translation studies thesis

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Translation Studies - Ph.D.

The Ph.D. degree in Translation Studies is a research-based program that provides advanced training in translation studies. The program focuses on translation research skills, specialized translation, computer-assisted terminology and translation, software localization and project management for the language industry. The program is designed to provide a comprehensive foundation for the development of key skills in humanistic translation and translation studies.

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Program Information

Full description.

The Ph.D. degree in Translation Studies is a research-based program that provides advanced training to support the investigation of translation- and interpreting-related phenomena. Program faculty have expertise in a wide-range of subjects and disciplines, including cognitive psychology; gender and sexuality studies; histories of translation; the language industry; machine translation, pedagogy of translation and interpreting' postcolonial approaches; translation quality assessment; and specializations of translation, from technical to legal to literary.

The doctoral program provides a comprehensive foundation in all aspects of translation studies, preparing students for careers in higher education, the language industry and government service — both in the United States and abroad. Funding opportunities are available on a competitive basis.

For more information about graduate admissions, visit the graduate admission website . For more information on international admissions, visit the international admission website .

Admission Requirements

Master's degree in translation, a foreign language or in any other relevant discipline with prior experience or training in translation
Minimum senior-year 2.750 undergraduate GPA and/or minimum 3.500 graduate GPA on a 4.000-point scale
Official transcript(s)
Proficiency in a foreign language
Goal statement
Essay or writing sample (7-10 pages) from a research paper on any aspect of translation (or a prospectus for a translation studies project)
Three letters of recommendation
Minimum 102 TOEFL iBT score
Minimum 7.5 IELTS score
Minimum 73 PTE score
Minimum 130 DET score

International applicants who do not meet the above test scores may be considered for conditional admission.

Application Deadlines

Priority deadline: January 1
Priority deadline: October 1

Applications submitted by these deadlines will receive the strongest consideration for admission .

Program Learning Outcomes

Graduates of this program will be able to:

Demonstrate broad knowledge across several areas in the field of translation studies, as well as in-depth knowledge in an area of expertise.
Demonstrate the ability to design and conduct original research.
Critically assess translation studies literature, as well as their own empirical and theoretical findings.
Communicate research findings effectively in written and spoken form.
Follow ethical guidelines for work in the field.

Program Requirements

Major requirements.

Students may elect to take doctoral courses from other departments as appropriate and with prior approval from the graduate coordinator and the student's advisor.

Each doctoral candidate, upon admission to candidacy, must register for TRST 80199 for a total of 30 credit hours. It is required that doctoral candidates continuously register for Dissertation I, and thereafter TRST 80299 , each semester, until all requirements for the degree have been met. After passing the written examination, students must present a detailed written proposal of their dissertation research. The dissertation focuses on original research. The dissertation topic must fall within one or more of the sub-fields in translation studies. The written dissertation is reviewed and approved by the research adviser and the dissertation advisory committee prior to scheduling a final defense before the committee.

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Thesis on Translation

Related Papers

Journal of Modern Languages

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The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the current curriculum for M.A. English translation in Iranian universities regarding the students’ perspectives to find its deficiencies and to propose some recommendations to make the curriculum compatible with students’ needs. The study was done based on a quantitative research design using a researcher-made questionnaire. The questionnaire was administrated to 341 M.A. and Ph.D. translation students in Iran. The data from the questionnaire were analyzed in descriptive statistics and an independent samples t-test. The results revealed that the current curriculum was moderately effective in providing the students with the necessary translation competencies. The results indicated some courses including Translation Workshop, and Theories of Translation were effective. Whereas, some courses such as Literary Criticism, and Philosophy of Education were not effective enough to improve students’ theoretical knowledge a...

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MA Translation Studies

Extended translation projects.

English Translation of a mini-anthology of texts from the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Sportmedizin on the shared topic of marathon running , David Twyman

Dissertations

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* Upgrading Film Subtitling to the Level of Literary Translation , Alexandra Palmer
Norms in the Chinese translations of Adam Smith's 'The Wealth of Nations' (1776) , Lung Jan Chan
A study on the narrator's voice in the chinese translation of A Room of One's Own , Law Tsz Sang
The Use of Translation as a Teaching Technique within the Context of Learning English as a Foreign Language in Greece by Elena Arkadi.
A Theological Approach to Equivalence: Comparing Judeo-Christian Belief with Shinto/Buddhist Thought by Dianne Cook.
The Translation of Culture-Specific Items: An Analysis of Helen Fielding’s ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ and its Greek Translation by Dimitra Panagioutou.
Analysis of Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders and its Greek Translation by Eleni Panagioutou
Medical Interpreting: Serving the Needs of Linguistic Minority Groups in the City of Birmingham by Alexandra Roupakia.
Translating Behaviour in the Late Qing Period: A Case Study of Lin Shu and His Translation of Robinson Crusoe by Chan Iut Va
Investigating the Issue of Translation Policy in a Multicultural Urban Setting: Birmingham by Dominika Brzezina.
The Subtitling of Film and the Strategies used in the Translation of Humour: An Evaluative Overview by Anastasia Doulakaki.
Comparison and Contrast of Two Greek Translations of Tennesse Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire by Fotini Sagmatapoulou.
*Anthologies of Modern Greek Poetry Translated into English (1974-2000): What the Introductions Say by Anna Tsapoga.
Winnie the Pooh's Most Grand Adventure and Its Multi-media Translations into Greek by Sotiroula Yiasemi.
Translating Culture-Specific References: A Study on Lu HSun's " The True Story of Ah Q" and Its English Translation by Siu Mui Yim
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The Representation of Gender in Shakespeare's King Lear. A Critical Analysis of the English Text and Three Greek Translations , by Dimitra Kouskoubekou.
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The impact of text type on Chinese-English translation effort: an investigation with reference to translation entropy

Xiao Liu 1 &
Ying Cui 2

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 11 , Article number: 676 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

214 Accesses

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Language and linguistics

Various factors affect translation effort. This research aims to explore the impact of source text type on Chinese-English translation effort with reference to translation entropy. An eye-tracking and key-logging experiment was conducted. Thirty-one student translators translated four text types, namely legal, advertising, news, and poetic texts. Data analyses show that there is a significant difference in participants’ effort of translating the four texts, which can be seen in such indicators as subjective ratings, fixation, pause, translation time, and edits. We further studied participants’ translations and calculated the translation entropy for each text type, which is a measure of uncertainty in translation. Analysis shows that there is a significant difference in translation entropy among the four text types, which provides evidence that source text features affect translation uncertainty and, hence, translation effort to search for appropriate options. The discussions are intended to provide further insight into the impact of text type on the translation process, and the result confirms the reliability of translation entropy as a predictor of translation effort.

Hong Kong Corpus of Chinese Sentence and Passage Reading

Text complexity and translation styles from the perspective of individuation: a case study of the English translations of Pipa Xing

Does simplification hold true for machine translations? A corpus-based analysis of lexical diversity in text varieties across genres

Introduction.

Different text types demonstrate distinctive linguistic features and perform their own textual functions, and such text features can affect the difficulty of translation and, hence, translation effort (Sun and Shreve, 2014 , p. 120). Explorations in this regard are abundant, but they are mostly associated with lexical or syntactic characteristics (Immonen and Mäkisalo, 2010 ; Liu et al., 2019 ; Ma et al., 2022 ; Wang, 2022 ). We intend to carry it further by examining the mechanisms that influence translators’ transfer process and cause translation effort. The translation process consists of source text (ST) comprehension and target text (TT) reformulation. ST is the primary factor affecting translation difficulty, and TT provides evidence for translators’ cognitive processes (Campbell, 2000 , p. 38). Every ST item may have more than one translation option, and translators have to compare the possible alternatives with regard to their appropriateness (Bangalore et al., 2016 , p. 212). During the TT formulation process, a large proportion of translation effort lies with such options since multiple alternatives for an ST item cause translation uncertainty, which mirrors the effort involved in the translation process (Campbell, 2000 , p. 38). Translators have to decrease the degree of uncertainty and arrive at a translation solution. Translation effort is lower when there are fewer translation options (Schaeffer et al., 2016 , p. 199). In contrast, translation effort is higher when there are more options (Bangalore et al., 2016 , p. 212). As the number of options is essentially a matter of translation uncertainty, we intend to describe it in terms of translation entropy in this study. More details will be explained later, but to put it briefly, entropy is a measure of uncertainty, and high entropy indicates more TT alternatives for an ST item (Schaeffer et al., 2016 , p. 190). We infer that translation entropy values of different text types may vary, which can be correlated to translation effort. Against this background, we have carried out this research to investigate the impact of text type on Chinese–English translation effort with reference to translation entropy.

