R1cARDO Muoz MARTN, UNJVERSITY OF LAs PALMAS

Nomen mihi Legio est-A cognitive approach to

Natural Translation

In the 1970s, Harris (1973; 1977; Harris & Sherwood, 1978) claimed
that translation was a natural, innate skill, and explained that devel-
opmental psychology had two understandings of the term innate. In
the weak sense, the one adopted here for cognitive translatology, in-
nate means 'a specialized predisposition in children to learn how
to translate'. Harris & Sherwood (1978) also pondered what the
'design features' could be of this specialized predisposition, and
considered that more research on the translation process was
necessary on at least four points: the very pleasure to translate,
the architecture of the lexicon, the working of the memory, and
the ability to keep meaning across languages. In this paper 1 have
taken up these questions, somewhat reworded and rearranged,
in arder to sketch sorne answers that research has provided in
the last 30 years. 1 will first argue that most people in the world
are bilingual. Then 1 will focus on sorne aspects of cognitive de-
velopment - such as learning and neural entrenchment - and
language acquisition, such as the architecture of the lexicon and
the ability to paraphrase. A brief introduction to metalinguistic
awareness will provide a transition to focus on translating and
interpreting skills in bilingual groups such as children and pro-
fessional translators. Befare a summarizing conclusion, an out-
line of sorne possible consequences for translation and interpret-
ing research and training will be offered.
36 Ricardo Muoz Martn
l. We Are Many
The UN has 192 member states, and other territories count as coun-
tries depending on who you talk to, such as Palestine, Western Sa-
hara, Puerto Rico, Kosovo, and Taiwan. We may simply agree that
the number of countries in the world nears 200, out of which 113
- more than half of them - officially provide for at least two lan-
guages spoken within their borders. Officially monolingual states,
such as Brazil, also have linguistic minorities that speak more than
150 languages (exact number uncertain). This is not only a feature
of large countries, for citizens of independent states as tiny as An-
dorra go about their daily businesses not only in their only official
language (Catalan), but also in French and Spanish.
This is not the end of the story, of course. There is probably no
country in the world with no immigrants at all. Qatar, with a popu-
lation of around 800,000 citizens, has Arabic as its only official lan-
guage, but more than 150,000 Filipino immigrants live there who
speak other languages as well. Plurilingual countries, by the way, do
not always provide for the languages spoken by their immigrants ei-
ther. Such is the case of Spain, where there are at least twice as many
speakers of Moroccan Arabic as there are of Basque. So, when immi-
grant populations are taken into account, the number of plurilingual
countries is definitely higher. In this informal portrait of who speaks
what, we should now add tourism to the equation. In the last dec-
ades, for example, English has become the third language spoken
in Spain during the summers, and the locals have to deal with it.
Finally, of course, we should also consider the impact of educational
institutions and mass media, which offer foreign language training
to sorne or all of the citizens in most countries. In Finland, for in-
stance, 60% of adult residents claim to speak English, and more than
15% think of themselves as speakers of German.
We cannot know how many bilinguals there are in the world.
Firstly, because languages and dialects are difficult to tell apart, as
in the case of Arabic, Chinese, and Bantu (Niger-Congo) languages.
And secondly, because the definitions of bilingualism range from
being able to use a single expression in another language to never
show deviant elements in any of the languages a person speaks (Par-
Nomen mihi Legio est 37
adis, 1998: 38). We can, however, safely assume that bilingualism "is
present in practically every country of the world, in all classes of so-
ciety, and in all age groups" (Grosjean, 1982: vii). Bilingualism seems
to be much more the rule than the exception in most places (Harris
& McGhee Nelson, 1992), so it is the monolingual situation which is
"somewhat unusual in the world at large" (Aitchinson, 1994: 236). By
sorne accounts, bilinguals might even comprise 80% of the world' s
population (Porch & de Berkeley-Wykes, 1985: 107).
Until the second half of the 20th century, studies on cognitive
development showed that bilinguals were at a serious disadvan-
tage when compared to monolinguals. But research on bilingualism .
made a U-tum in 1962, when Elizabeth Peal and the late Wallace
E. Lambert found that balanced bilingual children outperformed
monolingual children on both verbal and non-:-verbal measures of
intelligence. 1 would like to argue now that being exposed to more
than one language is beneficial for both cognition and language de-
velopment.
2. Cognitive Development and Language Acquisition
The cognitive processing of language involves Broca' s and Wer-
nicke' s areas, but also high frontal and parietal areas of the cortex in
both the right and the left hemispheres and other areas of the brain.
