House, J. (2000). Consciousness and the strategic use of aids in translation.

House, J. (2000). Consciousness and the strategic use of aids in translation. Benjamins translation library, 37, 149-162.
Introduction
1. the translator's mind has in the past fifteen years become increasingly an object not so much of speculative theoretical concern but of empirical inquiry focussing on "what goes on in translators' minds when they are translating" (Krings 1986)
2. This paper discusses the role of consciousness in translation process research and provides the background for a small empirical study using thinking-aloud techniques to investigate language learners' use of translational aids dictionaries, grammars etc.).
3. The sample were exposed to two treatments: one where there were translational aids available and one where there were not. Both thinking-aloud and retrospective data were elicited from the subjects.
4. The study analysed and compared the thinking-aloud protocols, the retrospective interviews and the translations produced under the two treatments with the availability versus non-availability of translational aids
Consciousness and Translation Process Research
1. Today, inquiries into the process of translation are conducted with the express purpose of improving our understanding of how a translation is made
2. In using the term "process of translation", we must however keep in mind that we are dealing here not with an isolable process but rather with a set of processes, a complex series of problem-solving and decision-making processes conditioned by semantic, pragmatic, situation-specific and culture-specific constraints operating on two 'levels' - that of the source and that of the target language.
3. The assumption behind all investigations into the processes of translation is that the translator has at least partial control over what she is (mentally) doing, and that the mental activities involved in a translation are at least partially or potentially accessible, i.e., open to conscious inspection by the translating subject, and can be verbalized accordingly.
4. Empirical investigations into the nature and structure of the processes of translation have further greatly benefited from the "re-discovery" of the method of introspection in the field of psychology...
5. In strategy research as in translation process research, however, the basic problem of the validity of the introspective method cannot be regarded as solved,
6. Thinking-aloud data research started with Sandrock's (1982) pioneering study,followed by the simultaneous but separate attempts on the parts of several researchers(cf. the contributions in House and Blum-Kulka 1986; Faerch and Kasper 1987 and see Tirkkonen-Condit 1991
7. The initial interest in investigating translation processes was in fact pedagogical (cf. the majority of the early studies included in House and Blum-Kulka 1986 and in Faerch and Kasper 1987).
8. The study to be reported on in this paper belongs to this more recent pedagogically motivated line of studies that spring from an interest in improving the quality of translations, through research which links alleged procedures or strategies with products
9. The study is an intensely practical one as it deals with the practice of using dictionaries and other translational aids in the process of translating by language learners.
Design of the Study
1. In the first experiment, ten students who attended one of my applied linguistics seminars in the winter term of 1995/96, volunteered to take part in the study. They were all very advanced students of English, French and German and applied linguistics in their fourth or fifth year of study. (MA programme or a programme leading to a teacher certification).
2. The subjects were asked to translate from German into English or French a text from a German weekly Die Zeit on the general topic of foreigners and refugees in present day Germany
3. Subjects were given a 30-minute time span to translate and to "think aloud".
4. They were given an introduction by the author about the technique of thinking aloud.
5. The resultant verbalizations were audio-taped and transcribed.
6. The experimenter was not present during the thinking-aloud sessions.
7. Monolingual and bilingual dictionaries and an English grammar (Greenbaum and Quirk's A Student's Grammar of the English Language) were put at the students' disposal.
8. Immediately following the translation sessions, subjects were asked to retrospect upon the session while being confronted with the audio-recording.
9. the same subjects were now asked to engage in another translation-cum-think-aloud session, continuing in their translation of the same text (second and third paragraph, see Appendix). This time, however, no reference works of any kind were made available to them.
Conclusion and Prospects for Future Research
1. The talk generated appeared to me often slightly "un-natural" and forced - due mostly to the frequent pausing and a number of non-sequitur translational choices, i.e., those that were not verbalized at all or where something completely different from the choice eventually realized was verbalized.
2. This finding confirms one of the results of my earlier study (House 1988) comparing monologic and dialogic think-aloud tasks, in which it turned out that the introspective data produced by pairs of subjects were generally less artificial, richer in translational strategies and often much more interesting.
3. It is advisable in think-aloud experiments to seriously consider giving preference to dialogic think-aloud tasks, in which pairs of subjects might engage in more "natural", less strained and less pressured introspective exercise that resemble "real life" activities much more than the laboratory-type individual thinking-aloud practices.
4. For the teaching of translation, especially in the context of foreign language learning, one might in future consider more seriously teaching translation in and as interaction (House 1986 and forthcoming) giving preference to collaborative translation work over the still overwhelmingly popular practice of asking students to translate in splendid isolation.
5. It may be useful to deliberately expose language learners and translation students to the two conditions - use versus non-use of translational aids. This treatment may be beneficial for making students reach a heightened awareness of their own strategic potential in translating as well as force them to recognize the real limits of their linguistic-cultural knowledge and translational competence.
6. Students should be made aware of the rich and rewarding possibilities of using dictionaries for testing hypotheses of various kinds that go far beyond using these aids as mere crutches for quick and superficial checking.
Ahmad Al-Khatib (2018) Ph.D. Fellow The Institute for Applied Linguistics Kent State University