Using Think-Aloud Protocols to investigate the translation process: methodological aspects

In the last decade, Think Aloud Protocols (TAPs) have become a major instrument in process-oriented Translation Studies (TS). However, the serious questions regarding the experimental validity of this research methodology when applied to the translation process has been systematically reviewed in the literature. Theoretical justifications have been imported from psychology and related disciplines without questioning their applicability to the new experimental settings, and the validity of the method as a whole has been assumed rather than proved. This paper surveys the breakthroughs as well as the limits of the growing body of literature dealing with TAPs in TS, and points at the necessity to take issues of experimental, theoretical and environmental validity more seriously. A pilot study is described which attempts to address some of these issues, at the levels of experimental design/administration, data analysis and report. It is claimed that the risks involved in the adoption of a lax experimental methodology in TAP studies have been underestimated in the past, and that the generalised lack of concern with it can invalidate not only the results obtained in the single projects, but the validity of the approach itself.