Translating in the zone

Abstract This study investigates how positive emotions and flow interact to influence translators’ cognitive processing patterns. Thirty-two translators completed two Chinese–English translation tasks following positive or neutral emotional priming, with their eye movements recorded throughout. While positive emotional priming did not significantly elevate overall flow scores, it correlated with key flow dimensions, including action-awareness merging and autotelic experience. Crucially, positive emotions and flow demonstrated synergistic effects on cognitive processing: their interaction enhanced processing efficiency, reduced cognitive effort, and tended to promote a more balanced attention distribution between source and target texts. The analyses further suggested a preliminary broaden-and-build effect, manifested in increasingly balanced attention allocation and enhanced parallel processing across tasks. By delineating how positive emotions and flow jointly shape translators’ behavioral and cognitive responses, this study refines process-oriented accounts of emotion and flow in translation and informs the design of workflows and training that more effectively support translators’ working states.