Research background

Text type and translation effort.

Translation tasks engage effort. The human cognitive processing capacity is limited, and the brain determines the amount of cognitive resources allocated to a task according to its characteristics (Moray, 1967 ). Effort refers to the demand on cognitive capacities to execute a task (Kahneman, 1973 , p. 16). In this vein, translation effort refers to the demand on cognitive resources involved in “thinking about how to translate and how to correct mistranslations, selecting the desired products, and reflecting on the chosen solutions” (Lacruz, 2017 , p. 387). During the translation process, ST comprehension and TT production compete for available cognitive resources (Seeber, 2011 , p. 187). The cognitive demand remains fairly constant once production begins and slowly decreases with the completion of comprehension and production tasks (Seeber, 2011 , p. 192). The process also invokes working memory, which is a set of cognitive processes in the control, regulation and active maintenance of task-relevant information and requires cognitive resources (Gile, 1995 , p. 167). In brief, translation effort is associated with ST comprehension, TT production, and working memory. Every kind of effort has its capacity requirements (Gile, 1991 , p. 17). Translation problems occur when the capacity available is not sufficient to meet the processing requirements (Gile, 1995 , p. 191). The intensity with which these cognitive processes are performed seems to be related to the factors that are inherent either to the task or to the task performer (Gieshoff and Heeb, 2023 , p. 3). Accordingly, the ST feature is an important variable determining the complexity of a translation task.

The importance of text type has been highlighted in translation research. The typology of Reiss ( 2000 ), despite the criticisms against it (Munday, 2008 , pp. 74–75), can provide us with some reference regarding the general categorization of texts based on functions, such as informative, expressive, and operative texts, and their translation criteria. The three textual types are not clearly distinguished. For example, operative texts may also provide information. However, the predominant function distinguishes one text type from another. For instance, news and legal texts emphasize the informative function, poetic texts emphasize the expressive function, and advertising texts emphasize the operative function. Meanwhile, the linguistic features of different text types vary (Reiss, 2000 , p. 48). In some cases, the texts playing similar functions may have contrasting linguistic features because of conventions or context. For example, news and legal texts both perform the informative function, yet the former tends to use concrete wording and concise syntactic structure (Buono and Snajder, 2017 , p. 138), while the latter is characterized by jargons and complex syntactic structure (Paolucci, 2017 , p. 326). Different from informative texts, the priority of expressive texts is not to convey information but to express feelings or thoughts, such as poetry. Poems are creative and often use rhetorical figures to enhance aesthetic effects (El-Shiyab, 1999 , p. 208). Operative texts such as advertisements aim to impact recipients’ behavior with concise and catchy wording (Leech, 1966 , pp. 186–193), and simple syntactic structures such as imperatives, interrogatives, and elliptical sentences (Leech, 1966 , pp. 110–119). Linguistic features are the main causes of translation difficulty (Sun and Shreve, 2014 , p. 120). For example, research shows that there is a positive correlation between translation effort, the length of linguistic units (Immonen and Mäkisalo, 2010 ), and text complexity (Liu et al., 2019 ). Linguistic features of different text types can affect translators' effort of comprehending ST and producing TT, as well as the working memory involved therein. Translators have to grasp the textual functions of different text types and understand the semantic, lexical, grammatical, and stylistic elements of ST (Reiss, 2000 , p. 65). In this sense, textual functions and linguistic features of different text types can impact such cognitive processes as monitoring, retrieval of possible translation equivalents, and sentence planning. On these grounds, it can be assumed that text type serves as a key factor determining the complexity of a translation task and translation effort.

Various studies have been conducted to explore text type and translation effort. Researchers have explored how news and legal texts affect semi-professionals’ cognitive processes in Spanish–Danish translation (Halskov Jensen, 1999 ), how business letters and legal contracts impact professional translators’ behavior in Danish–English translation (Dragsted, 2004 ), how news and tourism texts influence translation effort in English–Chinese language pair (Ma et al., 2022 ), and how allegorical stories and lease contracts affect the cognitive processes in Chinese–English translation (Wang, 2022 ). It is found that legal texts cause more translation effort than news (Halskov Jensen, 1999 ), business letters (Dragsted, 2004 ), and allegorical stories (Wang, 2022 ). Despite the significance of text type in translation, the types of texts covered in existing studies are limited and selected randomly (Wang and Daghigh, 2023 , p. 2). Besides, they have mainly explored the correlation between text type and translation effort, which is based on translation-process indicators, but why text type affects translation effort remains to be further explored. To answer this question, it is necessary to resort to ST and TT features, apart from exploring the translation process. As introduced earlier, a large part of translation effort is attributable to the uncertainty of translation, which can be described via translation entropy (Carl et al., 2016 , p. 29). Therefore, this study explores how and why text type impacts translation effort in Chinese–English language pair with reference to translation entropy by combing process- and product-based indicators of effort.

Measurement of translation effort

Three dimensions of translation effort.

Krings ( 2001 ) proposes a three-fold framework of effort for post-editing, including temporal, technical, and cognitive dimensions, which is “relatively well established and widely used” (Moorkens et al., 2015 , p. 270). We believe that the framework also applies to translation. First of all, temporal effort refers to the time spent on a task, which is regarded as the most direct measurement of effort (Krings, 2001 , pp. 178–179) and “the most important aspect” from an economic perspective (Krings, 2001 , p. 54). Given the fact that the translation process is complex, the effort experienced by translators cannot be measured by the temporal dimension alone (Vieira, 2016 , pp. 2–3). Second, technical effort needs to be taken into account, as technical operations are the direct results of translators’ cognitive processes (Cui et al., 2023 , p. 2). Technical effort is related to keystrokes and mouse activities such as deletions, insertions, and rearrangements (Krings, 2001 , p. 54). Third, cognitive effort is defined as “the type and extent of cognitive processes that must be activated” (Krings, 2001 , p. 179), reflecting the mental processes that take place during a task. More difficult texts exert higher cognitive effort (Lacruz, 2017 , p. 387). A number of studies have attempted to explore translation effort with reference to the framework (Vieira, 2016 ; Cui et al., 2023 ). As the three dimensions of effort are related (Lacruz, 2017 , p. 386), this study considers all of them.

Process-based indicators of translation effort

Approaches to assess translation effort include process- and product-based indicators. Process-based indicators include subjective and behavioral ones. To begin with, subjective ratings reveal the traits and experiences of participants, which reflect their cognitive effort (Hu et al., 2020 , p. 3). While some researchers suggest that human ratings are not reliable indicators of actual effort (Moorkens et al., 2015 , p. 282), some studies find that translators’ subjective ratings are significantly correlated to objective indicators (Vieira, 2017 , p. 42; Cui et al., 2023 , p. 9). Besides, behavioral indicators can be obtained via key-logging and eye-tracking tools. Studies on key-logging have identified such effort indicators as production time, keystrokes, and pause (Koponen et al., 2012 ; Lacruz et al., 2012 ). Production time reflects the temporal dimension of effort, and longer time indicates more effort (Koponen et al., 2012 ; Lacruz, 2017 , p. 386). Keystrokes are used as a proxy to predict technical effort, and more keystrokes indicate higher effort (Lacruz et al., 2012 , p. 29). Pause is a key measure of cognitive effort, and higher pause duration and counts suggest increased cognitive effort (Jakobsen, 2019 ). In addition, eye-tracking data are well-established as indicators of cognitive effort (Castilho, 2016 , p. 4). It is generally assumed that “there is no appreciable lag between what is being fixated and what is being processed” (Just and Carpenter, 1980 , p. 331), so it is possible to track the real-time cognitive process of translation by recording fixation data (Rayner et al., 2006 , p. 241). Fixation is defined as “eye movements which stablize the retina over a stationary object of interest” (Duchowski, 2003 , p. 43). The indicators of fixation count and fixation duration are used to measure cognitive effort (Hvelplund, 2021 , p. 283). Readers tend to make longer fixations on difficult texts (Rayner et al., 2006 , p. 242), so higher fixation duration and counts indicate more cognitive effort (Vieira, 2016 , p. 44). Meanwhile, it is worth noting that every research method has its disadvantages, and a mixed-method paradigm, triangulating analyses and results, brings about a better understanding of effort. Therefore, this study combines eye-tracking, key-logging, and questionnaire methods to elicit process-based indicators.

