This paper explores the impact of text complexity on translators’ subjective perception of translation difficultyand on their cognitive load. Twenty-six MA translation students from a UK university were asked to translate three English textswith different complexity into Chinese. Their eye movements were recorded by an eye-tracker, and their cognitive load wasself-assessed with a Likert scale before translation and NASA-TLX scales after translation. The results show that: (i) theintrinsic complexity measured by readability, word frequency and non-literalness was in line with the results received frominformants’ subjective assessment of translation difficulty; (ii) moderate and positive correlations existed between most items inthe self-assessments and the indicator (fixation and saccade durations) obtained by the eye-tracking measurements; and (iii) theinformants’ cognitive load as indicated by fixation and saccade durations (but not for pupil size) increased significantly in twoof the three texts along with the increase in source text complexity.

中文翻译：

---

测量文字翻译的难度

本文探讨了文本复杂性对翻译者对翻译困难的主观感知及其认知负担的影响。来自英国一所大学的26名硕士翻译学生被要求将三种不同复杂程度的英语文本翻译成中文。他们的眼睛运动由眼动仪记录，他们的认知负荷是在翻译前用李克特量表和翻译后的NASA-TLX量表自行评估的。结果表明：（i）通过可读性，单词频率和非文字性来衡量的内在复杂性与从信息提供者对翻译难度的主观评估中得出的结果一致；（ii）自我评估中的大多数项目与通过眼动追踪获得的指标（注视和扫视持续时间）之间存在适度和正相关关系；