Error committing stage in the translation between Japanese and English

The comprehension stage or the production stage?

Abstract

Language translation consists of two processing stages-comprehension stage and production stage. The comprehension stage is where messages in a source language are comprehended and the production stage is where messages in a target language are produced. Two experiments were designed to examine which processing stage causes more errors in translation. In Experiment 1, Japanese students were asked to memorize and then to translate one set of Japanese and English sentences into the opposite language, and also were required to memorize and then to recall another set of the sentences. The results of Expeiment 1 showed that the occurrence of error depended more on the source language than on the target language. This indicates that errors in translation occur mainly in the comprehension stage. The results were reconfirmed by Experiment 2, where Japanese students were required to read a Japanese or English sentences each time and after that they were directed either to translate or to recall it.