All of them are involved in other types of processing as well, so lan-
guage cognition cannot be clearly separated from the rest of cogni-
tion (Ellis, 1999: 24-25). Different regions in the cortex control different
aspects of language, but only a few structures seem devoted to specific
domains - whether linguistic or not - from the start. The human
cortex is plastic and, instead, specialization seems to result from the
dynamic interaction between neural growth mechanisms and neu-
ral activity fostered by the environment (Quartz & Sejnowski, 1997).
The development and specialization of the cortex is, at least partially,
the outcome of leaming and automation (Elman et al., 1996). Accu-
mulated leaming may lead to neural entrenchment, which reduces
the plasticity of the system, even when the leaming abilities remain
38 Ricardo Muoz Martn
unchanged (Munakata. & McClelland, 2003; Munakata & Pfaffly,
2004; see also Bialystok & Craik, 2006). That is probably why, after a
critica! developmental period, mastering a foreign language, or even
one' s own language, is more effortful (Sacks, 1990; Schachter, 1998),
but not impossible.
The child constructs her linguistic knowledge by dynamically
interacting with her environment, in such a way that knowledge
of language and knowledge of social conventions go hand in hand
(Tomasello, 2001; Deuchar & Vihman, 2005). In fact, linguistic and
sociolinguistic skills might only be two perspectives on a single phe-
nomenon (Chambers, 1995: 158). In brief, language is leamed and
verbal behaviour shaped by social feedback (Skinner, 1957). Babies
have possibly innate simple, associative leaming mechanisms, such
as schematization and analogy, which have their conceptual origins
in non-linguistic domains (Markman & Gentner, 1993; Ambridge et
al., 2006: 175). These leaming mechanisms yield abstractions of lin-
guistic and perceptual regularities, so that many aspects of language
skills may be explained by the relative frequency of experience, both
linguistic and otherwise (see Spitzer, 2002).
Apart from innate general capacities, such as leaming, humans
also have a variety of mechanisms that may in time become special-
ized, as a consequence of processing different kinds of input. Leam-
ing and cognitive development involve the automation of behavior
and also an increasing access to the information implicit in proce-
duralized behavior (Karmiloff-Smith, 2001: 17). Proceduralization,
explicitation, and social feedback are characteristics associated to the
development of expertise (see 3.2). So, in a way, language acquisi-
tion may be viewed as a form of expertise development. In the case
of bilinguals, being exposed to more than one language has an influ-
ence at least on their lexicons, the ways they process language and
information, and their metalinguistic awareness.
2.1. One Lexicon, Two Languages
Human babies can spot, classify and remember things and events
before they start using language. Speakers of different languages
show substantially different pattems of naming but they perceive
Nomen mihi Legio est 39
similarities between the objects much in the same way (Malt et al.,
1999). Thus, humans probably build multiple representations of ex-
perience for identifying, sorting and remembering. Sorne of these
representations may be linked to the ways specific languages encode
experience, while others spring from their own cognitive develop-
ment (Clark, 2004). Language itself provides people with the means
to build multiple representations. Usually, once a 2 year-old child
knows that she can call a puppy a dog, she becomes able to switch
conceptual perspectives as she starts building up a larger vocabulary
(Pemer et al., 2002: 1466). But she does not necessarily understand
yet that an animal can be both a puppy and a dog at once. This seems
to happen later, when she understands that two different represen-
tations can be equally true (Doherty & Pemer, 1998; Doherty, 2000;
Gamham et al., 2000). Synonyms are not fully mastered until the
age of 7-8, when children become able to judge the truth of some-
body else' s statement from their own perspective (Pemer et al., 2002:
1467), and bilinguals may show an advantage (Kvacs, 2009).
If our 2 year-old child is an English-Spanish bilingual, she can
now also choose to calla doga perro. At the word meaning/concep-
tual level, episodic and linguistic memory systems are shared by dif-
ferent languages, and they are also partly shared for pairwise trans-
lation-equivalents (Francis, 1999). Lexical and phrasal synonyms
and translation equivalents are stored in a nearly identical fashion
in bilingual subjects (Klein et al., 1995). Ambiguities, whether intra-
linguistic (homophones/homographs) or inter-linguistic (cognates,
false friends) are solved in quite the same ways (Paradis, 1998: 50).
Bilinguals activate information attached to lexical items from both
languages when they are carrying out monolingual processing tasks
as well, and the information from the other language seems impossi-
ble to shut off, even at production tasks (Christoffels et al., 2006: 325;
Desmet & Duyck, 2007). Hence, the bilingual mental lexicon may be
thought of as a single storage device, where items are tagged from
different perspectives such as register, grammatical foatures, and
also language membership (Paradis, 1998: 50-51).
