The Evaluation of Translation Quality: Criteria Used by Different Actors in the Field of Translation

Presentation for the Olomouc Conference.

'The evaluation of translation quality: criteria used by different actors in the field of translation.'

Alain MUREGANCURO, American Studies Center, FTI-EII, UMons, Belgium.
alain.muregancuro@umons.ac.be; almuregan@yahoo.com

Abstract

In the scope of my Ph. D. thesis on The Evaluation of translation quality, I am working on an experiment consisting of interviews addressing a few questions:
What are the criteria being used by translators of international institutions? What are the criteria being used by free-lance translators? What are the criteria being used by translation teachers in translation institutions? Is it possible to take some subjectivity out of the process of evaluating the quality of a translation?
We will try and examine the common points and the differences between these actors of the translation field. The following step will consist of an analysis of the different practices. In order to do so, we will conduct a set of interviews with a certain number of translators working for an international institution but also interviews of translation teachers. Our purpose will be to compare not only the different choices made by each group but also to shed some light on the reasons behind these choices. Therefore, we will transcribe the content of the interviews to examine them in depth. We will analyze the results and compare them. These results and our conclusions will then be presented at conferences and seminars on specific translation practices. The goal is to see how close the different practices are. If the analysis of these different viewpoints shows some discrepancies, we will examine and try to understand them as well as look for potential ways to reconcile them. We will then present our conclusions to our pairs for an open and productive discussion.