A Functional Approach for Translation Quality Assessment: Application to Informative, Expressive and Operative Text Types

Abstract

Translation Studies has always focused on theory and pedagogy, but accorded the least importance to assessment. The research aims to test the hypothesis that a comprehensive objective model for translation assessment of various text types can be designed by proposing a scoring rubric and a Translation Competence hierarchy combining functional qualitative and quantitative aspects. The qualitative aspect is incorporated from functional theories, mainly Reiss and Vermeer’s (2014) Skopos Theory, Reiss’ (2000a) text typology and Nord’s (2005) concept of “Functionality plus Loyalty”. Besides, the quantitative aspect includes scoring the translation product using a modified version of Angelelli’s (2009) rubric whose percentage score is aligned to the translator’s professional competence level on the adapted hierarchy set by Dreyfus (2004). The proposed rubric represents a top-down assessment starting with the pragmatic macro-level transfer competence of the target text’s function and type as the governing other sub-competencies of interpretation, linguistic transfer and logical organization. Implementing the rubric and the hierarchy to two translations of a cultural informative book (Orientalism), a literary expressive novel (Brave New World) and ten persuasive advertisements as operative texts, empirically show the better version. The study attempts to answer the question about the most practical definition of Translation Quality Assessment (TQA). Another question posed is the reason why various previous TQA approaches have failed to provide a reliable assessment tool. Moreover, the third important question is which criteria should be prioritized in efficient assessment: Accuracy or Adequecy or both. Finally, the fourth question is about how to bridge the gap between theory and practice in TQA through a comprehensive assessment model. The results of the research show that the most practical defition of TQA is the functional one offered by Lommel et al. (2013) combined with the multi-componential view of Translation competence. The study also validates the need to disregard the one-sided view of TQA definitions and approaches set by either qualitative or quantitative theories for the sake of a more comprehensive harmonized one.