Behavioural indicators of translators’ decisional styles in a translation task: A longitudinal study

Translation Process Research defines translation as a decision-making process, but a plethora of studies has demonstrated that there is high individual variation in the translators’ styles of making decisions. The present interdisciplinary empirical study combines the theory of personality types and translation process research in order to identify the behavioural indicators that characterise translators’ decisional styles at the stage of end revision, where final decision-making takes place. As based on previous research, such indicators as the duration of end revision, pause length and number, the number of deleted characters and the types of corrections introduced at the stage of end revision may comprise the behavioural variables that define the translators’ styles of decision-making. The analysis of the data shows that two distinct behavioural styles may be distinguished, and their nature lies in the translators’ individual preferences for one of the two dichotomous psychological functions responsible for decision-making.

Response Surface Modeling of Physical and Mechanical Properties of Cotton Slub Yarns

The objective of this study was to model the physical and mechanical properties of 100% cotton slub yarns commonly used in denim and other casual wear. Statistical models were developed using central composite experimental design of the response surface methodology. Yarn’s linear density, slub thickness, slub length and pause length were used as the key input variables while yarn strength, elongation, coefficient of mass variation, imperfections and hairiness were used as response/output variables. It was concluded that yarn strength and elongation increased with increase in linear density and pause length, and decreased with increase in slub thickness and slub length. Yarn mass variation and total imperfections increased with increase in slub thickness and pause length, whereas yarn imperfections and hairiness decreased with increase in slub length. It was further concluded that due to statistically significant square and interaction effects of some of the input variables, only the quadratic model instead of the linear models can adequately represent the relationship between the input and the output variables. These statistical models will be of great importance for the industrial personnel to improve their productivity and reduce sampling.

Pauses Reflecting the Processing of Syntactic Units in Monolingual Text Production and Translation

This study explores how the process of translating relates to other types of writing processes by comparing pause lengths preceding syntactic units (words, phrases and clauses) in two types of writing task, a monolingual text production and a translation. It also discusses the grounds for interpreting pause length as a reflection of the cognitive demands of the writing process. The data was collected from 18 professional translators using the Translog keystroke logging software (Jakobsen/Schou 1999). Each subject wrote two texts: an expository text in Finnish and a translation from English into Finnish (Immonen 2006: 316-319). Firstly, phrase boundary pauses were categorised according to type, function and length of phrase. All three features correlate with pause length. On average, predicate phrases are preceded by short pauses, adpositional phrases by long pauses, and pauses preceding noun phrases grow with the length of the phrase. These fi ndings suggest that the processing of the predicate begins before written production of the clause is started, whereas noun phrases and adpositional phrases are processed during writing. Secondly, pauses preceding clauses were categorised with respect to clause type. In monolingual text production, pauses preceding subordinate clauses are on average shorter than those leading to main clauses. In translation, pauses preceding subordinate and main clauses are almost the same length. It seems therefore that, in translation, the main clause and subordinate clause are processed separately despite the fact that the subordinate clause functions as a syntactic unit within the main clause.

A natural variant and an engineered mutation in a GPCR promote DEET resistance in C. elegans

DEET (N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) is a synthetic chemical, identified by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1946 in a screen for repellents to protect soldiers from mosquito-borne diseases1,2. Since its discovery, DEET has become the world’s most widely used arthropod repellent3, and is effective against invertebrates separated by millions of years of evolution, including biting flies4, honeybees5, ticks6, and land leeches4,7. In insects, DEET acts on the olfactory system5,8–14 and requires the olfactory receptor co-receptor orco9,11–13, but its specific mechanism of action remains controversial. Here we show that the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is sensitive to DEET, and use this genetically-tractable animal to study its mechanism of action. We found that DEET is not a volatile repellent, but interferes selectively with chemotaxis to a variety of attractant and repellent molecules. DEET increases pause lengths to disrupt chemotaxis to some odours but not others. In a forward genetic screen for DEET-resistant animals, we identified a single G protein-coupled receptor, str-217, which is expressed in a single pair of DEET-responsive chemosensory neurons, ADL. Misexpression of str-217 in another chemosensory neuron conferred strong responses to DEET. Both engineered str-217 mutants and a wild isolate of C. elegans carrying a deletion in str-217 are DEET-resistant. We found that DEET can interfere with behaviour by inducing an increase in average pause length during locomotion, and show that this increase in pausing requires both str-217 and ADL neurons. Finally, we demonstrated that ADL neurons are activated by DEET and that optogenetic activation of ADL increased average pause length. This is consistent with the “confusant” hypothesis, in which DEET is not a simple repellent but modulates multiple olfactory pathways to scramble behavioural responses12,13. Our results suggest a consistent motif for the effectiveness of DEET across widely divergent taxa: an effect on multiple chemosensory neurons to disrupt the pairing between odorant stimulus and behavioural response.

How salient are onomatopoeia in the early input? A prosodic analysis of infant-directed speech

Onomatopoeia are frequently identified amongst infants’ earliest words (Menn & Vihman, 2011), yet few authors have considered why this might be, and even fewer have explored this phenomenon empirically. Here we analyze mothers’ production of onomatopoeia in infant-directed speech (IDS) to provide an input-based perspective on these forms. Twelve mothers were recorded interacting with their 8-month-olds; onomatopoeic words (e.g. quack) were compared acoustically with their corresponding conventional words (duck). Onomatopoeia were more salient than conventional words across all features measured: mean pitch, pitch range, word duration, repetition, and pause length. Furthermore, a systematic pattern was observed in the production of onomatopoeia, suggesting a conventionalized approach to mothers’ production of these words in IDS.

Cultural transmission and its possible effect on urban acoustic adaptation of the great tit Parus major

Urban great tits (Parus major) sing with a higher minimum frequency than their forest conspecifics. Cultural processes may account at least in part for the song divergence in city birds as great tits learn their repertoire from conspecifics and switch to high pitch song types in presence of background noise. However, in small cities, this process of cultural divergence could be constrained because it is likely that these birds have a greater exchange of song types with the outside. We tested this prediction by recording great tit songs in a small city (Toledo, central Spain) and in a nearby forest. We found that background noise and the peak and the maximum frequency of songs were higher in the city but the minimum frequency did not differ. The pause length was also longer in forest birds. Seventy percent of the song types were shared between Toledo and the nearby forest. These results suggest that the small size of Toledo allows a homogenized cultural wealth, preventing the development of a high pitch song as observed in larger cities.