Rasgos de la personalidad y creatividad determinantes en la calidad y la creatividad en traducción

Abstract

To this day, there is little research that has studied the psychology of personality and creativity applied to translation. While it is true that studies carried out on the relationship between emotional intelligence, emotional stability, intuition, anxiety, tolerance to uncertainty, self-esteem and creativity in translation (Bayer-Hohenwarter, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013; Hubscher-Davidson, 2011a,b, 2013a,b, 2016; Bontempo et al., 2014; Çoban and Telci, 2016; Arnaiz-Castro and Pérez-Luzardo, 2016; Bayani, 2016; Cifuentes and Meseguer, 2016; Cifuentes and Fenollar, 2017; Fábregues, 2017; Rosiers and Eyckmans, 2017; Akbari and Segers, 2017; Rojo, 2017; Lehka-Paul, 2018) try to shed light on this connection, the studies that address this subject are still not enough, and their results are inconclusive. Therefore, this work aims to explore those traits of personality and creativity that could influence the translation process of three textual typologies. To fulfill this main objective, this research intends to meet the following specific goals: to investigate the influence of five traits of personality (extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience) and creativity on the final quality and creativity of the translation of a literary text, a technical text and an informative text; to analyze the impact of expertise on the final quality and creativity of a translation; to explore the significant differences between students and professionals in respect of personality traits and creativity; and to investigate the cross relations between creativity and the five personality traits we studied. We had a total of 114 participants - translation students and professionals - who translated the texts from English into Spanish. Three tests were used to conduct the study. The first one consisted of a translation test of three texts (one informative, one technical and one literary) that included routine and creative shifts to measure the quality and creativity of the translations. The Big Five Questionnaire, by Caprara et al. (2001), was also used to measure personality traits; and the CREA test, by Corbalán Berná et al. (2015), was used to measure creativity. The results suggest that openness to experience and a low energy favor creativity in the translation of literary texts; that openness to experience and agreeableness, as well as a low energy, favor the quality of the translation of technical texts; and that openness to experience, emotional stability, as well as a low level of agreeableness and conscientiousness, favor the accuracy and readability of the translation of informative texts. Concerning creativity as a trait, we obtained no significant results regarding the quality or creativity degree of the translation. The results also show that professionals deliver higher quality and more creative translations, and show a more creative and less agreeable personality than students; on the other hand, students show lower energy and emotional stability than professionals. Finally, we were able to see a positive correlation between creativity and energy. This dissertation contributes to outlining the role of personality and creativity in translation, an aspect that has hardly been explored in translation studies. It can also be of great help both to translation lecturers, who can use the results to provide better guidance to their students when it comes to choosing their specializations, and to employers, who will find valuable information on the personality traits that are most relevant in different types of translation.