The Impact of Chinese Subject Types on Difficulty of Chinese-English Sight Translation: An Eye-movement Study

The aim of this study was to explore the impact of nominal subjects of Chinese sentences during Chinese-English sight translation.The study used an eye tracking method to collect the eye movement indicators of 30 Chinese English learners while they were required to finish sight translation tasks.The results showed that:1) sight translation of sentences with a compound subject was more difficult than that with single subject; 2) sight translation of sentences with an agentive subject+patient subject was more difficult than that with a patient subject+agentive subject; 3) sight translation of sentences with a temporal subject, a locative subject, or a recipient subject was more difficult than that with agentive subject or patient subject.This study shows that different types of Chinese subjects have different levels of difficulty in Chinese-English sight translation, which arises from the differences in the cognitive processing of the subjects during Chinese-English conversion.