Academic approaches application to translation quality assessment and evaluation in translation teaching context

Abstract

The paper offers a descriptive and analytical overview of the academic approaches tothe translation quality assessment (TQA) and evaluation. The rationale of the study is that the observing of theacademic approaches to the TQA and evaluation can help in understanding what constitutes the translationquality, what features define its levels as well as in grounding the model for the evaluation of the translationquality in the field of education. Purpose & Methods. The purpose of this analytical overview is to exploreexisting TQA and evaluation approaches, define their general characteristics, common and distinctive features,advantages and limitations, observe the efficiency and teaching potential of the TQA models which adoptthese approaches in terms of validity, reliability and objectivity. Results. The paper deals with the academicapproaches to the TQA and evaluation and their classifications. House’s classification relies on the identificationof the evaluation components based on theoretical concepts of translation and includes four approaches:impressionistic, response-based, functionalistic, and text-based. Scholars also debate that assessment shouldfocus both on the translation product and process. According to Lauscher, the approaches fall into two broadcategories: equivalence-based and functional. Williams focuses on the methodology of assessment and identifiesquantitative and non-quantitative approaches. Waddington divides text-based approaches into analytic, holisticand combined ones. These approaches find their application in the TQA models which suggest methods, criteria,instruments, and procedures to ensure validity, reliability and objectivity of assessment and evaluation of thequality of translation. Conclusion. Due to certain limitations, there is neither a commonly accepted acrosstranslation research TQA approach nor a universally suitable in the context of teaching TQA model. However,the combination of the approaches is how the requirements of validity, reliability and objectivity of the TQAand evaluation results can be met. The efficiency of a TQAmodel in the context of translation teaching is ensuredby: a) establishing a comprehensive set of quality aspects, b) setting the criteria associated with learning outcomes,c) developing descriptors of the overall performance in the alignment with the criteria, quality aspects andquality levels, d) developing the error typology and error-marking scale to measure the quantitative dimensionof quality, e) employing methods of the translation process observation as a means of indicating factors influencingthe quality of the translation product.