translators as decision makers: a dialogue protocol study of equivalence in political texts

one of the most common issues of translation as a problem-solving process is equivalence. since equivalence as a textual relation depends on mental processes and choice of strategies, combining dialogue protocol and textual analysis, the researchers tried in the present study to identify different strategies and criteria used by undergraduate translation students to find equivalents in potentially problematic areas and, to know whether or not there is any significant relationship between those strategies and the acceptability of the equivalents. to this end, a sample of translation students at jahrom university was asked to translate a news item in pairs. the pairs were required to report on what they were doing during the translation and record their voices. analyzing dialogues and translation products based on schubert (2009) the researchers found that most of the participants had resorted to internet, especially google translate, as an external resource. in most cases, they were also not able to provide evidence for their choices. more importantly, a significant relationship was found to be present between the choice of strategy and the acceptability of the selected equivalents. the findings of this study can provide translation scholars and teachers with valuable insights into mental processes underlying equivalence.