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

In all of these experiments, the subjects were foreign language learners,
rather than students of translation, which has received a fair amount of
criticism, because their findings can hardly account for professional
translators’ performance. However, they have laid the methodological basis for
subsequent TAP studies and have provided important information about
translating by foreign language learners, which can be used for comparisons
between non-professional, semi-professional (translation students) and
professional translation, a design feature that can be seen in the studies by
Königs 1987, Kussmaul 1998 and Jonasson 1998 (Jääskeläinen 1999).
4. 2. FURTHER STUDIES: DIFFERENT AIMS AND HYPOTHESIS
Following these pioneers, a number of other translation researchers have
since used TAP to elicit data for their studies. These studies have different
settings and involve different subject populations (translation students,
professional translators, teacher of translation, laypersons, bilingual, a
combination of these categories); different language pairs (depending partly
on where the research has been carried out); different types of task and
experimental conditions (translating a written text orally, producing a written
translation, translating alone, in pairs or in small groups; translating with o
without access to reference material, limited or unlimited available time);
different text-types (political satire, newspaper editorials, tourist brochures,
government documents) and translation briefs (faithful translation, cultural
adaptation, shortening or popularizing the ST, rewriting procedures); different
categories of analysis (identification of translation problems and problem-
solving strategies, focus on conscious attention, role of affective factors on
translation).
“TAP studies on translating could also be conceptualized in terms of their
general purposes and the specificity of their hypothesis” (Jääskeläinen 1999:
44). On this basis, they could be divided into first- and second-generation
studies; the first group would include those with a relatively general aim of
discovering what happens in translation (Krings and Lörscher) or what
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