The impact of task complexity and translating self-efficacy belief on students’ translation performance: Evidence from process and product data

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Xiangyan Zhou¹  Xiangling Wang¹  Xiaodong Liu² 

[1] College of Foreign Languages, Hunan University;School of Foreign Studies, Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology

关键词: task complexity;    translating self-efficacy belief;    Interaction;    Translation process;    Product quality;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2022.911850

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Previous studies that explored the impact of task-related variables on translation performance focused on task complexity but reported inconsistent findings. This study shows that, to understand the effect of task complexity on translation process and its end product, performance in translation tasks of various complexity levels needs to be compared in a specific setting, in which more factors are considered besides task complexity—especially students’ translating self-efficacy belief (TSEB). Data obtained from screen recording, subjective rating, semi-structured interview, and quality evaluation were triangulated to measure how task complexity influenced the translation performance of Chinese students with high and low TSEB. We found that the complex task led to significantly longer task duration, greater self-reported cognitive effort, lower accuracy, and poorer fluency than the simple one among students, irrespective of their TSEB level. Besides, the high-TSEB group outperformed the low-TSEB group in translation accuracy and fluency in both tasks. However, the interaction effect of task complexity and TSEB was not significant, due possibly to weak problem awareness among students. Our study has implications for effectively designing task complexity, getting the benefits of TSEB, and improving research on translation performance.

【 授权许可】

CC BY