The fourth criterion of a good translation

International Journal of Language and Translation Research,, 2022

Translation quality is a central issue in the translation profession as well as translation education and training and is one of the utmost controversial topics in translation studies today. The terms and concepts used in discussing the process of judging translation quality in its various practices and contexts are rather confused by scholars and practitioners in the field. Perhaps, the prime example of such confusion is the interchangeable use of the terms, “evaluation” and “assessment.” Acknowledging the complexity and importance of defining these notions, a shared emphasis is found in the literature on defining and assessing quality in the context of specific situations. In fact, the lack of a universal, unified specialized terminology for judging translations is urging the need to standardize assessment terminology in order to reach a common understanding of quality standards demanded in both academic and professional settings. In order to differentiate among various practices, translation terminology is gradually being evolved. To date, efforts have been made to clarify this terminology and to identify and define different types of translation quality assessment procedures. Through a systematic review of the literature at hand, the present paper is an attempt to map out the terminology for judging quality in various translation practices as a key disciplinary desideratum.

H. Translation Project Publishing, 2014

The focus of this research-oriented book is the best possible interpretation of House’s (1977, 1981, 1997, 2009) translation quality assessment (TQA) model, among the latest approaches to translation evaluation. In this book, the significance of analyzing original and translated literary and other culture specific texts through House’s revisited TQA model as well as the quality of the translation versions are discussed. Then the considerable pertinent problems are proposed, and the notion of expertise in translation is discussed. Further, the model is applied to Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) and its two Persian translations. Finally, some challenging excerpts are offered for discussion and analysis.

2002

We cannot do anything about the proliferation of English Bible translations. They will keep coming. This is something to lament, not to celebrate. People are not more biblically literate as more and more English translations are available. On the contrary, they know less and less about the content of the Bible (p. 196). This quotation serves to highlight the issue which Leland Ryken, Professor of English at Wheaton College, Illinois, is addressing in this book. A ware of the fact that the last two decades have seen a profusion of new translations of the Bible in English, Ryken' s concern is to examine the principles which underlie the task of Bible translation. Reading his book, one is aware both of a burden and of a passion: a burden for the Word of God, which, he contends, some modem versions have failed to communicate fully, and a passion to highlight those principles which will secure excellence in Bible translation. But this is no mere academic discussion of the merits of essential literalism over dynamic equivalence. It is a devastating critique of all translations which have applied the dynamic equivalence theory, on the basis that it is enough to communicate the thought of a passage. Translations like the NIV, the New Living Translation and The Message, are all flawed at this point, according to Ryken. By not paying attention to the individual words of the original text, they are guilty of obscuring much of the original world of the text as well as its literary qualities. In fact, Ryken's work is the exposition of a simple principle: that any translation has to respect the words of the original speaker. When these words are the words of God, the importance of the task is magnified. Many modem translations, according to Ryken, have adopted fallacious pre-judgements: such as that the Bible is uniformly simple, or that it is essentially modern, or that the uliimate goal of translation is readability, or that we should translate as if the Bible writers were living today, or

Advances in Linguistics and Communication Studies, 2019

This chapter first gives an overview of existing interpretations of the concept of quality in organizations in general, as well as in the translation industry and translator training. This is followed by a discussion of quality assessment and how this is generally dealt with in the translation industry and translator training. Various perspectives are possible, but the focus is on translation as service provision as outlined in the translation services standards EN 15038 and ISO 17100. It is argued that implementing quality assessment of translation as service provision in translator training requires the introduction into the curriculum of quality management and quality assurance by students; a so-called skills lab is an ideal environment for this. Various suggestions are then given for assessing quality management and quality assurance while taking into account the requirements of validity and reliability.

Naukovij vìsnik Drogobicʹkogo deržavnogo pedagogìčnogo unìversitetu ìmenì Ìvana Franka, 2020

The article deals with the parameters of translation quality assessment. The author distinguishes three groups of target text users who must know the criteria due to various reasons. Literature review covers outstanding linguists' views on "equivalence" and "adequacy". Though these notions were thought to be synonymous, their meanings are different. Linguists come to the conclusion that equivalence and adequacy are interrelated, the former belongs to language, while the latter refers to speech. Some scholars even distinguish equivalence at different levels: word, idiom, grammar, and text. Translation quality assessment criteria are related to the notion of translator's errors. The quality of translation is improved by attributing "weight" to each error, thus pointing to its seriousness. Linguists distinguish five to seven parameters of errors and / or subdivide them into two to four groups based on the severity of errors. The article scrutinizes quantitative and non-quantitative models of translation quality assessment. The first model checks one or several text fragments and, depending on translation quality, may allow or disallow a certain number of errors. This model assesses the translation accurately; however, it can only be used for non-expressive, i.e. technical texts. Adherents of the nonquantitative model assess texts based on their functional and stylistic characteristics. Though this model can be applied for belles-lettres style, adherents of this approach have not suggested a scale for translation quality assessment yet. The communicative and functional approach to translation takes into account pragmatic aspects of the communicative situation of both the source and the target texts. The author differentiates educational and professional translation. The former aims at making an adequate translation in cooperation with students, while the latter focuses on the final result.

Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) is a delicate issue. Bowker (2000, 183) states that " evaluation is one of the most problematic areas of translation " and quotes Bassnett-McGuire, Mahn, Malmkjaer, and Snell-Hornby who described it as " a great stumbling block, " " a complex challenge, " " a most wretched question, " and " a thorny problem, " respectively. The paper maps the relationship between traditional) and current approaches to translation quality evaluation in terms of terminology and assessment methods and procedures. It states what problems have been traditionally associated with this area of translation studies (subjectivity of evaluation, vagueness of assessment criteria, lack of a standardized terminology and of attention from both researchers and practitioners) and how contemporary authors address these issues. It presents the thesis that problems related to translation evaluation can be reduced by researching evaluation processes and by developing assessment procedures appropriate for specific situations and purposes of evaluation. Based on a survey of traditional approaches, the study seeks to explore the current terminology of the discipline and develops a three-level model of TQA and TQA terminology.

In the new official translation of the current edition of the Roman Missal, without the National Propers for Ireland, there are 210,873 words, according to my computer. In the Latin from which it was translated, there are 187,747 words. The English has about 10% more words. The translation is an awesome task, not made easier by the fact that it is from a dead language to a language which is living and changing. The genius of gifted translation is that the gifts of expression of the second language can become a new revelation of meaning springing from the original language. The task is all the more challenging because of the aim to convey not just the meanings of words and sentences, but also a sense of the allusions to Scripture and to the traditions of Christianity. We need to find words to express a sense of the mystery and awe which are so much an integral element of the mystery of a loving God revealed in the Word made flesh. Finally, we need words which, as Liturgiam Authenticam (the official Vatican guide to liturgical translation) states, will be " evident and comprehensible even to the faithful who lack any special intellectual formation, the translations should be characterized by a kind of language which is easily understandable, yet which at the same time preserves these texts' dignity, beauty, and doctrinal precision. " (Paragraph 25) No translation is ever perfect. The current translation, dating from 1973, did a remarkable job in a relatively short time for the English-speaking church in many parts of the world. It aimed to express meaning without strict word for word equivalenc;, but it also lost some of the richness of the Latin text. I have been asking myself: is this new translation more successful? It does restore some of the lost richness. Yet, sadly, in my view this is not the translation we need. Liturgiam Authenticam insists that " the original text , insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses. " (20) It also insists on maintaining the syntax of Latin " as completely as possible in a manner appropriate to the vernacular language. " (57) A doctrinaire rigidity in applying these principles causes major pastoral problems.

Humanities and social sciences, 2014

The article highlights the principal difference between the traditional text-oriented approach to translation and the functionalist approach. According to the functionalist approach, an act of translation must be viewed as a means to enable ST author, TT recipient and the initiator of the translation to perform their activities. Each of them can be an assessor of translation in various communicative situations, while the distribution of assessors among communicative situations shows that a TT recipient is the key evaluator of translation. In an assessor's perspective, a translation is adequate if it fits the given communicative situation, corresponds to the translation goal and can be used successfully by the TT recipient and/or translation initiator.

Journalism: The Scientific Magazine of Journalism Faculty, 2017

Translation is one of the fundamental and essential tools through which different concepts, ideas, feelings, and cultures are linked. However, it is not an easy task and translators are challenged by many factors during the process of translation. This paper aims to focus on the linguistic factor that directly affects the process of translation. The researcher tries to show and provide evidence that there is no one-to-one relationship between the form and meaning so that the translator produces an adequate and acceptable piece of translation.

Íkala, revista de lenguaje y …, 2009

Normally the translation scholars concerned with the lack of objective parameters with which to carry out effective translation quality assessment processes have conducted their studies based on what is most easily observable: translated texts. In this article, we propose a methodology for the assessment of translated texts within an undergraduate translation program that takes into account not only the final product of the translation, but also the processes that led to the translated text and the subject who produced it.

ELOPE, 2013

Abstract The main focus of modern Translation Studies seems to be the ever changing challenges of successful cross-cultural communication. With globalisation of society, limitations in mutual understanding are surfacing, which are usually followed by the communicator's failure to meet the other party's expectations. The latter are not only linguistically, but culturally embedded and might prove difficult to grasp for those who are not closely connected to the particular culture. Mastering linguistic ablilities is inevitable and represents an important aspect of cross-cultural communication, but achieving a high level of acceptability of (translated) texts proves to be just as important, while not always directly related to the traditional linguistic aspects of the text. It requires meeting the expectations of the target audience which exceed the scope of grammar and vocabulary. Prior cultural and discoursal experience with relevant texts proves to play an important role in producing translations which meet the target audience's expectations in terms of linguistic, but more importantly in terms of discoursal characteristics.

The article aims to describe the inter-rater reliability of translation quality assessment (TQA) in translator training, calculated as a measure of raters’ agreement either on the number of points awarded to each translation under a holistic rating scale or the types and number of translation mistakes marked by raters in the same translations. We analyze three different samples of student translations assessed by several different panels of raters who used different methods of assessment and draw conclusions about statistical reliability of real-life TQA results in general and objective trends in this essentially subjective activity in particular. We also try to define the more objective data as regards error-analysis based TQA and suggest an approach to rank error-marked translations which can be used for subsequent relative grading in translator training.