The Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll and Stewart, 1994) in the fields of
bilingualism and second language acquisition has argued that the task of
translating/interpreting ‘single words’ into the second language is more cognitively
demanding than into the first language. Past empirical studies focused mostly on the
behavioral aspect of professional translators and interpreters or highly proficient bilinguals.
However, there is a scarcity of neurological and physiological evidence to support the above
suggestion, and the population of novice translators and interpreters has long been
neglected as potential research subjects. This study aims to explore if the predictions
suggested by the Revised Hierarchical Model are valid at a textual level and can be
extended to a textual level by collecting physiological and neurological measures
accompanying the cognitive loading caused by different translation/interpretation directions
on the part of novice translators and interpreters. In order to collect such measures as data
on the cognitive loading, methods of eye‐tracking and fMRI are employed; by doing so, the
study also aims to test the applicability of the two methods specifically to the field of
Translation and Interpreting Studies.
This is an area of importance as the findings can help us understand novice
translators’ physiological reactions and novice interpreters’ brain activation patterns. With
this in mind, it may in future be possible to design more effective educational or training
regimens to help novices improve their translating or interpreting skills. The potential
findings may also be useful, if combined with software development in future research, to
develop software to stimulate brain activities to help acquire a skill, e.g. translation or
interpreting. This aims to lay the foundation for possible future development.
Regarding the structure of this doctorial thesis, Chapter One presents the
background to the study. Chapter Two surveys related literature related to the research aims
and questions in the study. Chapter Three describes the methodology adopted for the two
eye‐tracking experiments reported in the research program. Chapter Four details the first
eye‐tracking experiment with the language combination of Mandarin (A) and English (B).
Chapter Five reports the second eye‐tracking experiment with the language combination of
Spanish (A) and English (B). Chapter Six describes an exploratory fMRI study with the
language combination of Mandarin (A) and English (B). Chapter Seven presents a
discussion regarding the entire doctorial study, limitations and recommended future work.
