Self-efficacy as a protective factor when translating under time pressure

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to investigate the relations between translation trainees’ self-efficacy and hormonal and subjective responses to the stressful situation of translating under strict time constraints and how these may impact their actual translation performance. With that purpose in mind, participants completed a questionnaire in which they were asked about their self-efficacy beliefs (Costa, Serrano, Salvador, 2016) and two other self-reported questionnaires: the State-and-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, and Jacobs, 1983), and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson, Clark, and Tellegen, 1988). They were asked to translate three comparable literary texts from English into Spanish under different time limit conditions. When finished, they completed a questionnaire on their perceptions and feelings about their performance. Besides, five cortisol salivary samples were collected at different points in time during the experimental session. Overall, our results showed that self-efficacy beliefs are a protective factor against stress that reduces the negative impact of translating under time-pressure conditions. Regarding translation quality, trainees with higher self-efficacy seem to produce less accurate target texts in terms of meaning under stringent time pressure than students with lower self-efficacy beliefs. Moreover, a higher level of cortisol seems to have a beneficial effect on accuracy for the same condition.