 40 Ricardo Muoz Martn
2.2. Paraphrasing into Translation
Grammar is acquired through the same general learning and cog-
nitive processes that intervene in the development of the lexicon
(Bates & Goodman, 1999). Perhaps for this reason, monolingual and
bilingual cognition parallels are not limited to the lexicon. Language
nonselectivity or integration between languages also happen at the
syntactical level (Christoffels et al., 2006: 325). Monolinguals and
bilinguals equally access metaphoric meanings automatically (Mar-
tnez, 2003) and they both borrow and experience linguistic interfer-
ence in similar fashions (Baetens Beardsmore, 1980). Code switching
works basically in the same ways style and register shifts do (Myers-
Scotton, 1993; Ervin-Tripp, 2001; Schilling-Estes, 2001). So, language
differences may be thought of as an extreme case of register shift
(Smith & Wilson, 1980). For instance, processing differences between
literary and spoken Arabic are similar to those found between two
different languages in bilinguals (Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2000).
When children learn how to write, they also leam to revise their
texts, and to paraphrase. Paraphrasing is "the restating of a sen-
tence such that the meaning of both sentences would generally be
recognized as lexically and syntactically different while remaining
semantically equal" (McCarthy et al., 2009: 682). 1 It is a metalinguis-
tic achievement which develops naturally, when readers strive to un-
derstand texts and word problems by modifying their wordings into
more familiar constructs (Laborde, 1990; McNamara, 2004), and also
when writers reformulate their ideas in order to better fit them to the
constraints perceived in readers or communicative events (Golightly
& Sanders, 1997; Hawes, 2003). Paraphrasing lays the foundation
for many other interpretive activities that continue to develop into
adulthood (Torrance et al., 1992: 2). One of these activities could be
translating, because children become able to judge utterances which
are different in form yet equivalent in meaning around the age of 6-7
(Torrance et al., 1992), about the same age when they master syno-
nyms, and right before the moment when sorne bilingual children
start translating on their own.
1 Of course, from a cognitive point of view the meaning of a paraphrase is
never identical to that of the original text segment, so in paraphrases meaning
equality and equivalence should be understood rather loosely.
Nomen mihi Legio est 41
In Translation Studies, the connection between paraphrasing
and translation can be traced back at least to the poet and transla-
tor John Dryden (1631-1700; see Munday, 2001: 25). Paraphrasing is
often portrayed as a translation technique (Baker & Saldanha, 2001:
passim) or part thereof, as in the framework of Nida & Taber's ker-
nels2 (1969: 39-55). Indirect evidence of the relationship between
paraphrasing and translating can be found in recent research on sta-
tistical machine translation, where bilingual corpora have been used
to generate novel paraphrases of input sentences in the same language
(Quirk et al., 2004), and to improve machine translation by adding
paraphrases toan autonomous system (Callison-Burch, 2007). A new
type of CAT tool is being developed which generates paraphrases to
help translators in their tasks (Barreiro & Cabral, 2009). More to the
point, Russo & Pippa (2004) found significant correlations between
a task of simultaneous paraphrasing, the marks of interpreting ex-
ams, and the time the students need to complete their training in
interpreting (see also Christoffels & De Groot, 2004, for task compar-
isons). Furthermore, Halverson (2000) found that intralingual trans-
lation between dialects might be considered central to the translation
conceptas well. Jakobson (1959) was right, after all, when he equated
intralingual and interlingual interpretive operations as two kinds of
translation. Zethsen (2007) argues that research of the relationship
between them has been neglected and should be fostered.
In sum, the brain mechanisms that underlie communicative be-
havior are probably not specific of any one language in particular, but
rather apply to language in general. There is probably no cognitive
or neural mechanism specific to bilingualism either (Paradis, 1998:
35), and many, if not all, monolingual and bilingual cognitive proc-
esses are similar (Kirsner, 1986). We might conclude that translating
and interpreting are tasks that are ingrained in the brain due to the
very nature of cognitive development and language acquisition. But
this is probably not enough. Native speakers acquire their linguistic
2 Kemels are restructured expressions "so that events are expressed as verbs,
objects as nouns, abstracts (quantities and qualities) as adjectives or adverbs
[... ] they are the basic structural elements out of which the language builds
its elaborate surface structures. [... ] if one can reduce grammatical structures
to the kernel level, they can be transferred more readily and with a minimum
of distortion" (Nida & Taber, 1969: 39).
42 Ricardo Muoz Martn
skills incidentally, and they store them as unconscious, procedural
knowledge (Paradis, 1998: 48), while language and communication
professionals display enhanced metalinguistic skills as well.3 Let us
have a look at this issue.