Product-based indicators of translation effort

Apart from process-based indicators of effort, translation entropy based on translation products can also reveal translation effort (Carl et al., 2016 , p. 29). Translation entropy is derived from information entropy, which measures the uncertainty involved in choosing one message from a set of possible ones in communication (Shannon, 1948 , p. 1). Translation entropy describes a certain distribution of translation probabilities “ p ”, which can be estimated based on the number of possible translations (Carl et al., 2016 , p. 29).

As in Eq. ( 1 ), translation probabilities “ p ( s−t i )” of an ST item “ s ” and its possible translations “ t i…n ” are computed as the ratio of the number of direct transfers over the total number of TT alternatives. Translation entropy can be calculated following Eq. ( 2 ) (Carl et al., 2016 , p. 31). The information of a probability “ p ” is defined as “log 2 ( p ( s−t i ))”. For illustration, if a given ST item has only one possible translation, its translation probability “ p = 1”, its information “log 2 ( p ( s−t i )) = 0”, and thus its translation entropy ( H ( s ) = 0) is minimal. It can be seen that translation entropy mathematically describes the uncertainty of which TT item to choose for an ST item (Carl et al., 2016 , p. 29). Translation uncertainty, as a cognitive state of indecision, arises as translators are implementing cognitive resources to select the most appropriate option during the comprehension, transfer, or production processes (Angelone, 2010 , p. 18). The management of uncertainty is associated with such cognitive processes as problem-solving and decision-making (Angelone and Shreve, 2011 , p. 115). Fewer translation alternatives lead to lower entropy, indicating higher inter-lingual similarity and resulting in less translation effort (Carl, 2021 , p. 119). In this sense, translation entropy reveals translators’ cognitive processes and predicts the effort needed to resolve translation problems (Carl and Schaeffer, 2017 , p. 43).

Translation entropy is ST specific and can be influenced by linguistic features (Carl, 2021 , p. 115). It is proposed that comprehension uncertainty is related to ST language, transfer uncertainty appears when translators have difficulty choosing an appropriate translation, and production uncertainty is connected with TT language (Angelone, 2010 ). Accordingly, semantic representations and syntactic constraints contribute to translation entropy (Carl and Schaeffer, 2017 , p. 43), which negatively affect translation production (Laxén and Lavaur, 2010 ). Empirical studies have explored translation entropy on lexical, phrasal, and syntactic levels and found a positive correlation between entropy and effort indicators such as reading time, fixation, translation time, and pause (Bangalore et al., 2016 ; Schaeffer et al., 2016 ; Carl, 2021 ; Lacruz et al., 2021 ). On the lexical level, researchers have revealed that words with multiple translations are more cognitively demanding to process than those with fewer translations (Laxén and Lavaur, 2010 ; Tokowicz, 2014 ; Schaeffer et al., 2016 ). ST items such as polysemous words (Tokowicz, 2014 , p. 171), abstract words (Laxén and Lavaur, 2010 , p. 158), and figurative expressions (Ogawa et al. 2021 , p. 160) have higher translation entropy and hence require more effort. On the phrasal level, translation variability has been examined in Japanese–English and Japanese–Spanish translations and the correlation between phrasal translation entropy and effort has been observed even when the ST language (Japanese) is remote from the TT languages (English and Spanish) (Lacruz et al., 2021 , p. 295). On the syntactic level, a positive relation appears between syntactic variation and translation time (Bangalore et al., 2015 ), and higher translation entropy is recorded in passive sentences than in active sentences (Ogawa et al., 2021 , p. 160). Based on such observations, we wonder whether the translation entropy of different text types also varies and correlates to translation effort.

Research objectives

The review in research background highlights two research gaps in this field, namely inadequate exploration into the reasons why text type impacts translation effort and insufficient attention to translation products when investigating translation effort. To be more specific, studies have identified text type as a key factor influencing translation effort (Dragsted, 2004 ; Liu et al., 2019 ; Ma et al., 2022 ; Wang, 2022 ), but they have mostly described how text type is correlated to translation effort and have not explored why text type impacts effort. We believe that translation uncertainty connected with text type is a major cause of effort, which can best be described via translation entropy. Furthermore, current studies have focused on the process of translation by examining the eye-tracking and key-logging data (Dragsted, 2004 ; Liu et al., 2019 ; Ma et al., 2022 ; Wang, 2022 ). We hold that studying translation products can also provide valuable information about translators’ cognitive processes. The studies on translation entropy, as outlined earlier, have shown that analyzing translation products and measuring translation uncertainty shed light on translation effort. Since linguistic features affect translation entropy on lexical, phrasal, and syntactic levels (Laxén and Lavaur, 2010 ; Tokowicz, 2014 ; Lacruz et al., 2021 ; Ogawa et al., 2021 ), we infer that text type impacts translation entropy. Taking into account the research gaps, this study aims to investigate the following questions: whether there are differences in the translation entropy of different text types and whether such differences are correlated to translation effort.

To answer the above questions, we have conducted an eye-tracking and key-logging experiment to capture translators’ behavioral data and explore their effort in translating different text types. We have designed an online questionnaire to obtain their subjective ratings of effort after finishing translation tasks. In addition, we have studied their translations and calculated the translation entropy values to explore whether translation uncertainty is connected with text type and thus affects translation effort.

We used Gazepoint GP3 HD Desktop Eye Tracker for the experiment. The eye tracker weighs about 155 g and is convenient to set up. It is a research-grade eye tracker utilizing a machine-vision camera at the heart of its imaging and processing system with a 150 Hz sampling rate and nine-point calibration. To ensure the accuracy of eye tracking, we placed a chin rest at a distance of 60 cm from a high-definition monitor with 1920 × 1080 resolution. We used Translog II (Version 2.0.1.222) to collect key-logging data.

Participants

We recruited 31 postgraduates majoring in Translation Studies to participate in the experiment. They were Chinese native speakers proficient in English, aged between 22 and 28 ( M = 22.63, SD = 1.43), with 26 females and 5 males. They had been studying translation for nearly one year. They all mastered touch typing skills. They were right-handed and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, with no history of neurological or psychological impairment. We informed them of the detailed experiment procedure. They signed the Consent Form and took part in the experiment voluntarily. We gave each participant a gift in return for their participation.

Experiment materials

We chose four types of texts for the experiment based on textual functions and linguistic features, namely news, legal, poetic, and advertising texts. The four texts cover the major textual functions as outlined in text typology (Reiss, 2000 , pp. 24–43). The news and legal texts are informative, the poetic text is expressive, and the advertising text is operative. The four texts have distinctive linguistic features, as discussed earlier, with the news text being semantically concrete and syntactically simple (Buono and Snajder, 2017 , p. 138), the legal text using jargon and complex syntactic structure (Paolucci, 2017 , p. 326), the advertising text being concise and catchy (Leech, 1966 , pp. 186–193), and the poetic text using rhetorical figures (El-Shiyab, 1999 , p. 208). To sum up, the four texts demonstrate different textual functions and linguistic features. Every text consists of about 50 Chinese characters, which are appropriate for eye-tracking research (Saldanha and O’Brien, 2013 , p. 140). We conducted a survey with 28 undergraduates majoring in English to assess the difficulty of the texts on a five-point scale, with “1” meaning “very simple” and “5” meaning “very difficult”. The mean ratings of news, legal, poetic, and advertising texts were 1.61, 2.32, 2.61, and 1.64, respectively, which were under “3 (medium difficult)”, suggesting that the texts were suitable for the experiment.

