This study is based on an experimental method of eye-tracking to investigate how translators perceive and understand translated literary texts and how different stylistic features influence their perception. This methodology allowed us to observe which parts of the text translators focused on the most, providing valuable data on their reading patterns and cognitive processes. Among English-Chinese translators, 95 out of 120 participants (79%) showed a tendency to prioritize faithfully conveying the source text’s meaning over crafting a target text that aligns with Chinese stylistically. In the specific context of Chinese-English translation out of the 120 instances examined, the translators exhibited a reduced fixation duration on words in the source language, accounting for 34 instances (28%). This suggests a greater concern for preserving the source text’s meaning rather than adapting it to the target culture. This research can assist translators and linguists in translating the stylistic features of English and Chinese literary texts more effectively. Future studies can explore other language stylistic features that may impact translation and compare translation styles across various literary genres and language pairs.

本研究基于眼动追踪实验方法，探讨译者如何感知和理解翻译文学文本，以及不同的文体特征如何影响他们的感知。这种方法使我们能够观察文本翻译者最关注的部分，从而提供有关他们的阅读模式和认知过程的有价值的数据。在英汉翻译中，120 名参与者中有 95 名（79%）倾向于优先考虑忠实传达源文本的含义，而不是精心制作与中文风格一致的目标文本。在所检查的 120 个实例中，在汉英翻译的特定语境中，译者对源语言单词的注视时间减少，占 34 个实例（28%）。这表明人们更关心保留源文本的含义，而不是使其适应目标文化。这项研究可以帮助译者和语言学家更有效地翻译英汉文学文本的文体特征。未来的研究可以探索可能影响翻译的其他语言风格特征，并比较不同文学体裁和语言对的翻译风格。