Information-seeking behavior of L1 and L2 student translators: Insights from screen recording

Aguiar De Souza Penha Marion, Laura [UCL] Gilquin, Gaëtanelle [UCL] Lefer, Marie-Aude [UCL]

In this digital age, characterized by an extensive use of information technology, information literacy has taken on great importance as a translation skill. It is part and parcel of various models of translation competence (see, e.g., PACTE’s 2003 and Alves & Gonçalves’s 2007 instrumental subcompetence and Göpferich’s 2009 tools and research competence), and student translators across the globe are now being formally trained to identify and address their translation-related information needs. Research has been conducted that investigates translation students’ development of documentation skills (Enríquez-Raído, 2011; Kuznik, 2017; Pinto & Sales, 2007; Sycz-Opoń, 2019), but much remains unknown about their actual online information-seeking behavior (Enríquez-Raído, 2013, p. 4; Shih, 2019, p. 1), especially when it comes to L2 translation. In our study, we rely on screen recording to examine how student translators at master’s level carry out Web searches in both L1 and L2 translation (here, English > French and French > English translation, respectively). Drawing on Laporte and Gilquin (2018), we annotate translation students’ use of online tools and resources, focusing on their information needs (e.g., L2 orthography), favored tools (e.g., bilingual vs. monolingual dictionaries), and query duration. We hypothesize that student translators’ Web-searching behavior, being conditioned by their translation competence, the acquisition of which is posited to be directionality dependent (Kuznik & Olalla-Soler, 2018, p. 27), will differ according to the direction in which they translate. With this study, we hope to contribute towards the understanding of translation students’ Web-searching skills, illustrating the added value of screen-recording annotation.