Animacy and agentivity of Subject Themes in English-German translation

Abstract This paper aims to analyze the translation of typical inanimate Subject Themes in the popular scientific register from English to German. Taking into account contrastive differences between English and German, we assumed that English sentences containing a combination of inanimate Subjects and agentive verbs would pose a translation problem that could potentially be reflected in translation shifts and increased values for reading and typing related measures of cognitive effort. A translation experiment was designed to test this assumption. We triangulated keystroke logging and eye tracking data from 13 professional translators and tested the results using linear mixed regression modeling. Our results show that the stimuli that included an inanimate Subject were more prone to be changed in the translations. However, the animacy of the Subject did not have a significant effect on the behavioral measures. A possible explanation for this finding is that animacy of the Subject is so salient for German translators that they change it without extensive deliberation.