The Effect of Translators’ Emotional Intelligence on Their Translation Quality

Mohsen Varzande,Esmaeil Jadidi

doi:10.5539/elt.v8n8p104

Abstract

Translators differ from each other in many ways in terms of their knowledge, professional and psychological conditions that may directly influence their translation. The present study aimed at investigating the impact of translators’ Emotional Intelligence on their translation quality. Following a causal-comparative study, a sample of 100 male and female professional translators, working in official or non-official translation offices or as freelance translators, were selected using purposive sampling method. Petrides & Furnham’s (2001) Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire – (TEIQue-SF) was administered to collect data on the participants’ emotional intelligence. The participants were then asked to translate a paragraph including 232 words, from Orwell’s 1984 novel, to assess their translation quality. To do this, Waddington’s model D (2001) was used as the marking system. For data analysis, correlation statistical procedure was used in order to investigate the research hypothesis. Results showed that translators’ academic experience significantly affects their translation quality, while no significant relationship was found between their Emotional Intelligence and their translation quality. The results also clearly depicted that the translation quality of translators with academic experience was significantly better than that of those without academic experience.

Highlights

Translators differ from each other in many ways mainly due to their professional and psychological conditions
The necessity of investigating translators’ Emotional Intelligence is of great importance; For instance, Nassimi (2009) demonstrated that there is a positive relationship between EQ and the quality of children’s literature translation
As cited in Shangarffam and Abolsaba (2009), in Nassimi’s (2009) study, it was demonstrated that there is a positive relationship between EQ and the quality of translation

Summary

Introduction

Translators differ from each other in many ways mainly due to their professional and psychological conditions. There are a lot of questions about why two translators with the same age and academic background are different from each other in their task of translation. Recent studies made it obvious that translation has always gone hand in hand with so many factors; it should be studied along other fields, and it is not separate from them. Emotions and being intelligent about them is an important factor, and presumably it can heavily influence the translation activities (Farahzad, 2003). Psycho-linguistic factors are involved in the process of translating (Shahraki, 2011)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion