How do students engage with parallel corpora in translation? A multiple case study approach

While emerging research has contributed significantly to our understanding of the efficacy of parallel corpora in translation education, specifically concerning student performance and perception, however, there remains a noticeable gap in the literature regarding the examination of student engagement with parallel corpora during the translation process. To address this research gap, the present study seeks to comprehensively analyse the behavioural, cognitive, and affective engagement of three MA students when utilizing parallel corpora in Chinese–English translation tasks. A multiple case study design was implemented, drawing upon a diverse range of data sources, including screencasts capturing students’ translation processes, the resultant translation outputs, corpus search logs, and in-depth interviews. The findings of this investigation reveal distinct engagement patterns exhibited by individual students and underscore the intricate interplay of these three dimensions of engagement. Furthermore, student engagement with the parallel corpus significantly influences their translation performance. This research also unveils various factors that impact student engagement patterns, including the perceived affordances of the parallel corpus, students’ self-perception, and learning motivation.

近年来, 平行语料库在翻译教学中的应用引发了学界广泛关注, 现有研究主要聚焦于学生的翻译表现及其对这种创新教学方法的评价。然而, 对于学生在实际翻译过程中如何与平行语料库互动这一关键问题, 研究仍显不足。为填补这一研究空白, 本研究深入分析三名硕士生在进行汉英翻译任务时使用平行语料库的行为、认知和情感投入。采用多案例研究设计, 本研究收集并分析了包括记录学生翻译过程的屏幕录像、最终译文、语料库检索日志以及深度访谈等多种数据。研究结果揭示三名学生呈现出不同的投入模式, 并凸显了行为、认知和情感这三个投入维度之间的复杂交互关系。更为重要的是, 研究发现学生与平行语料库的互动方式对其翻译质量产生显著影响。本研究还探索了影响学生投入模式的多重因素, 包括学生对平行语料库功能的认知、自我感知以及学习动机等。