritz Schaeffer, and Annegret Sturm. 2016. ‘Syntactic Variance and Priming Effects in Translation’. In New Directions in Empirical Translation Process Research, 211–38. New Frontiers in Translation Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20358-4_10.
Couto-Vale, Daniel, and Adjan Hansen-Ampah. 2016. ‘The Meaning of Hashtags Matters: Detecting Hashtags Such as #JeSuisKouachi’. In CILC2016. 8th International Conference on Corpus Linguistics, edited by Antonio Moreno Ortiz and Chantal Pérez-Hernández, 1:45–57. EPiC Series in Language and Linguistics. EasyChair.
Couto-Vale, Daniel, Stella Neumann, and Paula Niemietz. 2016. ‘Automatic Recognition of Linguistic Replacements in Text Series Generated from Keystroke Logs’. In Proceedings of the 10th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, 3617–23. Paris, France: European Language Resources Association (ELRA). http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2016/pdf/551_Paper.pdf.
Heilmann, Arndt, and Stella Neumann. 2016. ‘Dynamic Pause Assessment of Keystroke Logged Data for the Detection of Complexity in Translation and Monolingual Text Production’. In Coling 2016 Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Linguistic Complexity, 98–103. Osaka. https://aclweb.org/anthology/W/W16/W16-4111.pdf.
Serbina, Tatiana, Paula Niemietz, Matthias Fricke, Philipp Meisen, and Stella Neumann. 2015. ‘Part of Speech Annotation of Intermediate Versions in the Keystroke Logged Translation Corpus’. In Proceedings of The 9th Linguistic Annotation Workshop Held in Conjunction with NAACL 2015, 102–11. Denver, Colorado, USA: Association for Computational Linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W15-1611.
Serbina, Tatiana, Paula Niemietz, and Stella Neumann. 2015. ‘Development of a Keystroke Logged Translation Corpus’. In New Directions in Corpus-Based Translation Studies, edited by Claudio Fantinuoli and Federico Zanettin, 11–34. Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing. Berlin: Language Science Press. http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/76.
Serbina, Tatiana. 2013. ‘Construction Shifts in Translations: A Corpus-Based Study’. Constructions and Frames 5 (2): 168–91. https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.5.2.03ser.
Theses
PhD Theses
Miljanović, Zoë. In progress. ‘A Corpus-Based Study of Literary Translation for the Language Pair English-German’ (working title)
Freiwald, Jonas. 2022. ‘What Is Theme and How to Translate It’. PhD dissertation, Aachen: RWTH Aachen University.
Heilmann, Arndt. 2021. ‘Profiling Effects of Syntactic Complexity in Translation: A Multi-Method Approach’. PhD dissertation, Aachen: RWTH Aachen University. https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/816135/files/816135.pdf.
Serbina, Tatiana. 2015. ‘A Construction Grammar Approach to the Analysis of Translation Shifts: A Corpus-Based Study’. PhD dissertation, Aachen: Publikationsserver der RWTH Aachen University. https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/538325.
Master Theses
Kühnen, Claudia. 2021. "Literalness of Translations across the Registers of the CroCo Corpus". Master thesis, RWTH Aachen University.
Miljanović, Zoë. 2020. "An Investigation of Translators' Personal Style in Translation Research Experiments." Master thesis, RWTH Aachen University.
Freiwald, Jonas. 2016. "You say Theme, I say Thema: A corpus-based approach to theme in English and German from an SFL Perspective." Staatsarbeit, RWTH Aachen University.
Hahn, Anja. 2016. “Investigating Tendencies of Register Groupings in Translation from Dutch.” Staatsarbeit. RWTH Aachen University.
Heilmann, Arndt. 2015. "Syntactic Variation in Translation." Master thesis, RWTH Aachen University.
Lorenz, Rebecca. 2014. "A Construction Grammar Approach to the Translation of English Idioms and Idiomatic Expressions into German". Master thesis, RWTH Aachen University.
Bachelor Theses
Brost, Celina. 2021. “Experiencing circumstance - A contrastive analysis of circumstances in English and German”. Bachelor thesis, RWTH Aachen University.
Schulte-Geers, Laura. 2016. "An Exploration of Methods for the Assessment of Metalinguistic Awareness Using Data from a Translation Production Experiment". Bachelor thesis, RWTH Aachen University.
Cernova, Nina. 2015. "Shifts in translating cohesive devices". Bachelor thesis, RWTH Aachen University.
Reimann, Laura. 2015. "Translation shifts in postmodified noun phrases in the language pair English-German: A com-bined analysis of corpus and experimental data". Bachelor thesis, RWTH Aachen University.
Höfert, Annika. 2015. "Sentence Splitting in Translations". Bachelor thesis, RWTH Aachen University.
Hintzen, S. 2014. "Translation Process and Product: Analysis of translation shifts in the English and German lan-guage". Bachelor thesis, RWTH Aachen University.
Posters
Freiwald, Jonas: You say theme, I say thema, LINC, August 2016, Cardiff, United Kingdom.
Heilmann, Arndt: Functional Choices in Translation, LINC, August 2016, Cardiff, United Kingdom.
Couto-Vale, Daniel and Arndt Heilmann. Scalable ecologically valid translation experiment design.TRA&CO Symposium, April 2016 Germersheim, Germany.
Presentations and Conference Talks
Freiwald, Jonas, Zoë Miljanović, Stella Neumann and Arndt Heilmann. “The Effects of Entrenchment on Translation.” Translation in Transition 6, 22-23 September 2022, Prague, Czech Republic.
