Abstract
This study aims to describe and categorize the verbal reports on what students think during translation. With this investigation, the author tries to discuss the advantages of the translation tasks in a language teaching context. Retrospective verbal reports from nine university students translating literary texts are collected through the interviews and summarized into following eight categories: literary reading; understanding; translating; meta-reports; conflicts in translation; interaction between reading and translating; searching; and others. Taking collected reports of the participants into consideration, the following five points are stated as a conclusion: 1) the main focus is on the understanding of the text; 2) a contradiction was found with the participants on one hand searching for expressions natural to the Japanese language while trying to translate along with the source text; 3) some individual differences during translation are observed; 4) most participants struggle with the same sections, 5) translating and understanding seem interactive.
