Comparing L2 translation, translation revision, and post-editing competences in translation trainees

Abstract

Translation proper is rarely the sole activity that translators undertake in today’s translation market. Translators regularly function as revisers or post-editors, requiring them to check human or machine translations to make or recommend changes to improve translation quality. Various construct and performance models of and studies into translation competence (TC), translation revision competence (TRC), and post-editing competence (PEC) exist. However, a fundamental question remains unanswered to date: how similar or different TC, TRC, and PEC are. Using indirect translations (L1 Dutch, L2 French), we collected and analyzed translation, translation revision (TR), and post-editing (PE) data from 11 graduate translation trainees. Our exploratory study shows that TRC and PEC appear to have different competences, with trainees performing better for TR than PE. However, TRC and PEC do appear to have a common core, which does not differ significantly across tasks: problem detection.