The Relationship between Translation Trainees' Thinking Styles and Their Translation Quality

Abstract

Translating is not just a single activity that is done by measure of knowing SL and TL; it is a complex work in which many factors are involved. Among all factors that affect translators' renderings, Thinking Styles are those that make more challenge for the translators. Therefore, the researcher of this quantitative correlational study tried to find out whether there was any relationship between thinking styles and translation quality of thirty B.A. Translation students at Islamic Azad University Eslamshahr Branch based on Sternberg's (1999) theory of Thinking Styles and Waddington's (2001) model D of translation quality assessment. To this end, the Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI) as a self-report twenty four-item Likert scale questionnaire and four paragraphs as the Translation Product Test (TPT) were administered consecutively to evaluate the research question. To analyze the obtained data, Pearson product-moment correlational analysis and multiple regression analysis were accomplished. Based on the results, a null hypothesis was set stating that there is not any relationship between thinking styles and Translation quality of the undergraduate Translation students. As the results of the correlation analyses conducted, this null hypothesis was rejected, because the three thinking styles targeted had a positive correlation with the participants’ scores on translation quality. In addition, the results of multiple regression analysis indicated that the three thinking styles could cumulatively predict a significant amount of the variance in the participants’ scores on translation quality. The findings of the present study have important implications for translation theories, assessment, and training.