First, participants got familiar with the lab context and learned about the tasks. Second, participants completed a warm-up translation task in the Translog window. An electronic dictionary was placed on the right of the Translog window. Without dictionaries, participants might find themselves in an “unusual situation in a lab” (Dragsted and Carl, 2013 , p. 138). Providing an external resource could help to ease their nerves and improve the ecological validity of the experiment. The electronic dictionary chosen in this study is widely used among Chinese college students. We also asked participants to use the dictionary during the warm-up task. Third, the eye-tracker was calibrated, and participants translated four texts in a random order. There was no time limit, but we asked them to try to finish the tasks as quickly as possible. The experiment generally lasted for about 30 min. Finally, participants were invited to fill out an online questionnaire and provide their subjective ratings (SR) of translation effort. We assured them that their answers would be anonymized, and we only wanted to learn about their truthful perception. All participants shared with us their ratings.

Data processing and results

Data processing.

First, we checked the completeness of participants’ eye movement data. They were complete and valid. Then, we filtered fixation data. The noise in eye-tracking data is mainly related to fixation duration. Considering that reading plays a key role in translation and fixations in reading range from 100 to over 500 ms (Pavlovic and Jensen, 2009 , p. 97), we set the threshold at 100 ms. It is suggested that the total number of fixations normalized by ST words is reliable to reflect translation effort, for it avoids sentence-length effect (Vieira, 2016 , p. 52). In this study, we used fixation duration and counts normalized by ST words as effort indicators, namely ST fixation duration divided by ST word number (FDw) and ST fixation count divided by ST word number (FCw).

Second, the data captured by Translog II were valid. The pause threshold of 300 ms is regarded to be suitable, which “is not too short to be contaminated by normal typing activity, but is sufficiently short to capture much potentially informative pause activity” (Lacruz et al., 2014 , p. 82). We followed this criterion to process pause data. Pause count normalized by ST words (Vieira, 2016 ) and translation time normalized by ST words (Koponen et al., 2012 ) are found to be reliable in estimating translation effort. It can be seen that normalization by ST words can improve effort indicators’ reliability. Therefore, we used the following indicators in this study: total translation time divided by ST word number (TTw), total edits divided by ST word number (TEw), pause duration divided by ST word number (PDw), and pause count divided by ST word number (PCw).

Third, we calculated translation entropy on phrasal and syntactic levels. We chose the two levels because phrase is the basic unit of translation, and syntactic structure can be a major cause of translation difficulty between Chinese and English. To compute translation entropy, an alignment process between Chinese and English texts is necessary, which is complex due to their different structures and orthographies. In this study, we aligned ST and TT manually to count translation variants and calculated the translation entropy according to the equations introduced earlier.

As translation research is characterized by small sample sizes and unknown population distributions, non-parametric tests are recommended to increase statistical power (Mellinger and Hanson, 2017 , p. 78). In this study, we conducted Friedman tests on SR, translation time, edit, fixation and pause, and calculated Kendall’s W to measure the effect size (Mellinger and Hanson, 2017 , p. 147). The results of Friedman tests are summarized in Table 1 ( M = mean; SD = standard deviation; A = advertising text; N = news text; L = legal text, P = poetic text).

As shown in Table 1 , there are significant differences between the four text types in all effort indicators, namely SR ( p < 0.001), TTw ( p = 0.01), TEw ( p < 0.001), FDw ( p < 0.001), FCw ( p < 0.001), PDw ( p < 0.001), and PCw ( p < 0.001). The effect size of SR is large ( W = 0.52), while the effect sizes of TTw ( W = 0.12), TEw ( W = 0.20), FDw ( W = 0.20), FCw ( W = 0.21), PDw ( W = 0.14), and PCw ( W = 0.15) are small. As significant differences appear in all aspects of effort, we did Dunn’s tests to make pairwise comparisons and further explore the differences. The results are summarized in Tables 2 – 4 (MD = mean difference).

As shown in Table 2 , all effort indicators of the legal text are the highest except for TEw. Between legal and advertising texts, SR, FDw, FCw, and PCw of the legal text are significantly higher ( p < 0.001, p = 0.02, p = 0.03, p < 0.001). TTw and PDw of the legal text are higher, but the difference is not statistically significant ( p = 0.18, p = 0.23). The legal text has lower TEw, and the difference is statistically significant ( p < 0.001). Between legal and news texts, all indicators of the legal text are higher. There are statistically significant differences in SR ( p < 0.001), TTw ( p = 0.01), FDw ( p < 0.001), FCw ( p < 0.001), PDw ( p = 0.02), and PCw ( p < 0.001) except for TEw ( p = 0.41). Between legal and poetic texts, all indicators of the legal text are higher. There are statistically significant differences in SR ( p = 0.02), TTw ( p = 0.02), FCw ( p = 0.01), PDw ( p = 0.03), and PCw ( p < 0.001) except for TEw ( p = 0.46). The difference is statistically significant at the 0.10 level in FDw ( p = 0.06).

As Table 3 shows, all effort indicators of the news text are lower than advertising and poetic texts. Between news and advertising texts, the difference is statistically significant in TEw ( p < 0.001) but not in SR ( p = 0.10), FDw ( p = 0.11) and PCw ( p = 0.15). The difference is statistically significant at the 0.10 level in TTw ( p = 0.09), FCw ( p = 0.09), and PDw ( p = 0.09). Between news and poetic texts, the difference is statistically significant in SR ( p < 0.001), but not in TTw ( p = 0.43), TEw ( p = 0.45), FCw ( p = 0.19), PDw ( p = 0.44) and PCw ( p = 0.25). The difference is statistically significant at the 0.10 level in FDw ( p = 0.06).

As shown in Table 4 , between advertising and poetic texts, the advertising text has higher TTw, TEw, FCw, PDw and PCw but lower SR and FDw. The difference is statistically significant in SR ( p = 0.01), TEw ( p < 0.001), but not in TTw ( p = 0.13), FDw ( p = 0.37), FCw ( p = 0.34), PDw ( p = 0.12), and PCw ( p = 0.35). As significant differences only appear in SR and TEw and the results are divided, the difference between advertising and poetic texts remains to be further explored.

Text type and translation entropy

As translation entropy is based on the translations of four texts, which are independent of each other, we conducted Kruskal-Wallis equality-of-populations rank tests on translation entropy and calculated η 2 to measure the effect size (Mellinger and Hanson, 2017 , p. 136).

As shown in Table 5 , the difference between the four texts is statistically significant in phrasal entropy ( p < 0.001), with large effect size ( η 2 = 0.54), and syntactic entropy ( p = 0.02), with large effect size ( η 2 = 0.29). Phrasal and syntactic entropy of the legal text is the highest, followed by poetic, advertising, and news texts. It shows that there are differences between text types in translation uncertainty on phrasal and syntactic levels.

In addition, we adopted linear mixed-effects models (LMMs) analyses to study the impact of translation entropy on effort. LMMs can account for high variability among participants and increase the power of tests (Mellinger and Hanson, 2018 ), and thus compensate for weak control of variables in naturalistic translation tasks (Saldanha and O’Brien, 2013 ). We built models on SR, TTw, TEw, FDw, FCw, PDw and PCw. The fixed effect is the translation entropy of four texts. The random effect is participants’ English proficiency. We built the models from the minimal to maximal by improving model fit, which is recommended for exploratory analyses when there are no clear-cut hypotheses (Meteyard and Robert, 2020 , pp. 17–18). We started with a simple model from the fixed effect and obtained the best model with the lowest BIC (Burnham and Anderson, 2004 , p. 288). We calculated Cohen’s f 2 to measure the effect size. We did model checks by examining the distribution of residuals. The residuals of the models demonstrate approximate normal distribution. The results of LMMs are summarized in Table 6 .