2.3. Metalinguistic Awareness
Metalinguistic awareness is "the ability to think about and reflect upon
the functions of language" (Pratt & Grieve, 1984: 2). It is "to make
language forms the objects of focal attention and to look at language
rather than through it to the intended meaning'' (Cummings, 1987:
57). Metalinguistic awareness is intrinsically associated to language
development (Chaney, 1994; Taylor, 2000). Literacy and metalinguis-
tic awareness seem to facilitate each other (Dreher & Zenge, 1990).
Many children leam how to read when they are 6 to 7 years-old,
although sorne start when they are 4 or 5. In order to do so, they
need to have reached sorne level of metalinguistic awareness, prob-
ably prompted by the very nature of communicative exchanges (cf.
Taylor, 2000, in press). Literacy makes multiple linguistic resources
available to the child. It eases her into conscious access to her own
linguistic knowledge and into seeing language from multiple per-
spectives. It is also crucial in the perception of linguistic variation,
which, in tum, leads the child to control her linguistic repertoire to
adapt it to certain addressees and/or communicative events (Ravid
& Tolchinsky, 2002). 4
Children exposed to two languages are more prone to further
develop their analytical skills on language and communication
(Galambos & Goldin-Meadow, 1990; Gonz & Kodzopeljic, 1991;
Yelland et al., 1993; Francis, 1999). For instance, they use their ana-
lytical skills to collect evidence to sustain inferences. Bilingual chil-
3 For the concept of metalinguistic skills see, for instance, Byalistok & Ryan
(1985).
4 Literacy is nota necessary pre-condition to improve metalinguistic aware-
ness. For example, bilingual kindergarteners make judgments about the
bilingual proficiency of their peers, monitor each other' s comprehension
and production skills, and provide scaffolds to their classmates, in order to
maximize the comprehension and communication (Olmedo, 2003: 143).
Nomen mihi Legio est 43
dren seem more sensitive to scalar implicatures than monolingual
children (Siegal et al., 2007) and they detect more violations of most
conversational maxims (Siegal et al., 2009). What children leam in
one language can be transferred to the other one (Bindman, 2004),
although language-processing control seems to be more readily ap-
plied in the subjects' weaker language (Cromdal, 1999). In any case,
there is ample evidence that bilingual children have better metalin-
guistic skills than their monolingual peers (Hakuta, 1985; Hakuta &
Daz, 1985; Galambos & Goldin-Meadow, 1990; Daz & Klinger, 1991;
Malakoff & Hakuta, 1991; Cromdal, 1999; Bowerman & Levinson,
2001; Nunes & Bryant, 2004; Csap & Nikolov, 2009; Dillon, 2009;
Siegal et al., 2009).
Linguistic input also seems to impact general cognitive upgrowth
(Gopnick & Choi, 1990; Gopnick et al., 1996; Anggoro & Gentner,
2004). Children exposed to a foreign language achieve higher levels
of cognitive development atan earlier age (Bialystok & Hakuta, 1994;
Fuchsen, 1989). Bilingual children seem to have enhanced executive
functions, such as inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and work-
ing memory (Barik & Swain, 1976; Cromdal, 1999; Bialystok, 2001;
Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008; Feng et al., submitted). These advantages
may persist into adulthood, as in the case of working memory (Bia-
lystok et al., 2004).
Whether (any degree of) bilingualism always results in en-
hanced metalinguistic awareness is a matter of debate. Cummings
(1976: 13) proposed that there is a threshold in L2 command to be
attained "both in order to avoid cognitive disadvantages and allow
the potentially beneficia! aspects of becoming bilingual to influence
their cognitive functioning." Ricciardelli's (1992) results confirmed
this threshold theory. Poor vocabulary in the second language may
offset the cognitive advantages associated to bilingualism (August &
Hakuta, 1997), and sorne bilingual children with little or no school-
ing in their L1 have been found to develop their cognitive and meta-
cognitive5 abilities very slowly (Carlisle et al., 1999). However, chil-
dren with low L2 proficiency may also show improved cognitive
abilities (Daz, 1985), even with only minimal exposure to a foreign
language (Yelland et al., 1993). Daz (1985) suggested that the de-
gree of bilingualism might impact variation of cognitive measures
5 For the concept of metacognition see, for instance, Kuhn & Dean (2004).
 44 Ricardo Muoz Martn
only befare a certain threshold of L2 proficiency is attained. Eviatar
& Ibrahim (2000) argued that, rather than on the level in L2 skills,
improved metalinguistic awareness may depend on the differences
between the two languages spoken by bilinguals (see also Davidson
et al., in press).
