Le discours de la francophonie

Elena Gheorghiţă – Think aloud protocols…dency should be checked, as it may result in the invalidation ofthe results obtained.The study which makes the subject of this section is still inits infancy: analysis of the data collected has only just begun, andno conclusive results can as yet be presented. The concerns of thispaper being primarily methodological, we shall be dealing heremainly with the design and set-up of the experiment. After describingthe purposes of the study and the questions it addresses, weshall go on to discuss the methodology adopted, and finally pointat some provisional suggestions with regard to experiment set-up.Provisionally, the following hypothesis has been launchedfor the study: if we are able to deduce the algorithm of translationprocess, performed by humans, we should be able to design softwarethat would be capable to produce translation of very specializedtexts, without human post editing, paying greatest attentionto attention units, automaticity of processing and affective factors.Five undergraduate students in their last year of study andMaster Degree students in their first year of study participated inthe study so far. The study was discontinued for two reasons. Oneof them is to review the experiment design and methodology withthe view to make it more strict. Another reason is more down-toearth:the students are on vacation.Participants initially were selected randomly, based on theirwillingness to participate and a brief discussion, which was performedto ensure that they are comfortable enough with the generaltopic of the text to be proposed. Students were asked to translatea recipe and verbalize everything they do. Texts of recipeswere collected in cooking blogs in Russian, English, Romanian.Students were allowed to choose the language they felt mostcomfortable with (surprisingly, many have chosen to translate aRussian or Romanian text into English). The conversation was recordedand transcribed. Each session lasted around 60 minutes,approximately 40 minutes would go for preparatory stage.After the first few sessions we decided to stop the experimentand review the methodology. The reasons were the following.First of all, students seemed to have a great difficulty over-90