Within all the models, the random effect is close to zero and insignificant, implying that the variation of participants’ English proficiency did not influence their translation effort. Regarding the fixed effect, the relation between translation entropy and all indicators is significant except for TEw. On the phrasal level, translation entropy is significantly and positively correlated to SR ( p < 0.001), TTw ( p = 0.01), FDw ( p < 0.001), FCw ( p < 0.001), PDw ( p = 0.03), and PCw ( p = 0.02), but not to TEw ( p = 0.11). The effect size of SR is large ( f 2 = 0.40). The effect sizes of TTw ( f 2 = 0.06), TEw ( f 2 = 0.03), PDw ( f 2 = 0.05), and PCw ( f 2 = 0.06) are small. The effect sizes of FDw ( f 2 = 0.15) and FCw ( f 2 = 0.15) are moderate. On the syntactic level, translation entropy is significantly and positively correlated to SR ( p < 0.001), TTw ( p = 0.01), FDw ( p < 0.001), FCw ( p < 0.001), PDw ( p = 0.02), and PCw ( p = 0.02), but not to TEw ( p = 0.13). The effect size of SR is large ( f 2 = 0.42). The effect sizes of TTw ( f 2 = 0.07), TEw ( f 2 = 0.02), PDw ( f 2 = 0.06) and PCw ( f 2 = 0.06) are small. The effect sizes of FDw ( f 2 = 0.16) and FCw ( f 2 = 0.17) are moderate.

Text type and effort

As reported in the result section, text type significantly impacts temporal, technical, and cognitive effort in Chinese–English translation. Such impact is reflected in all indicators, namely subjective ratings, fixation, pause, translation time and edits. This result provides further evidence that text type is an important factor affecting translation complexity, thus deserving translation researchers’ attention, and ST characteristics such as semantic and syntactic complexity have a bearing on translation effort (Dragsted, 2004 ; Immonen and Mäkisalo, 2010 ; Liu et al., 2019 ; Wang, 2022 ; Ma et al., 2022 ). The impact of text types is attributable to their distinct linguistic features and textual functions. Different text types have variant translation requirements (Reiss, 2000 , p. 41). Translators are expected to convey the predominant function and produce adequate translations, achieving semantic equivalence, lexical adequacy, grammatical correctness, and stylistic correspondence. Therefore, the linguistic elements in ST can lead to translation difficulty (Sun and Shreve, 2014 , p. 120), which imposes different cognitive processing capacity requirements (Gile, 1991 , p. 17) and impacts the effort in ST comprehension and TT production (Seeber, 2011 , p. 183).

In our study, the difference between legal and news texts is outstanding. The subjective ratings and behavioral indicators, such as translation time, fixation, and pause of the legal text, are the highest, and those for the news text are the lowest. More fixation counts and longer fixation duration, higher pause densities, and longer translation time indicate more translation effort (Lacruz et al., 2012 ; Vieira, 2016 ; Lacruz, 2017 ). It suggests that the effort of translating the legal text is the highest, while that of the news text is the lowest. This result is consistent with previous findings that legal texts cause higher translation effort than news texts to semi-professionals in Spanish–Danish translation (Halskov Jensen, 1999 ), contract has more impact on professional’ translation behavior in Danish-English translation (Dragsted, 2004 ), and contract is more difficult for student translators than allegorical story in Chinese–English translation (Wang, 2022 ). As mentioned earlier, news and legal texts both emphasize the informative function, but the former is characterized by lexical concreteness and simple syntactic structure (Buono and Snajder, 2017 , p. 138), and the latter features jargon and complex syntactic structure (Paolucci, 2017 , p. 326), which are usually difficult to process (Kunilovskaya et al., 2023 , p. 46). Besides, legal translation also involves a transformation between two legal systems which have their own terminologies and concepts (Biel, 2017 , p. 78). In short, the use of jargon and complex syntactic structure and the difference in legal systems require higher processing capacity and thus add to translation effort.

In addition, the difference between news and advertising texts is prominent. Data analyses show that translation time, edits, fixation count, and pause duration of the news text are lower. As noted earlier, advertising appeals to consumers with concise wording and simple syntactic structure (Leech, 1966 , pp. 186–193). News also tends to use concise structure (Buono and Snajder, 2017 , p. 138). However, news emphasizes the informative function, while advertising emphasizes the operative function. The result of our study suggests that conveying the operative function in advertising translation to impact recipients’ behavior requires more processing capacity.

Furthermore, although advertising and poetic texts vary in textual functions and linguistic features, the difference between the two remains to be further explored, as there is a discrepancy in the results. For one thing, SR of the advertising text is lower, while its TEw is higher. TEw, calculated on the basis of user events, can be influenced by participants’ translation behavior, so more technical operations do not necessarily invoke more effort (Vieira, 2016 , p. 41). Hence, TEw alone cannot serve as a robust effort indicator. Comparatively speaking, subjective ratings are more reliable (Vieira, 2017 , p. 42). Therefore, it can be assumed that the poetic text causes more effort. It is attributable to the fact that poems often use rhetorical figures (El-Shiyab, 1999 , p. 208), which are more effortful to translate (Kunilovskaya et al., 2023 , p. 46). For another, no significant difference is observed in translation time, fixation, and pause. Two factors might have contributed to this result. One is the overlap between advertising and poetic texts in terms of textual function, for both entail creativity and aesthetic effect. The poetic text performs the expressive function, and the advertising text involves both expressive and operative functions (Reiss, 2000 , p. 25). The other is that the experiment materials are short to avoid causing fatigue. The shortness of texts might have weakened the varied linguistic features of the two text types. Consequently, in future studies, longer passages need to be selected to further explore the differences between the two.

To sum up, the impact of text type on temporal, technical, and cognitive effort is significant, which can be attributable to distinct linguistic features and textual functions. However, the above discussions have only shown the differences in translation effort. To explore why text type influences effort, we will further discuss the results in relation to translation entropy.

Translation entropy and effort

First of all, data analyses demonstrate differences among the four text types in phrasal and syntactic translation entropy. This lends support to the fact that translation entropy is associated with ST features on lexical, phrasal, and syntactic levels (Carl, 2021 ; Lacruz et al., 2021 ; Ogawa et al., 2021 ). Translation entropy, as a measure of translation uncertainty, reflects the number of options that translators are faced with (Carl et al., 2016 , p. 29). The result of our studies shows that different text types, which embody distinct linguistic features and textual functions, endow translators with various options, thus affecting the degree of translation uncertainty and effort.

Second, positive correlations are observed between translation entropy and such indicators as subjective ratings, translation time, fixation, and pause. This echoes previous findings (Bangalore et al., 2015 ; Schaeffer et al., 2016 ; Carl and Schaeffer, 2017 ). It provides further evidence that translation uncertainty leads to translation difficulty and influences translators’ cognitive processes (Angelone and Shreve, 2011 , p. 108). High translation entropy indicates high uncertainty, causing more translation effort. Furthermore, this research studies Chinese and English languages, which belong to different language families. It is in keeping with the research focusing on other distant languages, such as Japanese–English and Japanese–Spanish translations, which finds a correlation between translation entropy and effort (Lacruz et al., 2021 , p. 295). In this way, it confirms that translation entropy is correlated to translation effort even when the source and target languages do not belong to the same language family.

Third, the legal text has the highest translation entropy on phrasal and syntactic levels, while the news text has the lowest. The same pattern can be seen in effort indicators, as discussed earlier. The result shows that the linguistic features of legal and new texts cause variant degrees of translation uncertainty and, hence, translation effort. The highest translation uncertainty in legal translation arises from the use of jargon and complex syntactic structure (Paolucci, 2017 , p. 326) and the asymmetry between legal systems (Biel, 2017 , p. 78). Lexical and grammatical knowledge play an important role in text comprehension. The highest translation entropy of the legal text implies that translators may not have sufficient legal knowledge to deal with jargon and complex syntactic structures. Furthermore, every legal system consists of its own terminologies (Biel, 2017 , p. 78), which may intensify transfer uncertainty. Faced with such uncertainty, translators have to pay more attention to legal translation. It implies that more training in terms of domain knowledge is needed. In contrast, the lowest translation entropy of news translation is related to the fact that news carries clearer information with concrete wording and simple syntactic structure (Buono and Snajder, 2017 , p. 138). Concrete words have lower translation uncertainty (Laxén and Lavaur, 2010 , p. 158). It implies that translators are able to understand the concrete information assisted with their general background knowledge and are more certain about how to convey the information.