Be itas it may, the effects of higher levels of metalinguistic aware-
ness on general cognitive abilities are not restricted to bilingual chil-
dren. The benefits of plurilingualism are not necessarily related to
age of acquisition or fluency level, since foreign language leamers
may display better listening skills and sharper memories than their
monolingual peers (Lapkin et al., 1990), and also greater cognitive
flexibility, improved thinking processes, and better problem solving
skills (Hakuta, 1986). Enhanced cognition in bilinguals may be due
to the functional organization of their brains, based on brain plastic-
ity (Proverbio et al., 2002). Thus, bilinguals are endowed with an in-
nate predisposition to translate and interpret, thanks to the very na-
ture of cognitive development. They need to manage simultaneously
two constantly competing languages, and this fosters an awareness
of language as a system, i.e. metalinguistic awareness (Bialystok &
Ryan, 1985; Kuhn & Dean, 2004). Nevertheless, Lrscher (1992: 147)
stated that this innate predisposition is not an issue in translatology
and that what is controversia! is the way translation skills develop.
Let us now consider sorne ways for the development of translating
and interpreting skills.
3. Bilinguals and Translation
There is plenty of supporting evidence that many bilinguals can
translate or interpret. Children at elementary school can be very
good translators (Hakuta, 1988: 11), and they translate spontane-
ously, without any prior training (Harris & Sherwood, 1978). Teen-
agers perform improvised translations in oral interaction with other
bilinguals for reiteration, emphasis, recasting, and repair, often with-
out any clear prompting from their addressees (Greer, 2008: 99-100).
Adults may become impromptu translators and interpreters, as in
Nomen mihi Legio est 45
the case of the 250 terps who work for the US military in Afghani-
stan, or the 2,000+ in Iraq. To rapidly chum out skilled linguists, a US
Army program just recruits native speakers with demonstrated pro-
ficiency in English who are permanent U.S. residents. Most of them
have little to no training for their translating and interpreting duties,
such as Josh Habib, a retired engineer, Ahmadullah Barak, a used-
car salesman, and Torpekay Farhamg, a security guard in a casino in
Las Vegas, whose cases have been reported in the press.
But concluding that all bilinguals can translate might be a little bit
too fast. Hakuta (1988: 9) stated that introspection by bilinguals sug-
gests that they can be quite proficient in two languages and yet not
be very good at translating, and he found sorne empirical support for
this (Hakuta, 1988: 13-14). Professional translation and interpreting
tasks may demand more control than the usual bilingual cognitive
processes (Gile, 1997). Empirical research suggests that professional
translators and interpreters may outperform other populations in
severa! language and memory tasks (Bajo et al., 2000; Christoffels et
al., 2003; Padilla et al., 2005). Shreve (1997: 124f.) suggests that trans-
lation exposure to increasingly varied translation situations changes
the way subjects view the task and can also enrich and modify their
knowledge structures. Since sorne bilinguals with scarce translation
experience do not show sorne of these effects (Christoffels et al., 2006)
and sorne translation trainees may do so (Muoz, 2009: 97-101), dif-
ferences can be hypothesized to be the consequence of task exposure
(Anderson, 1982).
3.1. Language Brokering and Self-regulated Learning
Amongst the bilingual population, children from immigrant fami-
lies have been subjected to many studies because they often translate
or interpret, mainly for their families, in a variety of communicative
settings (McQuillan & Tse, 1995; Tse, 1996a). In the USA, these chil-
dren are usually 8 to 12 year-old girls who tend to be fluent in both
English and the language spoken at home (Morales & Hanson, 2005:
491). In the UK, the families of bilingual children often take their
role as mediators to be normal (Candcappa, 2000). They are natu-
ral translators or language brokers (Tse, 1995), bilingual children who
46 Ricardo Muoz Martn
simply help their peers, pay utility bilis, act as intermediaries in the
post office, advocate for their relatives, and even 'represent' others
in institutional settings (Hall, 2004; Green et al., 2005: 2108; Morales
& Hanson, 2005: 492).
Tse (1995; 1996b) reports that language brokers of all ages
thought that their tasks helped them master both languages, and
Halgunseth (2003) argues that the more sophisticated vocabulary
they must leam may help them build their lexicons. What is more
important, due to their brokering activities, many bilingual children
have greater exposure to adult-like experiences (which is not nec-
essarily always good). They need to comprehend words, concepts,
and situations that usually would have been beyond their reach. As a
consequence, regular language brokers may experience a faster cog-
nitive and socioemotional development than children who broker
infrequently or not at all (Buriel et al., 1998: 283; Acoach & Webb,
2004: 1-2). And they might apply it to leam how to meet the demands
imposed on them by translation and interpreting tasks, through self-
regulated leaming.
