Translation strategies: translators in training and the use of Linguee dictionary

Abstract

The translator works with texts from varied areas and fields. At times, internal support is not enough to translate certain translation units. In these situations, they resort to external support. The Linguee dictionary can be considered as one of these supports. It differs from other online dictionaries, since it presents the following sections: dictionary, Wikipedia section and Parallel Corpus, in which the search result appears contextualized in phrases extracted from bilingual sites. The aim of this research is to investigate how Linguee was used by two translation students in the translation process of two texts (from English to Portuguese). To achieve this, the verbal protocol technique was used to observe the participants’ translation process. There was also the application of a questionnaire on the opinion of the translators regarding the Linguee dictionary. It was observed that the dictionary section was the most used with 51 of the 74 queries, the Wikipedia section was practically unavailable, being consulted only once and the Parallel Corpus were examined only 17 times, not the expected result, since we estimated a greater relevance of this section. We also perceived the use of the dictionary in a way other than the traditional search for meaning, as it was often used with other translation strategies.