Sight-Translation Strategies and Quality. Part 2. The Impact of Directionality

Aim. The aim of this second part of the psycholinguistic research in the language pair Slovak-English is to determine the influence of directionality on the generation of the target text (TT) and its delivery by comparing the sight translation (SiT) of student interpreters from their native language (NL) into a foreign language (FL) and vice versa. Procedure. The participants, seven Slovak university graduates, sight-translated a non-specialised 272-word text from FL (English) into NL (Slovak). Their TTs were then compared with the TTs of the same students in the first series of the study where they translated a non-specialised 250-word text from NL (Slovak) into FL (English). The comparison was based on the following parameters: the rate of TT delivery, the degree of retention of ST information in the TT (based on the comparative proportions of omissions and major errors), the quality of TT delivery (as measured by the relative percentage of unmotivated pauses), and the respective ratio of surface-oriented (SurfOS) and sense-oriented (SensOS) translation strategies in the two directions of SiT. Results. Delivery in the FL–NL SiT was 1.5 times faster than in the NL–FL direction. The FL–NL SiT is characterised by a better retention of ST information. The proportion of omissions in the FL–NL SiT is 1.7 times lower and the number of major errors 7 times lower than in the NL–FL direction, which allows for a higher lexical accuracy of the TT in the FL–NL SiT. In the FL–NL direction, the correlation between the surface-oriented (SurfOS) and the sense-oriented (SensOS) translation strategies is more flexible and less dependent on the ST structure. For the same reason, the quality of TT delivery in the FL–NL direction is better, which is reflected in fewer long hesitations and TT repairs. Conclusion. Directionality is a factor influencing SiT efficiency. The conclusion about the dominance of the SurfOS strategy in FL–NL SiT should not be taken literally. SiT is not a mechanical substitution of target language equivalents for ST words, but a process of intensive intellectual activity related to ST processing and TT synthesis.