Selfregulation is the ability to use and develop knowledge, skills
and attitudes acquired in one context in another context (Boekaerts,
1999: 446). Autonomous or self-regulated learning is a general con-
struct in educational research, based on social cognitive theory (Ban-
dura, 1986). Under this view, personal, situational and behavioral
factors interact in such a way that they move subjects to control
their leaming, which becomes an active, constructive process. These
leamers set their leaming goals, plan actions, and monitor, evalu-
ate, and regulate their own behavior. Their actions are guided and
constrained both by their goals and the way the leamers construct
their experience (cf. Zimmerman, 2000). Often learning occurs from
the influence of the subjects' "self-generated thoughts, feelings, strat-
egies, and behaviors, which are oriented toward the attainment of
goals" (Schunk & Zimmerman, 1998: viii).
The way to this kind of leaming is paved by the subjects' own
metacognitive abilities. Metacognitive abilities relevant to leaming
can be summarized as (1) monitoring one's leaming progress, and
(2) making changes to adapt oneself when progress is not achieved
(Hamilton & Ghatala, 1994; Winn & Snyder, 1996). People with
adaptive beliefs and emotions leam more than other subjects who
Nomen mihi Legio est 47
are less adaptive (cf. Pintrich, 1999). Motivation also plays a very
important role, because it seems closely associated to the use of self-
regulation strategies (Pintrich, 1999), i.e., the ways in which people
manage the input that is available to them. 6 Specifically, there seems
to be a strong relationship between the use of self-regulation strate-
gies and the subjects' sense of self-efficacy, that is, their belief that they
are capable of performing in certain ways to attain certain goals, or
their expectation of success in a given situation (Pintrich & De Groot,
1990; Schunk, 1990; Wolters & Rosenthal, 2000; Usher & Pajares,
2008). Language brokering seems to endow bilinguals with a sense
of self-efficacy (Shannon, 1990; Buriel et al., 1998; Acoach & Webb,
2004; Weisskirch, 2007; Wu & Kim, 2009). In brief, pressed by the need
to provide a service to their relatives, but also certain that they can
succeed, language brokers will further enhance their metacognitive
abilities to monitor and evaluate their performance through reflec-
tion, and this results in leaming how to translate and ~terpret.
Those concemed about the quality of the mediated commu-
nication these language brokering children can achieve might feel
alarmed to leam that sometimes they cannot cope with their tasks in
the same way professional translators and interpreters do. Language
brokers may alter or select the information parents and teachers try
to forward each other (Tse, 1996a). In sensitive health care domains,
bilingual children may lack sufficient emotional maturity to deal
with the issues (Green et al., 2005: 2098; cf. also Pochhacker, 2000).
But this is not because they are poor translators; it is simply because
they are children. Sorne data suggest that language brokers make
more errors with potential clinical consequences than professional
translators (Flores et al., 2003: 6). However, rather than barring lan-
guage brokers from scenarios such as health care, as in Massachu-
setts and California (Abada et al., 2003: 1495; Valds et al., 2003: 64-
65), sorne researchers are suggesting instead that physicians should
be trained to effectively work with ad hoc interpreters (Karliner et
al., 2004; Zabar et al., 2006: 512). After ali, language brokering is a
spontaneous phenomenon present in every society. Children have
6 Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons (1986: 615) coined and defined self-regulated
learning strategies as "actions directed at acquiring information and skill that
involve agency, purpose (goals), and instrumentality self-receptions by a
leamer".
48 Ricardo Muoz Martn
been brokering for centuries (Morales & Hanson, 2005: 472) and the
prospects are that they will keep doing so (Green et al., 2005: 2108).
This means that language brokering performed by children must
somehow work, at least to a certain extent (cf. Valds et al., 2003:
79-84).7 But the focus here is not on quality, but on the fascinating
fact that untrained, bilingual children can leam how to translate and
interpret on their own.
Thus far, this brief summary of research seems to have fleshed
out Harris (1973; 1977) and Harris & Sherwood (1978) arguments.
