Thinking-for-translating of manner beyond the motion domain

Abstract Typological influences on translating manner-of-motion have been extensively examined, but few studies have analyzed whether the ‘thinking-for-translating’ hypothesis extends to other semantic domains and how factors like directionality and proficiency interact with typology. Using Stosic’s (2020) framework for multi-domain manner analysis, this study, which draws on the Parallel Corpus of Chinese EFL Learners, analyzes a bidirectional corpus of 8008 target texts translating twenty-four manner verbs and adjuncts between Chinese (equipollently-framed) and English (satellite-framed) by learners with varying English proficiency. The results reveal that: (1) Directionality affects manner transfer, with higher manner verb transfer in Chinese-to-English translation and higher manner adjunct transfer in English-to-Chinese translation; (2) English proficiency influences manner transfer, though with small effect sizes; (3) the effects of proficiency on manner transfer differ by translation directionality. These findings expand the ‘thinking-for-translating’ hypothesis to more semantic domains and offer implications for considering directionality and typology in translation training.