Miljanović, Zoë. “Translators’ Metalinguistic Awareness in Retrospective Interviews.” 10th EST Congress: Advancing Translation Studies, 22-25 June 2022, Oslo, Norway.
Freiwald, Jonas, Zoë Miljanović, and Stella Neumann. “Editorial Intervention in Translation: An Experimental Approach.” 10th EST Congress: Advancing Translation Studies, 22-25 June 2022, Oslo, Norway.
Neumann, Stella, Elma Kerz and Arndt Heilmann: "Translationese or Transfer: Comparing Interference Effects in Translation and Second Language Learning". 20th International Congress of Linguists, 2-6 July 2018, Cape Town, South Africa.
Heilmann, Arndt and Stella Neumann: "Intermediate versions in the translation of popular scientific texts". 39th Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society, 3-6 July 2018, Hong Kong, China.
Neumann, Stella, Stefan Evert and Geert de Sutter: "Register-specific interference in translation". 39th Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society, 10 -13 September 2017, Saarbrücken, Germany.
Neumann, Stella: "Is German more nominal than English? Evidence from a translation corpus". 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, 10 -13 September 2017, Zurich, Switzerland.
Serbina, Tatiana, Arndt Heilmann and Stella Neumann."Splitting of coordinated sentences in translations from English to German". Translation [and Interpreting] in Transition 3, 13-14 July 2017, Ghent, Belgium.
Heilmann, Arndt, Jonas Freiwald, Tatiana Serbina, and Stella Neumann. "Translation of inanimate themes in popular scientific texts", Translation [and Interpreting] in Transition 3, 13-14 July 2017, Ghent, Belgium.
Neumann, Stella, and Paula Niemietz. "On the process of choosing in translational logogenesis", 27th European Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference, 29 June - 1 July 2017, Salamanca, Spain.
Freiwald, Jonas. "The myth of the marked Theme in English", 27th European Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference, 29 June - 1 July 2017, Salamanca, Spain.
Heilmann, Arndt. "The influence of experimental aspects of meaning on the translation process", 27th European Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference, 29 June - 1 July 2017, Salamanca, Spain.
Arndt Heilmann, and Tatiana Serbina. Translation of Grammatical Metaphor. Evidence from Keystroke-Logging and Eyetracking,Talk at 8th EST-Congress, 15-17 September 2016, Aarhus, Denmark.
Neumann, Stella. Issues in translation. Course held at the LinC Workshop, August 2016, Cardiff, UK.
Niemietz, Paula, and Stella Neumann. Lexico-grammatical modification and its triggers during keystroke logged logogenesis in translation. Talk at the 26th European Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference, 13-15 July 2016, Salzburg, Austria.
Stella Neumann: Processing the Process. Using Corpus Techniques for Translation Process Data, Invited talk at TRA&CO, 27-29 April 2016, Germersheim, Germany.
Heilmann, Arndt. Cognitive Processing of Grammatical Metaphor. Talk at the Linguistischer Arbeitskreis (RWTH), 28 September 2015, Aachen, Germany.
Niemietz, Paula, Arndt Heilmann, Tatiana Serbina und Stella Neumann. What role does grammatical complexity play in cognitive processing? A multivariate approach. Talk at 2nd International Conference on Eyetracking and Applied Linguistics (ICEAL), 21-22 September 2015, Warschau, Polen.
Neumann, Stella, and Gert De Sutter. Multilingual analysis of translation corpora. Issues in comparing linguistic features and tag sets. Invited talk at Department 4.6 Applied Linguistics, Translation and Interpreting, Saarland University, 21 September 2015.
Heilmann, Arndt and Tatiana Serbina. Translation of grammatical metaphor. Talk at the colloquium Logogenesis: Chosen semantic features in text unfolding and choosing semantic features in text production. 42nd International Systemic Functional Congress (ISFC), 27-31 July 2015, Aachen, Deutschland.
Jonas Freiwald, Stella Neumann and Paula Niemietz: Translation shifts in Theme ‐ Subject conflation. Talk at the colloquium Translation. 42nd International Systemic Functional Congress (ISFC), 27.-31. Juli 2015, Aachen, Deutschland.
Neumann, Stella. Übersetzungseigenschaften 2.0. Aspekte eines empirischen Übersetzungsmodells. Invited talk at Heidelberg University, 21 May 2015.
Neumann, Stella. 2015. Towards an empirical model of translation. Ongoing research strands and open questions. Invited talk at Department 4.6 Applied Linguistics, Translation and Interpreting, Saarland University, 18 May 2015.
Heilmann, Arndt und Tatiana Serbina. Grammatical complexity and its effect on cognitive processing in translation. Talk at International Conference on Eyetracking and Applied Linguistics (ICEAL), 26.-27. September 2014, Warschau, Polen.
Neumann, Stella. Beyond Translation Properties. The Contribution of Corpus Studies to Empirical Translation Theory. Keynote lecture presented at the 4th Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies Conference (UCCTS), 24.-26. Juli 2014, Lancaster University, UK.
Serbina, Tatiana. Sentence splitting in the translation pair English-German. Talk at the 4th Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies Conference (UCCTS), 24.-26. Juli 2014, Lancaster University, UK.
Niemietz, Paula, Stella Neumann, and Jonas Freiwald. Theme and word order variation in English-German translations. Talk at the 25th European Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference, 10.-12. Juli 2014 Université Paris Diderot, Frankreich.