Quality and quantity in translation evaluation: A starting point

Tomás Conde

doi:10.1556/Acr.13.2012.1.4

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Across Languages and Cultures

Volume/Issue:: Volume 13: Issue 1

Quality and quantity in translation evaluation: A starting point

Author:

Tomás Conde

Tomás Conde University of the Basque Country Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, y Traducción e Interpretación Facultad de Letras Vitoria-Gasteiz Álava, Spain

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Pages:: 67–80

Online Publication Date:: 09 May 2012

Publication Date:: 01 Jun 2012

Article Category:: Journal Article

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1556/Acr.13.2012.1.4

Keywords:: evaluation; translation quality; quantitative analysis; empirical research; errors

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In academic environments, the question of quality is often related to that of quantity. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of translation evaluation quality by focusing on several issues: a) the number of actions performed by evaluators as related to quality judgments; b) evaluator coincidence in mistakes detected (saliency of phenomena) as related to their nature; and c) quality judgment as related to the presence or absence of the most salient phenomena in the translated texts. Four groups of participants evaluated 48 translations; the results discussed derive from their actual performance. The results suggest that evaluators exhibiting a minimum level of detail in their work should be thorough in their evaluative work for, if they are not, they run the risk of being too generous in their evaluations. Among the error judgments for which there is the highest degree of coincidence are those on divergent interpretation of the original text, terminology, syntax, (language) use and misprints. Conversely, evaluators do not usually coincide in pointing out punctuation, format, proper nouns, clarity, cohesion or appropriateness phenomena. Finally, texts including the most salient phenomena receive worse grades than those without them; this points to an implicit hierarchy of phenomena according to the extent to which evaluators coincide in pointing them out.

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Across Languages and Cultures

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Andrew CHESTERMAN (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Kirsten MALMKJÆR (University of Leicester, UK)
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Mona BAKER (Shanghai International Studies University, China, University of Oslo, Norway)
Łucja BIEL (University of Warsaw, Poland)
Gloria CORPAS PASTOR (University of Malaga, Spain; University of Wolverhampton, UK)
Rodica DIMITRIU (Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Iasi, Romania)
Birgitta Englund DIMITROVA (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Sylvia KALINA (Cologne Technical University, Germany)
Haidee KOTZE (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Sara LAVIOSA (Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Italy)
Brian MOSSOP (York University, Toronto, Canada)
Orero PILAR (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain)
Gábor PRÓSZÉKY (Hungarian Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungary)
Alessandra RICCARDI (University of Trieste, Italy)
Edina ROBIN (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary)
Myriam SALAMA-CARR (University of Manchester, UK)
Mohammad Saleh SANATIFAR (independent researcher, Iran)
Sanjun SUN (Beijing Foreign Studies University, China)
Anikó SOHÁR (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary)
Sonia VANDEPITTE (University of Gent, Belgium)
Albert VERMES (Eszterházy Károly University, Hungary)
Yifan ZHU (Shanghai Jiao Tong Univeristy, China)

Prof. Dr. Krisztina KÁROLY
School of English and American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University
H-1088 Budapest, Rákóczi út 5., Hungary
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