A critical perspective on the translation quality assessments of five translators organizations: ATA, CTTIC, ITI, NAATI, and SATI

Abstract

The present paper discusses translation quality assessments by adopting a critical perspective on five translators organizations, which are intended to assess the quality of non-literary translations with a particular focus on their objectivity, validity, and inter-rater reliability. Within this framework, it aims to contribute to the related literature (1) by discussing the objectivity, validity, and inter-rater reliability of the quality assessment methods of five translators organizations, namely the American Translators Association (ATA), the South African Translators' Institute (SATI), the Canadian Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters Council (CTTIC), the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI in UK), and the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI in Australia), and (2) by making suggestions on quality assessment concerning non-literary translation in view of the findings hereof. The study qualitatively analyzes the content of the guides and rubrics provided on the websites of these five organizations and discusses the objectivity, validity, and inter-rater reliability of their assessments in consideration of seven parameters, i.e. "purpose of assessment", "purpose of assigned translation", "duration", "source text", "assessor", "marking", and "grading". The findings showed that each organization suffers from varying degrees of objectivity, validity, and inter-rater reliability issues.

Proposing the evaluation criteria for linguistic errors through surveying the Chinese-Vietnamese translation by students at the elementary level: a case study at the Faculty of Chinese Linguistics and Literature, USSH, VNUHCM

“…một phần quan trọng cho tiêu chí đánh giá bản dịch. Để đánh giá lỗi dịch thuật ngoài việc xem xét bản dịch, người đánh giá cần phải quan tâm đ ến khái niệm "sự trung thành" với ngôn ngữ nguồn6 . Melis và Albir (2001) (Martínez Melis, Nicole & Hurtado Albir, Amparo %J Meta: journal des traducteurs/Meta: Translators' Journal, 2001)đã đưa ra một bộ tiêu chí thang độ lỗi (correcting scales) và thang điểm (rating scales), đây là cách đánh giá bản dịch trong môi trường giảng dạy, thang độ lỗi nhằm xác định kiểu lỗi và thang điểm nhằm đo lường chất lượng bản dịch7 .…”