Traducción literal vs. traducción por defecto. Un desafío para los dos constructos mediante la traducción del egipcio clásico como caso extremo

This paper presents the results of a study that compares the constructs of literal translation (Schaeffer & Carl, 2014) and default translation (Halverson, 2019) by means of an observational, exploratory study with Middle Egyptian translation as an extreme case in point. Two MA students in Egyptology at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and three recent graduates of the same MA programme took part in the study. They translated two excerpts from two Middle Egyptian literary texts into Spanish. InputLog was used to collect translation-process data and derive word-level indicators of cognitive effort from them: typos per word, word typing speed, and within-word pause. Results showed a clear link between default translations and cognitive effort (low number of typos, low number of respites, and fast writing speed). However, the assumption that deviations from literality cause greater cognitive effort was not observed. Hence, default translation may serve as a more adequate construct to describe the regular way translators perform.