Investigating the Web Search Behaviors of Translation Students: An Exploratory and Multiple-Case Study

Abstract

The translator’s role as an information user, processor, and producer in today’s multilingual and multicultural society emphasizes the need for the development of information skills that can be used both for problem solving in domain-specific translation and knowledge acquisition in a number of fields of expertise. The empirical study of dictionary use by (student) translators, for example, represents a significant area of research in Translation Studies. So does the study of additional online and offline resources. Yet, research into the use of the Web as an external aid has frequently occupied a secondary position in the investigation of translation processes. Moreover, there are hardly any studies addressing the information behavior of (student) translators within the domains of documentation, user studies, and information literacy. This essentially exploratory and multiple-case study aims at bridging this gap in the literature by exploring the Web search behaviors of a total of six participants. These include a naturally occurring sample of four postgraduate translation trainees (in their first year of studies) who enrolled in an introductory course on technical and scientific translation, and two additional subjects (a PhD student of translation with three years of casual professional translation experience and a translation teacher with over 15 years of experience in the discipline) who participated in a pilot study conducted prior to the main study. Given that the need to seek, retrieve, use, and generate translation information depends on the type of users and the translation tasks performed, the study focuses on two specific tasks dealing with the translation of two popular-science texts from Spanish into English. In particular, the study examines the online search behaviors of all participants in relation to a number of translation task attributes (text type and translation brief) as well as user attributes (translation expertise, Web search expertise, and domain knowledge). While for the first task data was obtained from all six research participants, the second task was only carried out by the four translation trainees. The participants’ Web search behaviors embedded in translation are monitored on the basis of the notion of “Web search task,” which in turn is conceptualized as involving four main information-seeking/problem-solving stages, or units of analysis: (a) The search need, or recognition of an information need as perceived within the context of translation problem solving; (b) the search goal(s), or type(s) of information required to potentially satisfy a specific information need; (c) the search process, or online actions carried out within one or more search sessions that may address single or multiple infor-vi mation needs; and (d) the search outcome(s), or type(s) of information potentially selected and/or used to (a) satisfy a search need, and (b) eventually solve a translation problem. For the in-depth study of the participants’ Web search tasks, this investigation uses case study research and combines various qualitative and quantitative sub-methods, datacollection tools, and data sources for triangulation purposes. In particular, the study employs direct observation via screen recording and survey research using two types of questionnaires (a background questionnaire and an online search report) as well as semistructured interviewing. The data sources include the completed background questionnaires, the translated texts obtained from the two translation tasks, the online search reports completed for each task, the corresponding screen recordings, and the one-to-one interviews conducted with the student participants. Qualitative analyses supported by descriptive statistics are used to process the data and provide a multifaceted overview of the participants’ Web search behaviors concerning their depth and range of research, their degree of iterative (repetitive) behavior, as well as their query construction and query modification patterns, among others. The main findings of this study suggest that participants’ level of translation expertise had a bearing on their choice of information sources, which, in turn, seemed to affect their degree of iterative online search behavior. A look at task-related factors—in particular the degree of specialization—suggests that increased task complexity (along with increased translation experience) also influenced the participants’ choice of resources. Furthermore, task-related attributes appear to have had a bigger impact on the participants’ range of search behavior than on their depth of research. In addition, it was generally observed that the lower the level of Web search expertise (and translation expertise), the more basic and unplanned the search statements and the less sophisticated the refinement of queries. Finally, both domain knowledge and taskrelated factors appeared to have had a combined effect on the participants’ amount and type of information needs. In general, it was noted that the higher the level of perceived domain knowledge, the lower the number of information needs and the less specialized the nature of these needs. Furthermore, both the type of research and the amount of time spent online seemed to have had an impact on translation quality. Overall, the more indepth the nature of research and the higher the increase in research time, the higher the level of translation quality.