creativity

This project attempts to answer three main research questions:

1. Is it possible to establish a correlation between a more or less creative personality and a higher or lower translation quality?
2. Are there any differences in the correlation motivated by the type of translation carried out?
3. Are there any differences in the correlation motivated by the translators’ level of expertise?

To answer these questions, an experimental design is proposed with two groups of participants: translation students and professional translators. Translations carried out by both groups will be analysed and compared to achieve the following objectives:

1. To measure and assess creativity levels in the group of students and the group of professionals.
2. To assess the quality parameters of the translations elaborated by each group.
3. To establish the correlation between creativity levels and quality parameters in both groups.
4. To compare and describe the similarities and differences between different the translation of different types of texts.
5. To compare and describe the similarities and differences between students and professionals
6. To identify the aspects which define translational creativity as a competence that can be developed in translator training.

This study aims to explore  the relationship between translation and creativity from an interdisciplinary perspective  drawing upon the fields of translation and psychological studies on personality and creativity. This interdisciplinarity  is one of the strengths of this project,  since  creativity has  been traditionally explored from a linguistic and/or  translation perspective. Creativity in translation has  been a controversial topic for centuries, but it is in the 20th Century when its impact on the product  and process of translation is empirically investigated. Among the few existing studies, we find those of Kussmaul (2000), Heiden  (2005),  Hubscher-Davidson (2006) and Bayer-Hochenwarter (2011),  which explore  personality and creativity in translation and combine the study of the translation product  and process, applying notions  from psychology. Despite their innovative  character, these works still display certain shortcomings that will be addressed in the present reseach: there  is no precise definition of the concept of creativity or the parameters that define it in translation, the instruments to assess creativity with precision have  not been determined yet, we need to define clearly the concept of translation quality and establish its relationship with the level of creativity, and we need to especify the relationship between creativity and level of expertise. The project aims to answer the following questions: how is creativity defined  in translation? Is it possible to establish a correlation between creativity and quality in translation? What are the parameters that define translation quality? Are there  differences in the correlation caused by differences in the level of expertise? The proposed experiment analyses a sample of 150 participants distributed into two groups: students and professionals. The student sample will be selected from 2nd and 4th year students of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Murcia. To select the experts, we count on the support of the association ACE Traductores. The following research objectives are established to answer these research questions: identify the aspects that define creativity in translation with special attention to motion events, assess the degree of creativity in both groups, evaluate the quality parameters of the translations, establish the correlation between the degree of creativity and markers of translation quality, and compare and detect the similarities and differences between students and experts. These aims will be implemented in three  stages. Firstly, psychologists will run the tests to measure the participants level of creativity (CREA, Corbalán et al. 2003) and psychological strength (Peterson & Seligman 2004).  Secondly, translation researchers will assign the translation tasks with the motion units selected. In order to assess the impact of creativity on the product, the following parameters will be measured: the use  of primary, secondary and optional creative shifts, the novelty of solutions and their acceptability for a group of translation experts (Bayer-Hochenwarter 2011).  To assess the impact of creativity on the process, experimental tools such  as Translog, Camtasia, retrospective interviews, and collaborative TAPs will be used. Thirdly, correlations between translation quality and degree of creativity, and differences between students and professionals will be established, as well as differences between more creative and less  creative subjects.

See project website: https://gams.uni-graz.at/fedora/get/container:tc/bdef:Container/get