ERROR COMMITTING STAGE IN THE TRANSLATION BETWEEN JAPANESE AND ENGLISH - THE COMPREHENSION STAGE OR THE PRODUCTION STAGE

Language translation consists of two processing stages-comprehension s tage and production stage. The comprehension stage is where messages i n a source language are comprehended and the production stage is where messages in a target language are produced. Two experiments were desi gned to examine which processing stage causes more errors in translati on. In Experiment 1, Japanese students were asked to memorize and then to translate one set of Japanese and English sentences into the oppos ite language, and also were required to memorize and then to recall an other set of the sentences. The results of Expeiment showed that the o ccurrence of error depended more on the source language than on the ta rget language. This indicates that errors in translation occur mainly in the comprehension stage. The results were reconfirmed by Experiment 2, where Japanese students were required to read a Japanese or Englis h sentences each time and after that they were directed either to tran slate or to recall it.