Relatore: Professor Bruno OSIMO - Bruno Osimo, traduzioni ...

the starting point for a discussion about the use of the think-aloud method in
writing research.
2. “To discover and understand general patterns of behavior in the
interaction with documents or applications, in order to create a scientific basis
for designing them” (Krahmer and Ummelen 2004: 1). Carroll, for example,
used TAPs to investigate how learners interacted with new software. It has
been found that they were annoyed by the huge quantity of irrelevant
information contained in tutorial manuals. In fact, manuals appeared not to
satisfy the users’ goals and questions. TAPs analyses also showed how software
users learn to work with a new system; consequently, researchers were able to
develop a new design for software manuals: the minimal manual.
3. To test and revise functional documents and applications such as
manuals and websites. Researchers like Schriver and Nielsen used verbal
protocols (usability testing, pre-testing, formative testing) to gather users’
information to support the design of a specific product (Krahmer and
Ummelen 2004).
4. TAPs IN TRANSLATION STUDIES
The analysis of think-aloud protocols (TAPs) in translation studies began
in Europe in the late 1980s. Scholars felt the necessity to develop empirical
and inductive methods in order to complement the predominantly deductive
and often also normative models of the translation process presented until
then, which usually described what ideally happened or rather – with a
pedagogical aim – what should happen, in translating. It was researchers like
Krings, Königs and Lörscher in Germany, Dechert and Sandrock in Britain,
Jääskeläinen and Tirkkonen-Condit in Finland, who began to ask what
actually happens when people translate (Kussmaul and Tirkkonen-Condit).
This new trend can be partly explained by developments in the adjacent
disciplines: psychology had renewed its interest in the study of the mental
process (as opposed to patterns of external behavior) with the consequent
choice of appropriate or legitimate methods of research. This change had an
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