Fourth, the phrasal and syntactic entropy of the advertising text is higher than news, and the same trend appears in effort indicators. The varied functions of the two text types are the main causes of various translation uncertainty. As mentioned earlier, advertising tends to use concise wording and simple syntactic structure (Leech, 1966 , pp. 186–193), and news also uses concrete wording and concise syntactic structure (Buono and Snajder, 2017 , p. 138). This suggests that the original meaning of news and advertising texts is easy to understand, and translators encounter lower comprehension uncertainty in news and advertising translation. However, advertising prioritizes the operative function and often uses rhetorical devices such as prosody or rhythm to appeal to consumers (Cook, 2001 , p. 105). For this reason, advertising translation entails more creativity, and translators need to deal with higher transfer and production uncertainty.

Finally, it is worth noting that the poetic text has higher translation entropy than the advertising text. It provides evidence that literary translation causes higher translation variability than non-literary translation (Sun and Shreve, 2014 , p. 120). Data analyses suggest that translation entropy is positively correlated to subjective ratings. It lends support to the findings that subjective ratings are reliable to measure translation effort (Vieira, 2017 , p. 42; Cui et al., 2023 , p. 12). Poetry is rated to be more difficult to translate than the advertising text. This is attributable to the fact that figurative expressions in poetic text have higher translation entropy than non-figurative expressions (Ogawa et al., 2021 , p. 160). It implies that translators experience higher comprehension and production uncertainty when translating figurative expressions.

This study has investigated the impact of text type on Chinese–English translation effort via an eye-tracking and key-logging experiment and discussed the impact with reference to translation entropy. The major findings include the following. First, the impact of text type on translation effort is significant, and such impact can be traced back to the distinct linguistic features and textual functions of ST. Second, the differences in phrasal and syntactic entropy suggest that different text types cause variant degrees of translation uncertainty, and translators need to make variant efforts to manage the uncertainty. Besides, translation entropy is positively correlated with effort indicators. This provides solid evidence that translation uncertainty is actually the main cause of translation difficulty, and high uncertainty results in more translation effort. Third, the legal text causes the highest translation effort, followed by poetry, advertising, and news texts, as reflected in subjective ratings and objective indicators. The same trend can be observed in translation entropy, which helps to explain why translators experience different efforts when translating the four text types. The findings imply that the text type of ST affects translators’ cognitive processes, and translation entropy can provide a new perspective on how and why translators experience effort. Meanwhile, this research has two limitations. Participants were restricted to student translators. While the homogeneity of participants leads to more generalizable conclusions, diversity in sampling will reveal more nuanced differences. Besides, this study used short passages as experiment materials to avoid fatigue on the part of participants, which might have attenuated the varied linguistic features of different text types. In future research, we plan to invite professional translators to participate in the experiment and select longer passages to further confirm the current findings.

Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available because they concerned individual participants, and we made it clear in the Form of Consent that their data would not be made public, but they are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The experiment materials and data analysis code are publicly available at: https://github.com/2236117534/Translation-experiment-.git .

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Project Fund of Ministry of Education, P.R. China under Grant [23YJC740007].

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The experiment was carried out at the School of Translation Studies, Shandong University. The School, specializing in humanities research, did not have a review board for experimental research at the time. However, as eye-tracking is noninvasive, the experiment was safe for participants. We tried to uphold research ethics by explaining to participants the detailed experiment procedure, how data would be anonymized, and how their privacy would be protected. We assured them that they could withdraw from the experiment at any time without any consequence. They all signed the Consent Form and participated in the experiment voluntarily.

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Liu, X., Cui, Y. The impact of text type on Chinese-English translation effort: an investigation with reference to translation entropy. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 676 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03187-y

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The doctoral program is primarily designed to prepare its graduates for careers in both the academic field and scholarly research, including research-informed translation. It offers individualized interdisciplinary tracks to accommodate a variety of backgrounds. The doctoral program offers the following features:

Inclusive curriculum comprising, but not limited to, history and traditions of translation studies, literary studies, cultural and postcolonial studies and philosophy;
Individualized interdisciplinary tracks, with the option to take courses in other academic departments; and
Learner-centered atmosphere through discussion seminars and independent studies, to make learning an enriching exchange among students and faculty.

Admission Requirements

Students pursuing the PhD in translation studies must follow the standard Graduate School matriculation procedures. Admission decisions are made by the TRIP director in consultation with the advisory committee and any other faculty member whose expertise seems appropriate for the applicant.

Graduate applicants should demonstrate the following background, as attested by transcripts, standard exam scores, letters of recommendation, personal statement and a writing sample.

Near-native fluency in English, as well as (and especially) the ability to write academic texts in English, as demonstrated by high GREs (310+) (GMAT or LSAT will be accepted in place of the GRE), and high TOEFL scores (100+);
Near-native fluency in a second language;
Optionally, but desirable: a good reading knowledge of a third language, meaning the applicant can read reliably with a dictionary;
Previous immersion in a culture where the second language is spoken;
A master’s degree in a relevant area; applicants with no graduate course work in languages should also be prepared for a diagnostic examination during the application process.
Background in translation studies; applicants who do not have a documented background in translation studies, or who do not have any formal certification in translation, may be provisionally admitted; full admission will be granted after passing the certificate examination.

Program Requirements

Course requirements.

Students pursuing the PhD in Translation Studies must complete 36 credits of graduate coursework (48 credits for those entering the program without a previous master’s degree in a related field), which includes:

A. Translation Practice (8 credits total):

TRIP 572 - Translation Workshop: Literary *
TRIP 573 - Translation Workshop:Non-Litry *

B. Translation Theory (8 credits total):

TRIP 560 - Intro to Translation Studies
TRIP 562 - Scholarly Methods in Translati

C. Allied and Disciplinary Electives (20 credits total):

Depending on their interests, students will be able to choose electives from a variety of courses in other academic departments

D. Dissertation Courses (2+ credits total):

TRIP 698 - Pre-Dissertation Research
TRIP 699 - Dissertation Research

* Students who present workshop credits from Binghamton University or elsewhere may petition to have the required workshop courses waived. However, if a waiver is granted, these credits must still be fulfilled with other relevant classes.

Comprehensive Examination Requirement

The comprehensive examination consists of four parts, detailed below: a dissertation prospectus, two written take-home exams and an oral examination. Students need to form an exam committee consisting of an academic advisor (who will usually serve as their dissertation director - the chair of the committee - and who supervises the dissertation prospectus) and two additional faculty members from Binghamton University, whose work is relevant to their project, each of whom will be responsible for one of the written take-home exams.

Dissertation Prospectus. This is a longer paper (approximately 30-50 pages) devoted to a theoretical issue or sub-area explicitly related to translation studies, which will help students establish the direction of their dissertations. It should involve substantial scholarship and show that students are familiar with the current bibliography on the topic selected and are able to articulate their arguments in an academically acceptable format. The paper serves as a dissertation proposal in that it defines the areas that the student will be focusing on for their research.
Main Area of Concentration. Students are required to define an area and build a reading list with one of their committee members that reflects students’ main interests in the field. Suitable topics might be, for example, translation pedagogy, political aspects of translation theory, translation and ethics, linguistic approaches to translation, translation criticism or a focus on the literary works of a particular period/language. (This is a 72-hour take-home examination scheduled by the student.)
Minor Field. This section of the exam focuses on a field that either complements or expands the student’s main area of concentration. Thus, if a student’s main area of concentration is, for example, translation pedagogy, the minor field might be contemporary approaches to education or the training of translators in medieval Spain. Students will build a reading list for this field with one of their committee members that reflects the student’s main interests in the field. (This is a 72-hour take-home examination scheduled by the student.)
Oral Examination. This final component of the comprehensive exam involves all committee examiners and requires the student to explain choices made in each written exam, including the prospectus.

In order to pass their PhD comprehensive examination, students must achieve a grade of B+ or better on each part. At the discretion of the examiners and in consultation with the graduate advisor, a student who has failed to achieve this standard may retake the part (or those parts) in which the grade was below B+ once. All exam procedures and evaluations follow the Graduate School Manual.

