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

translating, students identified problems more clearly and recognized they
have a complex structure. Furthermore, evidence of strategic processing was
more easily identifiable than in think-aloud protocols.
As far as TAPs are concerned, advanced students were the best subjects,
as their training had provided them with the metalanguage to discuss
translation problems. This observation shows Matrat expects the subjects to
provide sophisticated analyses, i.e. to introspect rather than to think aloud,
which, in turn, reflects her interest in the emergence of metacognition.
“One of the most puzzling findings is that none of the protocols showed
evidence of decision-making strategies or decision criteria, whereas other TAP
studies contain plenty of verbalizations on decision-making” (Jääskeläinen
1999: 78). In fact, the subjects discussed problems, but were not able to decide
on a solution, then moved on and never came back to the problem (Matrat
1992). This may have been the result of time constraint or of the fact that the
text was incomplete.
In addition, the subjects’ interpretation of the purpose of the experiment
may also have played a role: in one example of joint translation, one of the
subjects said that the experimenters were interested in what subjects said and
not in how they translated. This comment is important in relation to the
methodological comparison: if the subjects felt that their ability to talk about
translating was being investigated, they might have been intimidated by the
demands of the task when translating alone, while it seems reasonable to
assume that tackling the task together (and with some previous experience
with the text) would be less face-threatening to the subjects.
In sum, it seems that Matrat’s investigation in not only trying to compare
the appropriateness of the two methods of data collection, but also to argue
for the appropriateness of Vygotsky’s theory on human consciousness in
relation with translation. This complicates the assessment of the validity of her
methodological comparison.
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