The music and power of concentration while translating

The first things that can come to your mind when reading this title are how music and cognitive activity related. How important concentration is in the exercise of translation, and its close relation with empowering productivity.

Concentration is considered the ability to have a selective focus on objects or activities without allowing elements foreign to it. On the other hand, distraction is the loss of concentration, which happens when the mind wanders. Due to the process in the mind of a translator, concentration must reach a higher level to optimize their performance.

The complex process of translation is defined in multiple steps. A translator receives the written message in the source language, decodes it, frees it from linguistic support, and recodes it, covers it with linguistic support, in a target language.  Translation requires cognitive functions, which are the mental processes that allow us to receive and process information.

What professionals say about this?

An article published by Fundación UNAM, they state the following:

“Dr. Gordon Shaw and Dr. Frances Rauscher, scientists at the University of California and the University of Wisconsin and many others in the brain research community, have proven that music has extensive educational value at the level of brain development. Listening to music can increase memory and concentration. Scientists discovered that music involves the left, right, anterior, and posterior brain proportions, which explains why people learn and retain information more quickly. (Mauri, 2001)”

Another study made by Patton et al. 1986 states that, besides increasing memory and concentration, it also improves cognitive abilities. Some surgeons use it during their operations to block distractions and concentrate.

This works because processing music and performing manual activities are processes that don’t compete with each other inside the brain. Music used with an environmental effect during a creative writing activity increases the imaginative capacity. This results in an increase in the creation of a text richer in vocabulary and fantasy.

On the other hand, music encompasses many senses, it goes beyond art, it offers visual and tactile stimulation, it touches our emotions. Therefore, the power of music can be subjective. Music, due to its connection with emotions and memories, can lead us to different mental states. It can be something positive when it connects with positive emotions, making us better at task performance.

Music can also cause a disturbance in an individual, by diminishing the performance in different tasks, when it allows subconscious and disturbing feelings to surface in the consciousness. This happens because our brain will focus on the event triggered by the music that is being listened to instead of the original objective.

How does music and translation relate?

As previously mentioned, translation requires complete concentration due to the complex processes involved, so the question is not whether the should listen to music or not, the question should be: which music is best to listen to?

Daniel Levitin, author of the book “This Is Your Brain on Music:  The Science of a Human Obsession” matches Nick Perham, a psychologist at Cardiff University in the UK, who specializes in the effect that sound has on our cognitive ability and states the following:

“The more captivating the music, the worse it is for concentration, and if it has lyrics, says Levitin, it is terrible for verbal tasks. But background noise doesn’t necessarily always have a negative effect”

Listening to instrumental music is better than working in silence, because it empowers concentration and cognitive processes allowing an individual to have more creative and productive thoughts.

The line drawn between increasing a translator’s concentration through music or working in silence is very thin.  It’s also dependent on the type of music you decide to listen to and the individual’s way of working.