Readers have to work harder to understand a badly translated text: an eye-tracking study into the effects of translation errors.

Texts are translated to be read and provide access to otherwise inaccessible information or experiences. Scant empirical interest in how translations are read and received by readers is surprising in the context of our knowledge about the features of translations, and the systematic ways in which th...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Perspectives: Studies in Translatology Vol. 33; no. 5; pp. 1085 - 1106
Autores principales: Whyatt, Bogusława, Tomczak-Łukaszewska, Ewa, Witczak, Olga, Lehka-Paul, Olha
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Oct2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:Texts are translated to be read and provide access to otherwise inaccessible information or experiences. Scant empirical interest in how translations are read and received by readers is surprising in the context of our knowledge about the features of translations, and the systematic ways in which they differ from originally written texts. In this paper, we explore the impact of translation quality on the reading experience by analysing the cognitive effort involved in reading and text comprehension. Two groups of participants (n = 64) were eye-tracked as they read either a low-quality translation (with errors) or a high-quality translation (without errors) of the same source text. Overall, the errors contributed to longer dwell time when reading the entire text but did not significantly affect the participants' comprehension scores. A more in-depth analysis of the impact of translation errors on the reading experience shows that it depends on the amount of confusion errors cause to the reader when building a coherent model of the entire text.