Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona Universidad de Vigo Universidad del País Vasco 2013 Ten years of PETRA Expertise & Environment in Translation Pericia y Entorno de la Traducción

o Cognitive science is the optimal framework to develop translatological theories focused on mental processes. o Empirical research is the touchstone for any translatological endeavor. Founded in 2000, PETRA is a loose group of like- minded researchers sharing two basic assumptions: We decided we needed a first phase to gain direct insights on both TPR and extant theoretical frameworks.

This first phase turned out to span a whole decade! We mistrusted introspection as a way to access mental processes and were happy to adopt Translog. We also realized we needed to get closer to cognitive psychology. We set out to study different translation subtasks within a unified perspective, such as: o reading & comprehension o information search & retrieval o problem solving o drafting o creativity o self-correction o evaluation

With no funding, we focused on problem solving, time pressure, and memory while we studied translatological functionalism and existing cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches to translation and interpreting based on the information-processing paradigm. We recruited young researchers mainly from the PhD program “Translation & Interpreting Processes” of the University of Granada. Through the years, we welcomed distinguished guests such as Gyde Hansen, Zoltán Kövecses, Paul Kussmaul, Amparo Hurtado, Greg Shreve and Hanna Risku.

1.Christine Lachat, on problem-solving 2.Bart de Rooze, on time pressure in the translation process 3.Celia Martín de León, on the flaws of functionalism The first important results in our journey came out in 2003, in the form of three PhD dissertations:

By then we had already adopted situated cognition as our main referential framework. We had also concluded that we needed to gather data that Translog could not collect and started to combine it with another keylogger, KGBSpy. We were intrigued by the interface between bilinguals and professional translators, and started studying the notion of Natural Translation.

o explore how to profile test subjects. We started using several WAIS3 subtests to check subjects’ working memory and processing speed. Our comparative trials of bilinguals and translation trainees led us to o focus on translation quality and evaluation. Maribel Gómez finished her dissertation on translation behavior and results in advanced trainees and bilinguals.

Mª Jesús Blasco finished her dissertation on listening comprehension in trainee interpreters. And we started to apply some of what we have learned so far in class, using (socio-)constructivist approaches. We also expanded our theoretical base with embodied cognition

We focused more on what professionalism entails and enlarged data collection with text analyses. María Castro carried out a pilot study in Copenhagen comparing different kinds of reading with eyetracking. We further expanded our theoretical base with extended and distributed cognition.

Then we moved the group headquarters and welcomed new members.

We thought we finally had a clearer picture of what a cognitive translatology should look like and started looking for appropriate parameters and ways to study them. Tomás Conde finished his dissertation on the behavior and results of different types of translation assessors and evaluators.

We are now working on o mental load o implicit beliefs o text mining o improving & standardizing research methods

Jorge Amigo started his research on the proceduralization of culture in empirical research José I. Perea finished his dissertation on computer- assisted revision Petra Klimant started her research on mental load in translation Shao Hui Liang started her research on implicit beliefs in novice trainees

We feel we are now nearly ready to start our second phase We are currently working on a project on text profiling We aim to combine text mining with non-invasive data collection of translation processes We’ll keep you posted!

Expertise & Environment in Translation Pericia y Entorno de la Traducción J. Jorge Amigo Extremera Alicia K. Bolaños Medina María Castro Arce J. Tomás Conde Ruano Susana Cruces Colado Petra Klimant Álvaro Marín García Celia Martín de León Ricardo Muñoz Martín José I. Perea Sardón Marisa Presas Corbella