ABSTRACT
The cognitive processes involved in translation and interpreting has drawn on research into bilingualism, as well as language comprehension and production. The cognitive process of written texts can be understood as the building of a mental model of the propositional content. The translation process drew on models of artificial intelligence, with decision-making flows indicating which strategies were used when problems were encountered. Seen from this perspective, translation could be considered a decision-making activity involving declarative and procedural knowledge. Since translation and interpreting are multitask activities involving two languages, researchers have tried to break down the process in order to examine each step in detail. First, translation task models need to be delineated. Second, the component sub-tasks need to be defined. Finally, the cognitive processes of interest need to be described in detail. Transparency, interdisciplinarity, and triangulation, the hallmarks of cognitive translatology, hold great potential as a unifying catalyst for advancing cognitive process research.
