Le discours de la francophonie

Elena Gheorghiţă – Think aloud protocols…analysis, research report) and in a host of studies setting their owncategorisations in a theoretical void. Most of the research reportswe have been concerned with so far describe the research designsummarily, present findings in an anecdotal fashion, do not provideany statistical analysis of their data (and sometimes not eventhe data themselves) and leave central theoretical assumptionsunexplained. The reader thus finds it difficult to assess the validityof the results obtained. Besides, the studies themselves sometimesseem to be loosely set up.Another problem with most of the studies dealt with here isthe excessive reliance on between-subject designs, used to comparethe performance of professionals with that of semi-professionalsand/or non-professionals This is a very controversial design,which is nonetheless normally posited without further discussion.Even if we had an uncontroversial way of determiningwhat professionalism involves – and we do not, resorting to externalmeasures such as years of experience and official certificationsonly partially solves the problem – we would still have totake into account individual differences in the ability or dispositionto verbalise, interests, involvement with the task, variableeffects of the experimental condition and so on. This preoccupationis shared, for instance, by Krings who claims that «individualdifferences between subjects with regard to their willingnessto verbalise might be greater than Ericsson & Simon seem toassume» 15 .Lastly, it is necessary to mention a general methodologicalproblem with the use of think-aloud protocols in translation research.As a method of data collection in cognitive science, thinkaloudprotocols are recognised as valid only if they have beencollected under very rigorous experimental conditions. Whenthink-aloud protocols are used in translation research, theseconditions are very often relaxed. Although this is partly due tothe justified need to preserve environmental validity, this ten-15 Krings, H.P. (1987), The use of introspective data in translation, inFarch, C. and Kasper, G. (eds.), Introspection in second language research, MultilingualMatters, Clevedon, p.167.89