Source language text processing in translation

Roger Bell's model of the process of translating makes some assumptions about the way a source language text is processed in translation. An empirical project attempting to examine source text processing strategies employed by professional translators and translation students have been carried out in the Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University. A questionnaire was used to find out what the translators believe to be the techniques they employ, followed by a controlled translation attempt during which actual processing techniques were recorded. The project compares translators' beliefs on the processing strategies they employ with the theoretical view as expressed in Bell's model and actual strategies used in apractical translation task as well as valuable empirical evidence on claims made by Bell.