Literature review

Professional translators and interpreters working in certain language pairs describe production difficulty they perceive as stemming from structural difference in those pairs. A major typological difference between languages which appears to be relevant to that perceived difficulty is difference in the typical branching direction of subordinate clauses. Certain features of a message which can change in translation or interpretation, such as reordered or nested elements, have also been associated with cognitive difficulty.

This study seeks to establish associations between structural difference in a language pair and identified indicators of production difficulty as applied to translation and interpretation. With that aim, it proposes a method for assessing whether the linear order and hierarchical relations between propositions as established in the original version of a sentence are preserved in translation or interpretation. The study identifies three ways in which those features can change in translation or interpretation. Two of those ways involve linear order: reordering and changes in nested structures. The other way involves hierarchical changes in the place and type of attachment between propositions. Taking each type of change as an indicator of difficulty as established in other research, the study seeks associations between measured rates for those three dependent variables and three independent variables: structural difference in a language pair, mode of language transfer and sentence complexity.

The first section of this review considers research into structural difference in a language pair as it relates to difficulty in translation or interpretation in that pair. The second section considers research into the three identified indicators of difficulty and the difficulty associated with each one.

2.1 Difficulty in translation and interpretation

2.2 The three input variables

2.3 The three output variables