Abstract
This research aims to investigate early-career professional translators' information-seeking behaviour in translating into and out of one's A language. As information seeking is regarded as a key competence for professional translators, a focus on information-seeking behaviour has recently gained a more central place in literature. Few, however, have discussed the relationship between directionality and information-seeking behaviour. Considering the fact that in the Chinese context, it is a common practice for a professional translator to do either Chinese-English or English-Chinese translation, this research focuses on early-career professional translators' information-seeking behaviour in two-way translation. With its exploratory nature, this research employs mixed methods by triangulating think-aloud protocols, screen recordings and interviews to investigate native Chinese translators, who are working based in China. The research combines quantitive analysis and qualitative analysis, exploring main categories of their information seeking behaviour, including information seeking triggers, resources, seeking strategies and seeking paths as well as seeking outcome and self-perception. According to the experiments, this research provides empirical evidence to the different presences of directionality during the process of information seeking. Under a dynamic framework, three dimensions of information-seeking behaviour and their connection with directionality are mainly analysed in the study. Consistent with existing literature, this research finds that, in the text dimension, translators place more emphasis on production over comprehension in both translation directions. In the resource dimension, the categories of resources are similar in both translation directions; instead, translators' individuality in resource selection is more evident. Finally, in the translator dimension, it is shown that translators' familiarity with their A language and their prior knowledge about its culture lead to a more cautious use of equivalents they sought. The finding is different from the view that the familiarity with one's A language helps simplify the translation process.