The importance of studying ‘translator beliefs’ and its research methods

Abstract

Although the fact that professional translators, who are socially recognized as ‘experts’, are required to predict risks and solve problems in an exceptional manner, little research has been undertaken from the expert performance perspective in the area of translation studies. To enable novice translators to achieve such an exceptional performance, notion of ‘translator belief’ appears to hold a key. This is because beliefs and behaviour are closely related, as scholars including Johnson (1991), Williams & Burden (1997), and Woods (1991) posit in the area of teacher education. This paper will first explore the nature of professional beliefs and their relationship with performance (particularly in terms of predicting risks and solving problems), and this will lead to the discussion of their applicability to the context of translation. I will then present the findings from the analysis of two pilot attitudinal surveys, in which a focus was placed on novice-expert differences in ‘translator beliefs’ in dealing with such risks and problems. In this study, I generated a 97 item survey in which findings from my previous studies on ways in which novice and expert translators address risks and problems were reflected. This paper will be concluded by discussing the implications of the results of this study to developing novice translators’ expertise in translator education.