How do students engage with parallel corpora in translation? A multiple case study approach

Abstract

While emerging research has contributed significantly to our understanding of the efficacy of parallel corpora in translation education, specifically concerning student performance and perception, however, there remains a noticeable gap in the literature regarding the examination of student engagement with parallel corpora during the translation process. To address this research gap, the present study seeks to comprehensively analyse the behavioural, cognitive, and affective engagement of three MA students when utilizing parallel corpora in Chinese–English translation tasks. A multiple case study design was implemented, drawing upon a diverse range of data sources, including screencasts capturing students’ translation processes, the resultant translation outputs, corpus search logs, and in-depth interviews. The findings of this investigation reveal distinct engagement patterns exhibited by individual students and underscore the intricate interplay of these three dimensions of engagement. Furthermore, student engagement with the parallel corpus significantly influences their translation performance. This research also unveils various factors that impact student engagement patterns, including the perceived affordances of the parallel corpus, students’ self-perception, and learning motivation.