Coordination of reading and writing processes in translation

This article explores how translation students and professionals coordinate source language comprehension and target language production processes. Using a combination of eye tracking and keyboard logging technologies, user activity data on reading and writing processes in translation were collected and analyzed, focusing on pre-translation, visual attention on source and target text, transitions between reading and production mode, eye-key span, and pauses. Analysis of our data suggests a distinction between integrated and sequential coordination, with the former characterizing professional performance and the latter student performance. Although there are still interruptions in the processing data stream (i.e., pauses) which are difficult to explain, comprehensive eye tracking data enables us to account more precisely for these and other indicators of cognitive processing in translation.