But the comparison of natural and professional translators and
interpreters cannot be avoided, for it is a key argument for many
people that bilinguals cannot develop their skills on their own to
reach professional levels and meet market demands. According to
Lrscher (1992: 148), this question "can only be answered in terms
of the concept of translation which one adopts". In order to distin-
guish natural from professional translation, Lrscher refers to ReiB
& Vermeer (1984) to define professional translating as a text-based
activity aimed at rendering a text into another text in a different lan-
guage, so that they are optimally equivalent at sorne of various lev-
els (sense, function, style, text type, etc.) with respect to the purpose
of the translation and its addressees. From a cognitive perspective,
the differences captured by this approach might be more a matter of
quantity than of quality, and sorne bad translations would belong
to professionals as well. The only point not covered yet - at least,
indirectly - is that, for professionals, translation is a text-based ac-
tivity, but Hakuta (1988: 14) claims that when bilingual children are
translating "they are certainly working at a much higher level than
word-for-word translation". So we might want to look for differenc-
es somewhere else. Since we are adopting a cognitive perspective, let
us have a look at the other element in the comparison, namely, the
cognition of professional translators and interpreters.
7 Governments should definitely provide professional public services of
interpretation instead (see Corsellis, this volume), to improve the quality
of mediated communication and, not the least, to let children develop their
skills in a more child-like fashion. Contingent needs may have to be met with
available bilinguals, even children, now and then, but many of the scenarios
where untrained bilinguals broker point, rather, to obvious social needs in
multilingual communities which governments should address.
Nomen mihi Legio est 49
3.2. Cognition and Professional Translators and Interpreters
Professional translators and interpreters are usually bilingual to
various degrees, so the same notions of bilingualism apply to them.
But professional is nota cognitive concept. The closest notion we have
is that of an expert, and not all professionals are experts. Expertise
(Ericsson & Smith, 1991; Ericsson ,1996) is the set of capabilities that
underlies the performance of human experts, i.e., of people who per-
form an operation or a set of operations in a limited domain with
exceptional results. These capabilities include extensive domain
knowledge, heuristic rules that simplify and improve problem solv-
ing, enhanced metacognition, and a large set of behavioral proce-
dures that afford great economy in skilled performance.
Experts are taken to need ten years of constant, relevant prac-
tice to fully develop their outstanding abilities (Bloom, 1985; Ray-
es, 1989). Hence, translation and interpreting graduates and other
bilinguals entering the market as translators and interpreters may
not have fully developed their expertise when they start their pro-
fessional careers. Jensen & Jakobsen (2000: 114) suggest that "the
translational behavior of young professionals may be closer to that
of semi-professionals (graduate students) than to that of profes-
sionals with eight or more years of experience". The development
of expertise does not necessarily follow from experience. Often,
when subjects reach an acceptable level of performance, there are no
more gains from further task exposure; for performance to increase
beyond just acceptable levels, subjects need to seek out particular
kinds of relevant experience, i.e., deliberate practice (Ericsson et al.,
1993; Shreve, 1997: 125; Robinson, 1997: 86-97). This is not necessarily
the case of many bilinguals, including many professional translators
and interpreters.
Furthermore, expertise is not something that a person has or
has not8. Rather, it constantly changes throughout the lifespan of a
translator, because it results from the efficient adaptation to certain
working conditions, and these conditions are subject to change. In
the case of translation and interpreting, tasks are so varied that even
8 This might have a correlate with sorne psychological indexes. For example, in
a study carried out by Moser-Mercer et al. (2000), expert interpreters did not
outperform novice students on all cognitive measurements.
 50 Ricardo Muoz Martn
expert professionals may have to face demands where their skills
do not yield any important advantage, because they are fine-tuned
to different ones. For example, a simultaneous interpreter may have
difficulties when performing liaison interpreting, and a translator
of poetry may feel pretty lost when asked to localize. In such cases,
their performance is not necessarily better than that of other, even
untrained bilinguals.
The picture that emerges from these considerations is far from
showing neat categories of translators and interpreters, which would
separate professionals from non-professionals. It looks more like an
open-ended continuum where translation skills and professionalism
do not always go hand in hand. One may be tempted to believe that
cases of untrained translators who have excelled in the profession are
exceptional, as in the case of Gregory Rabassa. But there are literally
thousands of untrained translators who are doing very good, profes-
sional jobs, as in the fields of open source computing applications
(Openffice, Mozilla, etc.), fansubs (Daz & Muoz, 2006; O'Hagan,
2008) and community interpreting. Translation enterprises do hire
untrained bilinguals, and not only in "rare" languages (Sguinot,
2008). All of them are people who have enhanced appropriate skills
by observation, reflection, and experience, thereby acquiring a rel-
evant set of socially accepted norms. We need to conclude that all
bilinguals can translate, and that they will do a pretty good, profes-
sional job if they are motivated and keep trying. It is professionalism,
not translating, which is not coextensive with bilingualism. And it is
professionalism what needs to be explained (cf. Robinson, 1997: 21-
22; Kiraly, 2000: 26-32; Sguinot, 2008).
