Humanities & Social Sciences 12 (2016 9) 2913-2916 ~ ~ ~ УДК 81’25 The Role of Visual Context for Stylistic Differences in Students’ Translations of User Interface Stanislav G. Bogdanov* New Bulgarian University 21 Montevideo Str., Sofia 1618, Bulgaria Received 26.11.15, received in revised form 17.03.16, accepted 27.09.16 This paper reports on a case study aimed to investigate the role of visual context for stylistic differences in students’ UI translations. <...> Data from the two groups revealed stylistic differences and a tendency for a more consistent use of already conventionalized vocabulary on UI elements by the experimental group. <...> Introduction Ivan Turgenev wrote in Fathers and Sons in 1862, “The drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over ten pages in a book” (Рисунок наглядно представит мне то, что в книге изложено на целых десяти страницах). <...> This old adage reworded as “A picture is worth a thousand words”, is all the more valid today in software and web-based user interface (UI) translation. <...> Literature review Dual coding theory (Clark, J. M. & Paivio, A. 1991) posits that an appropriate visual clue which accompanies textual information greatly aids comprehension. <...> It is common practice for software companies and translation agencies to send out to translators and localization experts alphabetical © Siberian Federal University. <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: stanbogdanov@nbu.bg – 2913 – lists of words and phrases devoid of visual context with the wrong assumption that one or two words are ever so easy to translate. <...> While research findings in support of the Dual coding theory are abundant, very little research has been carried out into the impact of visual context on UI translation. <...> Ten graduate students from one Translation in Localization class participated in this study. <...> Everyone had used a computer before with an average of 15.8 years of usage experience. 3. <...> Design and procedure The present study is based on analyzing the linguistic output produced by students in the class tasks. <...> The source text contains 3883 words, 991 of which are unique words. <...> The target text contained on average 3759 words, approximately 1126 of which <...>