The aim of the present article is to give an overview of the most important approaches to translation competence. As the term ‘competence’ is used in a somewhat arbitrary way in translation studies, psychological approaches to competence are reviewed first. Then some influential translation competence models are presented and analyzed. Translation competence models are classified into three categories based on Pym (2003). The outlined translation competence models are also related to the psychological concepts of competence described at the beginning of the study. Finally, recurrent issues related to translation competence are identified and discussed briefly. These issues involve the relationship between language competence and translation competence; the existence of a separate transfer component of competence, the status of natural translation and the differences between L1→L2 and L2→L1 translation. It is concluded that none of the models of translation competence is inherently better than the others. It is always the purpose of a given piece of research or project that should determine the type of competence model to be adopted.

The aim of our research was to investigate social and emotional skills that determine pre-schoolers' aggressive and pro-social behaviours in stressful situations. The sample of the empirical study consisted of 119 (36-48, 49-60 and 61-72 months) Hungarian children from six pre-schools. Instruments that were used: Coping strategy self-report and teacher-report questionnaires as well as hypothetical social situations interviews with puppets. The statistical analysis of pre-school teachers' questionnaires showed that verbal and physical aggression as coping strategies were used in a significantly higher proportion (p , 0.05) by 61-72-month-old children than by the younger age groups. In the oldest age group, boys were rated significantly more aggressive than girls (p , 0.05). However, significant age or gender effects could not be demonstrated on pro-social behaviour. Self-report questionnaires have not yielded any significant results concerning age and gender differences in either studied dimension. Hypothetical social situations resulted in significantly less-aggressive responses by 36-48-month-old children than by the two other age groups (p , 0.05). Data obtained by self-report and teacher-report questionnaires on coping strategies and pro-social behaviour showed moderate correlations (r ¼ 0.325-0.478).

Value transmission is a fundamental task of schools. However, the question arises as to how far prevailing political and social conditions shape the functioning of a country or a region's school system. In other words: what effect do they have on the choice of values to be transmitted at schools? Are there any fundamental social values that are shared by different cultures at different times? Are there values that exist independently of social and political systems? These questions have a special relevance in Eastern and Central European countries like Hungary where political and social changes in the twentieth century had a crucial effect on the set of values that were transmitted by the school system. The aim of this study is to describe how the value transmitting role of the Hungarian school system has changed as a consequence of political transformations in recent decades.

In our paper, we present the results of the second phase of a study conducted in collaboration between two higher education institutions in Hungary with different types of translator training: a postgraduate (MA) course at the University of Szeged (SZTE), Faculty of Arts, and a postgraduate specialist training course at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest (PPKE JÁK), Faculty of Law and Political Sciences. At SZTE, students do not have any legal qualifications, while at PPKE JÁK, students are all qualified legal professionals. Our main research question was whether there are significant differences in the quality of legal translations carried out by students with and without legal qualifications. We analyzed and evaluated the global (holistic) quality of the translations using a five-point scale as suggested by Kiraly (1995: 83), and compared types of errors made by the two groups of students with the help of a special error typology. Our results show that students with legal qualifications perform better in terms of both global and analytic indicators, with significantly less errors made in information transfer and in legal register.

The present study investigates English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ use of motivational strategies (MS) in Hungarian high schools. It also seeks to identify whether students recognize these strategies. Keller’s (2010) motivational model was employed through the instructional materials motivational survey (IMMS) questionnaire that was translated into Hungarian. A population of 117 Hungarian high school students from grades 9 to 12 filled out questionnaires on their teachers’ use of MS, and 62 high school teachers completed the same questionnaire to report their MS. Classroom observa- tions were also conducted following the Motivational Orientation of Language Teaching (MOLT) scheme proposed by Guilloteaux and Dörnyei (2008). For each grade, face-to-face and online classes were observed. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to process the data. The results show that teachers’ mean scores for all the ARCS categories were higher than those of students, with significant differences between students’ and teachers’ views on attention and relevance. Teachers reported using satisfaction-generating strategies most often, while the observation results indicated that the most frequently used strategy was attention. Students’ grades had no correlation with students’ perception of the use of MS, which might be due to the homogeneity of the sample selected.