Historical Overview of Translation quality assessment (TQA)

Quality is certainly an important issue in modern industry. Consequently, industrial customers come up with quality requirements for translations of their documentation and localized products. At the same time we have to recognize that a growing number of customers are, to a certain extent, fully capable of assessing the quality of the translated product. They are not capable of producing the text themselves, but they do know how to pinpoint quality. Total Quality Management (TQM) as the mother of all the quality assessment subsystems defines the concept of quality as "Fully satisfying agreed customer requirements". Furthermore, International Standard Organization (ISO) defines quality as "The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs". Taking these matters into consideration, in recent years there has been a significant increase in interest in developing good criteria for solving the problems of assessing the quality of translation. This interest has resulted in many studies concerning the nature of translation, the techniques and procedures used in the translation process. There have also been attempts to build models for assessing translation quality which may be used as workable tools by translators and translation evaluators. To name just afew, Farahzad (1992) believes that the field of Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) is problematic, especially when the texts are long, and also there are various theories and applications about the evaluation of students' translations. Some scholars are concerned with developing models that satisfy the needs of practitioners, thus attempting to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Others make attempt to draw up "objective" translation assessment criteria by means of incorporating conventional frameworks of educational measurement, such as reliability, validity, and objectivity, into their overall structures. She maintains that two main features are to be checked in scoring for each unit of translation (suggesting that sentence and clause might be the units of translation) and they are:

1. Accuracy: the translation should convey the information in the ST precisely i.e. the translation should be close to the ST norms.

2. Appropriateness: the sentences sound fluent and native, and are correct in terms of structure.

She declares that unnatural translations which convey the source text's meaning receive half a score, whereas inaccurate translations receive no score, no matter how appropriate and natural the target texts sound. In addition, in error recognition items, one score is given for spotting the error, and another one for correcting it. Regarding the long texts, Farahzad believes that scoring them can be done in several ways:

A: it can be scored holistically: Since the item assesses a wide variety of competencies, the examiner may find it convenient to approach the text as the unit of translation and adopt this system, especially with a large number of students. The examiner may, for instance, come up with the following scheme:

1. Accuracy - 20 percent

2. Appropriateness - 20 percent

3. Naturalness - 20 percent

4. Cohesion - 20 percent

5. Style of discourse/choice of words - 20 percent

B: it can be subjected to objectify scoring: In this system the target text must be read two times, first to check the accuracy and appropriateness, then for cohesion and style. Albeit time-consuming, this system is more reliable.

Farahzad suggests that sentence and clause might be the units of translation. Thus each verb in the source language text marks a score. The main clause receives one score and each sub-clause another score. So the accuracy and appropriateness are checked in each sentence and clause. Cohesion and style cannot be checked and scored at the sentence and clause level. The elements of cohesion (e.g. transitional, appropriate use of pronouns, linkages, etc.) are spread all over the text as are the elements which form the style of discourse (choice of words, grammatical structures, etc.) If, for instance, the source text is fairly neutral, one may allot a smaller number of points to it than in other cases where the preservation of style is important. However, Farahzad's method seems a holistic method and it may cause some problems in evaluation of translations. Hence, it seems that Waddington's method might complete the Farahzad's method in assessment, which is expressed as follows:

Waddington (2001) indicates that almost all the contributions in Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) have been descriptive or theoretical and have centered mainly on the following themes:

(i) Establishing the criteria for a "good translation" (Darbelnet 1977, Newmark 1991);

(ii) The nature of translation errors:

- Defining the nature of translation errors as opposed to language errors (House 1981, Nord 1993, Kussmaul 1995, Gouadec 1989);

- Drawing up a catalogue of possible translation errors (Gouadec 1981);

- Establishing the relative, as opposed to absolute, nature of translation errors (Williams 89, Gouadec 89, Pym 92, Kussmaul 95);

- The need to assess quality not only at the linguistic but also the pragmatic level (Sager 1989, Williams 1989, Hewson 1995, Kussmaul 1995, Nord 1996, Hatim & Mason 1997);

(iii) Basing quality assessment on text linguistic analysis (House 1981, Larose 1989);

(iv) Establishing various textual levels on a hierarchical basis and linking the importance of mistakes to these levels (Dancette1989, Larose 1989).

For instance, in order to find out the kind of translation exam and the kinds of methods of correction currently in use in Faculties of Translation, Waddington sent out a questionnaire to 48 European and Canadian universities. A total of 52 teachers replied from 20 of these universities and their answers reflected the following situation:

(i) All the teachers said that they require the students to translate a text, although over half also include other complementary tests.

(ii) As far as methods of evaluating student translations were concerned, 36.5% of the teachers use a method based on error analysis, 38.5% use a holistic method, and 23% combine error analysis with a holistic appreciation.

In accordance with these findings, he considers the validity of the results obtained through applying these different types of methods to the correction of translations of part of an authentic text done by students under exam conditions.

Al-Qinai (2000) indicates that translation is a complex hermeneutic process in which intuition plays a crucial role in interpreting the intentions of the ST writer. Further, languages vary in their choice of lexical connotations, sentence structure and rhetorical strategies, the only tangible tools for assessment. It is prudent, therefore, to talk about the adequacy of a translation rather than the degree of equivalence. In addition, quality is relative and absolutes of accuracy cease where the end user (i.e. client) imposes his own subjective preferences of style in TT. Concerning these challenges, standardization of quality is thus a fuzzy grey area. However, Al-Qinai in his study concerns to textual/ functional (or pragmatic) compatibility (i.e. quality of linguistic conversion) rather than to the logistics of management and presentation (i.e. quality of service). He points out that the ultimate end-users are interested in the quality of the product and not the means sought to serve its creation. According to him, the assessment of a translated text seeks to measure the degree of efficiency of the text with regard to the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic function of ST within the Cultural frame and expressive potentials of both source language and target language. He also states that since no two languages are identical, either in meaning or in form, the best we can hope for is an approximation given the following variables:

a) Nature of ST message.

b) Purpose and intent of ST producer.

c) Type of audience.

Another translation scholar, Sainz (1992), discusses a student-centered approach to correction of translations. She believes that teachers must make it clear that there are no right or wrong answers to the questions and that the students' answers are going to be used only as feedback for discussion later on.

The process which Sainz suggests for correction of translations

Comprises five stages as follows:

1. Development is a stage during which it is intended to understand and anticipate students 'needs in order to meet them more efficiently.

2. Implementation is a stage during which students get the "correction chart" shown on the following:

Under "Mistakes" students write the word, phrase or sentence which was understood as incorrect in their translation. Under "Possible Correction" they try to produce an "error free" version. The source of the answer for students' correction is entered under the column "Source" as: 'Myself'; 'Peer'; 'Dictionary'; 'Teacher'. The column "Type of Mistake", filled in by the students, can become a good exercise to help students recognize what types of mistake they are making and consequently eliminate them.

3. Monitoring is a stage during which teachers can monitor the process in order to make adjustments as the course unfolds, on the basis of the information they retrieve from the 'Correction Chart'.

4. Integration is a stage during which teachers can fill in their own chart of "Types of Mistakes" for a particular translation piece.

5. Self-monitoring is a stage during which students can check their own progress in the course, at the same time, become critical about their learning.

Besides, at the bottom of the 'Correction Chart', students are asked to circle the figure, ranging from +3 to -3, which they think best matches their idea about their performance in that particular translation passage and to make any other comments.