What enters in the head of a person when he can understand and translate from his language to a second one? What memory processes do they use to carry out this task? The research group «Memory and development», of the department of Experimental Psychology and Behaviour Physiology of the Universidad de Granada, has given an answer to these questions analysing memory and language jointly from a cognitive perspective in bilingual personas and professional translators.
The aim of the researchers is to carry out a cognitive analysis of the mind of bilingual personas specifically trained for translation and interpreting. They intend to develop with it learning programs of a second language or training programs of translation and interpreting in order to help those subjects in learning process to acquire the abilities of very skilful persons.
According to Professor Pedro Macizo Soria, one of the persons in charge of the group, these programs will facilitate the acquisition and use of a second language. Through them, the students will be able to carry out training exercises of work memory and practices to suppress irrelevant information during texts understanding and to do the understanding of the second language and the production in the target language simultaneously.
Originality
The importance of this group of the UGR is in their object of study: although there have been many research works on cognitive processes and memory systems in bilingual persons, there are very few studies carried out with translation and interpreting professionals. Pedro Macizo has pointed out that the psychological characteristics of professional translators and interpreters do not always coincide with those of bilingual persons without specific training in code change tasks. With the daily practice of translation tasks, these professionals may have developed specific cognitive abilities.
The research works of this group, with the collaboration of other professors of the University of Jaén, will be applied in the near future to the study of those persons who are at an early stage of acquisition of a second language or at the first phases of translation and interpreting training (university students of this degree course).
Reference: Prof Pedro Macizo Soria. Department of Experimental Psychology and Behaviour Physiology of the Universidad de Granada. Phone number: 958 243769 / 243763. E-mail: pmacizo@ugr.es
