Devising a systematic approach to examination marking criteria for audiovisual translation: a case study from Poland

Abstract

Until recently, audiovisual translation in Europe ‘was learned in situ, away from educational establishments’. Despite a number of publications devoted to different aspects of this dynamically evolving discipline, the teaching and assessment of the different types of audiovisual translation have received limited attention. One case of this is Poland, where audiovisual translation has been introduced at universities relatively recently, and where there is a need to develop a systematic and objective approach to the assessment of different types of audiovisual translation which could be followed in final examinations. This article focuses on the issue of evaluating audiovisual translations in the higher education context. Based on the market standards reported in the literature, we identify challenges specific to voice-over, subtitling and audio description, and argue that the different types of audiovisual translation require different assessment categories. We then develop sets of detailed voice-over, subtitling and audio-description specific evaluation criteria which were applied to assess student translations in a master’s and postgraduate programme at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. The criteria cover information transfer and language, together with a range of technical aspects. The discussion centres on our approach to ranking and grading the evaluation criteria, followed by a reflection on how those criteria worked in practice in final exams.