Cognition and Comprehension in Translational Hermeneutics

2021

Cognition and Comprehension in Translational Hermeneutics

Introspektion unter der Lupe. Phänomenologische und hermeneutische Ansätze im empirischen Vergleich mit Think Aloud und IPDR

This essay presents a portion of a long-term project designed to develop, refine and test methods that can be employed in research in Translation Studies. The research depicted here is a joint project between Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań, Poland) and Technische Hochschule in Cologne, Germany. In the spring of 2014, eight students from each university took part in a project designed to compare the relative strengths and weaknesses – pedagogical as well as epistemological – of two methodological pairs: one being the phenomenological method and the hermeneutical analysis; the other was think-aloud and IPDR (Integrated Problem and Decision Reporting). The students were asked to perform role plays, four of which took place in Poznań, and four of which took place in Germany, which simulated job interviews or employee evaluations. Although the long-term goal of the project is to enhance introspective methods for use in Translation Studies, for methodological reasons this joint project deals medially with role plays and focuses on face-to-face interaction. Upon completion of the role plays, the authors of this essay used both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze extensively the various reports from the role plays and to compare these reports with the video recordings made of the role plays. In this article we discuss the design of the role plays, the methods used to analyze them, and our conclusions.