Developing a Valid Scale for Translation Quality Assessment in the Undergraduate Translator Training Program

Abstract

The rapid expansion of translator training which is highly interrelated with the socio-cultural and economical developments in our country has underscored the need for efficient translation quality assessment (TQA). Unfortunately most of the works addressing TQA focus on the theoretical domain and the ones which have taken a practical stance to TQA mostly lack the necessary empirical robustness. The research reported here was conducted in order to address one of the fundamental requirements in TQA at the undergraduate translator training program. It involved development of a scale for TQA based on a well-established theory of translation competence – the PACTE (2003) multicomponential model. Three experienced raters used the developed scale for rating more than two hundred translation protocols written by undergraduate university students coming from three universities. Eventually the validity of the scale was established through calculation of different reliability estimates as well as running an exploratory factor analysis of the ratings.