Effect of word order asymmetry on the cognitive load of English–Chinese sight translation

Abstract This article examines word order asymmetry as one prominent obstacle in the cognitive process of English–Chinese sight translation. A within-subject experiment was designed for 23 MA translation students who sight translated sentences with different degrees of structural asymmetry from English into Chinese in both single sentence and discourse contexts. To measure cognitive load, participants’ eye movements during translation were recorded using an eye tracker. Three major findings were generated: (1) The effect of word order asymmetry was confirmed on both sentence-based and word-based processing; (2) Contextual information did not contribute to less effortful processing in the discourse context (as indicated by more fixations and longer regressions); (3) Segmentation was used far more frequently than restructuring to address asymmetric structures. We expect these findings will enrich our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms involved in interpreting between languages that are structurally very different and help inform training practices.