Feasibility of Using House’ TQA Model in Self-Revision in English-Arabic Non-Literary Translation: An Empirical Study

Abstract

This paper is an empirical study investigating the feasibility of using House’ 2015 TQA model as a tool for self-revision to assess the quality of the English-Arabic translation of some semantic and rhetorical challenges in non-literary series of books under the name “Perspectives on Higher Education” translated by the researcher. While self-revision is part and parcel of the translation process, it is understudied compared to the volume of translation made every day across the world. House’ TQA model is vastly used in assessing the quality of translation in different domains and between various language pairs, but to the best knowledge of the researcher there are no studies made on the model as a self-revision tool, hence this study. As part of the empirical study, examples with special semantic and rhetorical challenges are selected for the self-revision process using House’ model. The analysis follows four steps: problem identification, solution explanation, solution assessment and finally making a statement of quality. The study finds that mismatches do not necessarily mean wrong translation as the context may necessitate using a mismatch. The study finds that using House’ TQA model as a tool for self-revision needs few modifications such as adding a clear criterion for the successful transfer of the overall meaning of the ST and acceptability in the TT context.