Ankara : The Institute of Economics and Social Sciences of Bilkent University, 1999.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 1999.Includes bibliographical references leaves84-86The assessment of the quality of a translation has long been an issue under
discussion both in the field of translation studies and in the teaching of translation in
second language curriculum. Variables such as the purpose, type and audience of the
translation, viewpoint of the assessor and the context of the act of translating are
intricately connected. A combination of these variables leads the assessors to adopt
specific criteria for the assessment of each translation. As is the case with the
marking of translation tests at The Center for Foreign Languages (YADIM),
assessment requires standardisation of the criteria adopted by different assessors.
The necessity of achieving standardisation among assessors introduces the problem
of establishing clearly-defined criteria for assessing translation.
The purpose of this study was to suggest guidelines for establishing criteria for
the marking of translation tests given to intermediate level students at YADIM,
Çukurova University. To collect data, ten translation teachers were interviewed and
observed once and then they marked eight mock-exam papers. The course outline
for the translation courses in the institution was analysed. In the interviews,
questions about the institutional and course aims, teachers’ priorities regarding the translation process and formative evaluation and the problems perceived in
summative evaluation were asked. In the observations, the teaching stages and their
sequencing and the distribution of teachers’ feedback on various aspects of students’
translations were observed. In the mock-exam markings, the same teachers marked
eight student translations.
To analyse the data collected through interviews, a coding technique was used.
The frequencies and percentages of the themes under each category were quantified
for each teacher and teachers’ priorities were identified individually. The
frequencies of teachers’ feedback on various aspects of students’ translations in the
observed courses were quantified. The mock-exam papers marked by teachers were
analysed, error categories were identified and teachers’ priorities regarding the errors
were determined.
The results revealed that teachers differed in the ways they approached
translation. Four teachers favoured information translation which took contextual
elements of the source texts into consideration and six teachers favoured literal
translation which mainly took the structures in the source text into consideration to
the exclusion of contextual elements. In accordance with the methods they favoured,
their materials selection criteria and evaluation priorities also differed. To minimise
the discrepancies among teachers in the marking of the translation tests, an analytic
scoring scale and guidelines for testing and marking were suggested.Türkmen, MelekM.S
