EDiT Project

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Faculty of English

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

The EDiT Project – The Effects of Directionality in the Translation Process and Product is financed by a grant number UMO - 2015/17/B/HS6/03944 from the National Science Centre Poland



In the EDiT project we ask some fundamental questions concerning professional translation into the translator’s native language (L1 translation) and into the translator’s foreign or learned language (L2 translation): Does translating into a foreign language require more time and cognitive effort than translating into the native language for a professional translator? In what way does directionality affect the translation process which leads to a translation as an end product? Do L2 translations require more corrections from proof-readers who are native speakers of the target language? Pinpointing the impact of the direction of translation on the process and the quality of the end product is hoped to fill the niche in empirical research on L1 and L2 translation. The results are relevant to Translation Studies which has recently noted a revival of interest in L2 translation. An enhanced understanding of directionality effects will be informative for the training of bidirectional translators but also for second language acquisition (SLA) studies and bilingualism research as all these disciplines are interested in how the human mind handles two languages and uses them for effective communication despite the asymmetry in L1 and L2 proficiency.

To encourage replication of the experimental research in other language pairs, we provide a detailed description of our study design, methodology, a list of the stimuli we used and instructions for participants (EXPERIMENT). We also provide raw data we collected from our participants – 26 professional translators with Polish as their native language (L1 or A language) and English as their foreign language (L2 or B language). The data bank includes keylogging files, eye-tracking files and screen capture recordings of the translation process (DATA BANK).