4. A Note on Formal Training and Research
The considerations stated above challenge a couple of assumptions
that underlie the research on translation and interpreting processes,
and also sorne training practices. In research, many empirical stud-
ies compare novice trainees or "beginners" with professionals as the
points of departure and end of translation and interpreting skill ac-
Nomen mihi Legio est 51
quisition. But we can only properly understand fluent expertise if we
understand the processes by which this carne about (Ellis, 1999: 22-
23, for language acquisition). Since many cognitive improvements
that facilitate translation and interpreting tasks are already under-
way when trainees sit at our classrooms for the first time,9 the point
of departure should be Natural Translation.
Bilinguals with various levels of language command and trans-
lation task exposure should be studied. Subjects in control groups
in many studies should probably be bilinguals, so that the true de-
fining nature of translation and interpreting expertise can be dis-
cemed. This, in tum, calls for an agreement on what a bilingual is,
at least, for research purposes. For instance, there seems to be plenty
of evidence that professionals outperform untrained bilinguals, but
Gmez (2005) used a strict definition and found that bilinguals ob-
tained better results than advanced trainees when translating into
the foreign language, and that the main differences between both
groups were behavioral. Also, a clear distinction should be made
between professional and expert translators, even if there is no end
at this other pole. The varied experience of professional translators
suggests that the evaluation of their products, combined with the ob-
servation of their behavior and sorne psychological measurements,
might be better indicators of degrees of expertise than curricular de-
tails such as their training, the number of years in the profession, or
even the amount of words they have translated.
As for training, the fact that bilinguals can leam how to translate
on their own should call for a change in teaching practices. Tradi-
tional prescriptive, product-oriented methodologies should be aban-
doned to adopt leamer-centered, needs-based, process-oriented ap-
proaches (Gile, 1994; Fox, 2000: 115). Students should be prompted
to build their own knowledge by collaboratively participating in
the authentic activities of professional translators (Kiraly, 2003), and
early in their programs they should leam their future roles as co-
operation partners in text production (Risku & Freihoff, 2000; Olvera
et al., 2009; Mihalache, 2009). Trainees should be exposed to as large
and varied a range of authentic experiences of the translation proc-
9 Gerver et al. (1989) and Shaw et al. (2008) report positive results in predicting
aptitude for interpreting from psychological measurements and tests.
52 Ricardo Muoz Martn
ess as possible (Massey, 2005: 628)10 Awareness of many facets of
the translation process may be fostered with diaries, portfolios (Fox,
2000; Kiraly, 2000; Johnson, 2003; Hrvath, 2005) and through self-
assessment (Robinson et al., 2006). Also, sorne cognitive skills may
be trained separately, such as working memory capacity (Zhong,
2003). In short, we need to move towards situated learning (Lave &
Wenger, 1991) within (socio-) constructivist and cognitive approach-
es. But, above all, the definition of professionalism must be a top
priority for translation theory and pedagogy.
5. Conclusion
Bilinguals seem to have only one lexicon, where elements are also
tagged for language membership. The ability to translate seems en-
grained in cognitive development, for it is probably coextensive with
the ability to build multiple representations and to judge their truth
value from one's own perspective. Bilingualism enhances metalin-
guistic awareness, which is crucial for translating and interpreting
successfully. When exposed to translating and interpreting tasks,
bilinguals will further develop their metacognitive skills, and will
improve their ability to judge and regulate their own performance,
and to establish their own learning goals. And they will readily do so
thanks to their sense of self-efficacy, which fosters their motivation.
Given these conditions, all bilinguals can translate.
Of course, one does not expect a natural skill to develop fully
ovemight (Harris & Sherwood, 1978: 155) and the demands of the
market are not the kind of experience bilinguals usually collect.
Thus, the existence of translation and interpreting programs is fully
justified. But sorne of these programs might be more effective if they
imitate the ways bilinguals learn how to translate and they focus on
realistic training and professionalism. Also, translation process re-
search should extend its scope to include bilinguals in order to better
10 Buriel et al (1998) found that places, i.e., the amount of different scenarios
where bilingual children brokered, was the variable which best captured the
cognitive demands inherent in language brokering.
Nomen mihi Legio est 53
define translation expertise. The population on Earth rounds 6.8 bil-
lion. If we arbitrarily take a modest estimate of 50% bilinguals with
acceptable language skills, and consider that only 10% of them can
translate to a certain extent thanks to their exposure to translation
and interpreting tasks, we still have ca. 350 million of natural transla-
tors. That is more than the whole population of the USA. Too large a
figure to be ignored.
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