Dissertation Requirement

The dissertation is an original research project, which may consist of a case study, an annotated translation, a speculative essay, a literature survey or some other form approved by the student’s committee, presented and defended in a public form. The dissertation should be at least 200 pages, not including bibliography and appendices. If students choose to include a translation as a part of dissertation, their theory-guided analysis of the translation must comprise at least one-quarter, or 50 pages, of the total dissertation.

Additional Information About the Program

Residency Requirement: Students are expected to be in residence during their formal coursework, which will usually take two academic years. It is also advisable that they stay in residence during the subsequent requirements described below.

For more information on the Translation PhD program, please refer to the TRIP website . To apply to the Translation PhD program, please visit the University Admissions website .

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Fulbright grants awarded to 26 from Johns Hopkins

A record-breaking number of jhu affiliates received awards this spring from the fulbright u.s. student program in support of their continuing study, research, and teaching in foreign countries.

By Aleyna Rentz

Johns Hopkins has long been a top producer of Fulbright scholars, but this year's cohort is exceptional: Twenty six students and alumni were offered grants this spring, the largest number from Johns Hopkins in a single application cycle since the program's inception just after World War II.

Named for U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright, who sponsored legislation creating the prestigious scholarship, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program is the country's largest educational exchange program, offering opportunities for students and young professionals to meet, work, live with, and learn from the people of the host country. The program awards approximately 2,000 grants annually and operates in more than 130 countries worldwide.

More information about the Fulbright application process can be found on the the university's National Fellowship Program website .

Study/Research Grant Recipients

Winners of the Fulbright Study/Research Award design their own research or academic course of study in a specific country. The program aims to facilitate cultural exchange and promote mutual understanding by supporting study or research abroad.

This year's winners are:

Rhiannon Clarke . A PhD student in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures/Spanish, Clarke has won a research grant to Spain to conduct research at the Centro Federico García Lorca in Granada for her dissertation, which investigates how Lorca represented bodies in his work, the role of materials in his artistic process, and the importance of the materiality of his manuscripts to interpreting his work.

Teresa Deskur , who earned a bachelor's degree in horn and music education in 2022, has won a study grant to the Netherlands to earn a Master's Degree in historical performance (recorder) at the Royal Conservatoire of the Hague. (She has declined the grant.)

Gabriella Fee , who earned an MFA in poetry from the Writing Seminars in 2022, has won a research grant to Italy, where she'll spend the grant period in Naples completing a first-draft translation of Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto's second collection of poetry, Dove non siamo stati , published by BUR Rizzoli in 2020. She will also study queer Italian poetics under the guidance of Professor Roberta Morosini at the University of Naples L'Orientale.

National Fellowships Program

Learn more about applying for awards and fellowships at the university's National Fellowship Program website

Glen Gray , a PhD student in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures/German, has won a research grant to Germany, where he will study the politics and aesthetics of despotism in opera and German drama at the University of Hamburg in the Institut für Germanistik.

Bradley Harmon , a PhD student in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures/German, has won a research grant to Germany to spend the next year at the Freie Universität Berlin continuing work on his dissertation on the ecopoetics of "flesh" in 20th century German and Nordic poetry.

Mashoud Kaba , who earned a master's degree in international health in May, has won a research grant to Guinea to work with community members and local researchers to better understand social barriers to reducing female genital mutilation/cutting rates.

Arisha Khan . A 2023 graduate with a master's degree in international health, Khan has won a research grant to Iceland to study the impact of Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruptions on the respiratory health of the arctic community.

Diya Kulkarni , who earned a bachelor's degree in public health studies in May, has won a research grant to Turkey to investigate chronic health barriers for Syrian refugees residing in Turkey post-earthquake.

Renee Liu , a 2022 graduate with a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering, has won a research grant to the Netherlands to explore using tomography angiography (OCT-A) to measure the health of retinal blood vessels as a means to achieve earlier and less invasive detection of cardiovascular problems, a project based at the Cardiovascular Research Institute of Maastricht University. (She has declined the grant having also been named a Schwarzman Scholar.)

Yuncong (Toby) Mao , a 2023 graduate with a bachelor's degree in neuroscience, has won a research grant to Germany to utilize computational modeling and artificial intelligence to augment treatment strategies for cardiac diseases.

Ikshu Pandey . A 2024 graduate with a bachelor's degree in materials science and engineering and neuroscience, Pandey has won a research grant to spend the next year at the University of Bern in Switzerland to study the role of the choroid plexus in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's.

Alex Pinsk , a 2023 graduate with a master's degree in health, behavior, and society, has won a research grant to South Africa, where she will assess frequency, methods, and extent of current tuberculosis-multimorbidity screening practices and service provisions offered to tuberculosis patients in townships in Klerksdorp, North West Province.

Sondra Rahmeh , a medical student, has won a study grant to pursue a master's in global health at National Taiwan University.

Wesley Sampias . A PhD student in the Department of History, Sampias has won a research grant to Japan to spend a year in Tokyo working on his dissertation on animals and economies of death in early 20th-century Japanese cities.

Emily Sperring , a 2024 graduate with a bachelor's degree in environmental engineering, has won a research grant to Germany to work with Gunnar Luderer at the Potsdam Institute Climate Impact Research, where she'll use life cycle assessment and integrated assessment models to characterize impacts of decarbonization.

Eleni Theodoropoulos , a PhD student in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, has won a Fulbright/IKY PhD Research Award to Greece, where she'll work with scholars at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Panteion University in Athens on a project combining research into the Greek author Melpo Axioti's role in global modernism with translation of Axioti's Cadmo (1972) for the first time into English.

Samhita Vasu . A 2024 graduate with a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering, Vasu has won a research grant to India to develop an at-home creatinine sensor for increasing access to early screening for chronic kidney disease, working with mentors at Mehta's Children's Hospital in Chennai.

Maxwell White , an MD/PhD student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has won a research grant to Spain to work at the Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona to characterize novel coagulases produced by two common and frequently multidrug resistant hospital-acquired bloodstream infections.

Carson Yu , who earned a bachelor's degree in behavioral biology in 2023, has won a research grant to South Korea to work with Hun Lee at ASAN Medical Center in Seoul on the study of hydrogels, a versatile class of biomaterial which can be customized to mimic the properties of natural body tissue.

Fulbright-Fogarty Fellowships in Public Health

The Fulbright-Fogarty Fellowships in Public Health are offered through a partnership between the Fulbright Program and the Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Recipients of the award conduct research in public health and clinical research in resource-limited settings.

Shea Littlepage , a PhD student in the Department of International Health, will spend a year in Ethiopia researching the country's relatively successful COVID-19 response via two public health agencies to understand how they achieved many COVID-19 goals with limited resources and within the complex global health governance structure.

Ashwin Reddy . A medical student, aspiring otolaryngologist, and global health researcher, Reddy will study hearing loss in a marginalized brick kiln worker population in Bhaktapur, Nepal next year.

English Teaching Assistantship Recipients

The English Teaching Assistantship Awards program places Fulbright winners in classrooms around the world to provide assistance to the local English teachers and to serve as cultural ambassadors for the United States.

Sophia Berkey , who earned a bachelor's degree in English, French, and Writing Seminars in May, has won a Fulbright/Athens College-HAEF English Teaching Assistant Award to spend next year teaching English, leading activities, and advising students at Athens College in the Greek capital.

Sarah Kondo , who earned a master's degree in education studies in May and is a full-time teacher of high school ESOL, was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Spain to work with Spanish speakers in a university setting. (She has declined the grant.)

Suzy Schlosberg , who earned a bachelor's degree in international studies in May, has been selected to be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Bulgaria, where she will work with secondary school students to complement their English learning with leadership training activities and extracurriculars, such as Bulgarian-English speech and debate tournaments.

Zarina Tavares , who earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry with a minor in East Asian studies in May, has been selected to be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Taiwan. Beyond formal teaching duties, she proposed to encourage her students to sharpen their English through afterschool photography and writing activities. (She has declined the grant.)

Claire Zou . A 2020 graduate in international studies and sociology, Zou has been selected to be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Taiwan. Outside of the classroom, she hopes to get involved in urban gardening and other activities that promote cultural exchange through food cultivation.

