A Study on Cognitive Processes in Literary Translation of The Winter Scene in Jiangnan from the Perspective of Think-Aloud Protocol

Abstract

This study adopted the Think-Aloud Protocol (TAP) to collect corpus data on the translation processes of The Winter Scene in Jiangnan by three groups of translators with varying experience levels (an English teacher, a translation master’s student, and an undergraduate student). Through the quantitative analysis of cognitive strategy differences using a three-dimensional coding system, the results show: 1) the frequency and accuracy of free translation for culture-loaded words increase significantly with translation experience; 2) there is a strong negative correlation between grammatical error rates and the frequency of meta-cognitive thinking; 3) the dynamism of image transformation strategies exhibits a positive correlation with translation experience. The study indicates that the Think-Aloud Protocol can reveal cognitive differences of translators, and translation experience promotes the systematization of translation strategies.