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Tagged fellowships , scholarships , fulbright scholars

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IMAGES

(PDF) Teaching Translation Studies and the Effect on Students
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COMMENTS

PDF Papers in Translation Studies
issues in corpus-based translation studies, NLP and machine translation. In the first part section of the book, Steven Schoonjans presents an interesting and informative discussion of the influence of context on the translation of modal particles. He demonstrates how the meaning of modal
(PDF) The Theory of Translation and Linguistics
The thesis begins with a chapter on the results of a survey we concluded, followed by the historic relationship between translation studies and linguistics. The thesis first examines theories and ...
Qualitative Research Methods in Translation Theory
How does a discipline think? When translation studies emerged as a discrete area of academic enquiry, James Holmes (1988), in a landmark paper, drew on Michael Mulkay (1969, p. 136) to argue that science moves forward by revealing "new areas of ignorance."He went on to provide a tentative mapping of research in the nascent field, dividing it into two branches, "pure" and "applied."
PDF Translation 3.0: A Blueprint for Translation Studies in the Digital Age
1) Translation 3.0: A Blueprint for Translation Studies in the Digital Age, a monograph evaluating six university translation studies programs and outlining recommendations for institutions considering creating their own programs. The monograph is a traditional scholarly text anchoring the rest of this multiple-element dissertation project.
(PDF) Translation Strategies, Techniques, and Equivalences in Critical
Translation Strategies, Techniques, and E quivalences in Critical Approach 15. the goal to be purs ued. Despite the fact that equivalence can be most easily perceived at. the level of word or ...
PDF Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS)
Translation Studies" also explains the choice of "studies" as a means of. explicitly affiliating the discipline to the arts or the humanities. As a field of. pure research, Translation Studies is then defined as an empirical discipline. with the dual purpose of describing "the phenomena of translating and.
(PDF) Qualitative Research Methods in Translation Theory
This study provides a "systematic review" (see Fisher et al., 2020) of the theoretical articles published in core translation. studies journals, focusing on the qualitative methods they. use ...
PDF Translation Master Thesis
However, in this thesis I will take a closer look at the problems that arise during the translation process. Translators have to make many choices. Therefore, it is interesting to compare the translation with the original as well as to compare the first translation with the translations written in a later stage, so called retranslations. The
Book review: Empirical Studies of Translation and Interpreting: The
Meanwhile, the empirical turn in translation studies began to emerge, and in the 1990s, a post-structuralist shift—the post-structuralist turn—in empirical translation research began to take shape and broaden the scope of translation studies from texts to the cultural, ideological, and social factors involved (Schäffner & Bassnett, 2010 ...
Interdisciplinarity in translation studies: a didactic model for
1. Introduction. As early as the mid-90s, Translation Studies (TS) was recognized as an interdiscipline with theoretical and methodological inspiration from several fields (among others see Snell-Hornby et al., Citation 1994).However, up to the present day, only a few suggestions for didactic maps or models reflecting its interdisciplinarity have been put forward (cf. van Doorslaer, Citation ...
"Twenty-Two Theses on Translation"
Douglas Robinson 22 Theses on Translation Originally published in Journal of Translation Studies (Hong Kong) 2 (June 1998): 92-117. This paper presents a series of arguments or theses regarding the field of translation studies, some perhaps fairly obvious to all but I hope useful as a summary statement of where the field has been and where it is going, others rather more controversial and ...
The Case Study Research Method in Translation Studies
The first part of the article looks at the definitions of case study in the social sciences and its uses within translation studies; emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between case and context; and delivers an overview of the differences between single- and multiple-case studies. The second part concentrates on the relationships ...
[PDF] Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS)
This chapter discusses Descriptive Translation Studies, a methodology for describing translations and beyond, and Criticizing descriptivism, a response to the criticism of descriptivism. 1. The name and nature of Descriptive Translation Studies 2. The Manipulation School 3. A methodology for describing translations 4. DTS and beyond 4.1 Describing and explaining 4.2 A multidisciplinary ...
Feminism and literary translation: A systematic review
Feminist Translation Studies identifies and critiques "the tangle of concepts which relegate both women and translation to the bottom of the social and ... thesis and conference paper. After examining the title and abstract, 293 studies were excluded as they deal with the non-literary genre. The rest of the forty studies were reviewed for ...
Reasoning patterns of undergraduate theses in translation studies: An
These studies have largely focused on teaching students about translation theories and developing students' translation and interpreting skills. However, we are not aware of any studies that have examined how undergraduates participate in knowledge making in translation studies through thesis writing.
Political Discourse and Translation Studies. A Bibliometric Analysis in
Hatim and Mason (1997) argue that insights provided by CDA studies contribute to understanding "the way ideology shapes discourse, and the way discourse practices help to maintain, reinforce or challenge ideologies" (p. 119). Schäffner contributes significantly to the study of political discourse analysis from the perspective of translation. ...
Translation Studies
The dissertation focuses on original research. The dissertation topic must fall within one or more of the sub-fields in translation studies. The written dissertation is reviewed and approved by the research adviser and the dissertation advisory committee prior to scheduling a final defense before the committee.
(PDF) Thesis on Translation
Download Free PDF. View PDF. The Impact of the MA Translation Studies Program on the Students' Translation Ability. Hamid Marashi, Elmira Mohammadi. This study sought to evaluate the graduate program of Translation Studies in terms of training expert translators in the field of humanities and social sciences.
MA Translation Studies
1995. The Translation of Address Forms from New Testament (Greek into Dobel) by John Hughes. A Study of Compensation: A Comparative Analysis of Two Spanish Translations of Ulysses, by Gema Echevarria. A list of MA Translation Studies dissertations from students in the Department of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham.
Dissertations / Theses: 'Translation theory and studies'
This thesis addresses these issues, with a less used approach in the eld of Descriptive Translation Studies, by investigating the nature of translational language from a machine learning perspective. While the main focus is on analysing translationese, this thesis investigates two related sub-hypotheses: simplication and explicitation.
Translation studies
Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of the theory, description and application of translation, interpreting, and localization.As an interdiscipline, translation studies borrows much from the various fields of study that support translation. These include comparative literature, computer science, history, linguistics, philology, philosophy ...
Theses and dissertations
Advisor. 2020. Reception of A. B. Yehoshua's Work Translated into Italian: Literary Work in Translation as an Inter-Cultural Transitional Space with Therapeutic Potential. PhD. Sarah Parenzo. Professor Emeritus Rachel Weissbrod, Dr. Hilla Karas. 2019. Adapting an Ambivalent Text into an Opera: David Zeba's Adaptation of Lewis Caroll's Alice's ...
The impact of text type on Chinese-English translation effort: an
We recruited 31 postgraduates majoring in Translation Studies to participate in the experiment. ... segmentation and effects of integrating a TM system into the translation process. Dissertation ...
Program: Translation Studies, PhD
The dissertation should be at least 200 pages, not including bibliography and appendices. If students choose to include a translation as a part of dissertation, their theory-guided analysis of the translation must comprise at least one-quarter, or 50 pages, of the total dissertation.
Fulbright grants awarded to 26 from Johns Hopkins
Glen Gray, a PhD student in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures/German, has won a research grant to Germany, where he will study the politics and aesthetics of despotism in opera and German drama at the University of Hamburg in the Institut für Germanistik.. Bradley Harmon, a PhD student in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures/German, has won a research grant to ...
PDF Faculty of Arts and Sciences 2023-2024 Student Prize Recipients
Judith Vichniac Thesis Prize in Social Studies . . . awarded for the best senior thesis in Social Studies on a country or countries in the European Union. • to Manuel Andres Yepes, Class of 2024, a prize of $500 for his projectentitled"Ditching Dogmafor Data: The Rise of a Technocratic Elite in 1980s Spain" Namhi Kim Wagner Korean ...

Translation Studies - Ph.D.

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The impact of text type on Chinese-English translation effort: an investigation with reference to translation entropy

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Measurement of translation effort

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Text type and translation entropy

Text type and effort

Translation entropy and effort

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Admission Requirements

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A. Translation Practice (8 credits total):

B. Translation Theory (8 credits total):

C. Allied and Disciplinary Electives (20 credits total):

D. Dissertation Courses (2+ credits total):

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Fulbright grants awarded to 26 from Johns Hopkins

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