Assessing Translation Students' Reflective and Autonomous Learning

As an essential soft skill in life-long learning, reflective and autonomous learning has been an integral part of many translator training programs today. However, how it could be assessed systematically and what factors might influence its acquisition is still much under-researched. To help bridge this gap, this chapter aims at reporting the findings of an empirical study, which used diary, think-aloud and small-group discussion as reflective learning methods to investigate translation students' reflective learning. It first provides an overview of relevant theory and then reports how students' reflective levels were assessed and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Based on the empirical findings, it discusses the factors influencing the success of a reflection-encouraging learning environment, followed by a provisional model of translation students' reflective and autonomous learning process.

Process-Oriented Assessment of Problems and Errors in Translation

Screen recording has gradually emerged as an efficacious tool in the context of process-oriented translator training. From an assessment standpoint, process protocols derived from screen recordings would seem to hold great potential as an empirical means through which translators and translation trainers can re-trace errors found in translation products back to underlying problem triggers that emerge during their creation. This chapter will begin by outlining how screen recordings can be utilized to reverse engineer translation products for purposes of process-oriented assessment. A series of directly observable indicators will be linked with various error classification parameters, including locus (comprehension, transfer, or production), phase (drafting or revision), and information retrieval type (internal or external) in providing assessors with a diagnostic gauge for pinpointing potential triggers. The chapter will conclude with some preliminary data on evidence of inter-rater consistency when screen recording is used in such a diagnostic capacity by various student populations.

Quality Assessment in Audio Description

Audio description (AD) is one of the younger modes of translation. It shares many similarities with interpreting, although AD users have specific needs because they are blind or partially sighted. As quality is of concern in both fields, this chapter explores the overlaps to see what can be learned for AD from research already carried out in interpreting. Macro and micro criteria suggested for each discipline are compared, and describer competencies are discussed in the context of AdlabPRO, a European research project that seeks to define the professional profile of an audio describer and develop training materials and courses. The chapter concludes that assessment protocols and rating scales developed for interpreting might be adopted for AD, after appropriate adaptation to accommodate areas where the fit is incomplete. These include synchrony and the need for the AD to be considered, not in isolation, but in relation to the existing audio elements of the source text (ST).

Quality Assurance in Translation and Corporate Communications

While the nature and status of translators' work are changing due to technologisation and other factors, translation is acquiring a strategic function in organisations. The intercultural component of translation competence makes translators well positioned to play a key role in assuring quality in international corporate communications. But quality models envisage only restricted interactions between translators, clients and communications specialists. Moreover, evidence about translators' self-concepts shows them underequipped to adopt the roles that meaningful cooperation with corporate communications suggests. This chapter reports on a pilot study at the interface between translation and corporate communications in Switzerland. Presenting findings from a survey of translation and communications professionals, it reveals underdeveloped feedforward and feedback cultures and a translator self-concept that underplays the mediatory, advisory added value of human translation. Concrete implications for quality assurance and translator education are drawn and future research is outlined.

Cognitive Effort and Efficiency in Translation Revision

Empirical studies of revision are often based on either think aloud protocols, interviews, or observational methods. Eye tracking and keylogging methods are rarely applied to the study of revision behavior. The authors employ established methods from translation process research (TPR) to study the eye movement and typing behavior during self-revision (i.e., the phase in the translation process that follows a first complete draft). The authors measure the effect of behavior during the drafting phase on the relative revision duration. Relative revision duration is the time translators spend revising the first complete draft of the source text. They find that the most efficient process involves a large degree of concurrent reading and writing and few deletions during the drafting phase. The efficiency gains in terms of relative revision duration achieved by avoiding discontinuous typing, by making a larger number of deletions, pausing for longer amounts of time, and engaging in less concurrent reading and writing are outweighed by the gains in total task time by doing the exact opposite.

Competency-Based Education and Assessment

In an attempt to analyze the reliability and validity of the most frequently used oral certification exams for court interpreters in the United States, this chapter examines the basic test model used for state-level certification through the lens of concepts in testing theory. Having identified several limitations to the currently used performance-based model, a hybrid model which includes competency-based education and assessment is proposed. By building on best practices in competency-based education, the alternative credentialing paradigm proposed here would represent an innovation in the context of court interpreter certification in the United States, requiring the transfer of assessment criteria usually used in traditional educational contexts into the realm of professional training. The proposed hybrid model would necessitate a shift from one high-stakes exam to assessment of a series of compartmentalized competency clusters that would account for soft skills and dispositional traits not currently assessed.

Conceptualizing and Operationalizing a Formative Assessment Model for English-Chinese Consecutive Interpreting

Formative assessment has been increasingly used by interpreter trainers and educators to promote student learning. Different forms of formative assessment have been practiced and reported in interpreting literature. However, a critical review of current practices reported in literature suggests that a longitudinally designed formative assessment model that harnesses the synergistic potential of self, peer, and teacher assessment seems to be lacking. This chapter therefore aims to provide a detailed account of how an inclusive formative assessment model was conceptualized and operationalized for an undergraduate-level English-Chinese consecutive interpreting course and how students and the teacher perceived the assessment model. Based on the students' evaluation and the teacher's reflection, the chapter highlights good practices that contribute to effective formative assessment, discusses potential problems, proposes possible solutions, and suggests future trends in implementing and researching formative assessment in interpreter training and education.

How to Put the Translation Test to the Test?

Reliable and valid evaluation of translation quality is one of the fundamental thrusts in present-day applied translation studies. In this chapter, a thumbnail sketch is provided of the developments, in and outside of translation studies, that have contributed to the ubiquity of quality in translation discourse. This sketch reveals that we will probably never stand poised to reliably and validly measure the quality of translation in all its complexity and its ramifications. Therefore, the authors have only sought to address the issue of product quality evaluation. After an introduction of evaluation methods, the authors present the preselected items evaluation method (PIE method) as a perturbative testing technique developed to evaluate the quality of the target text (TT). This presentation is flanked by a case study that has been carried out at the University of Antwerp, KU Leuven, and Zuyd University of Applied Sciences. The case study shows that, on account of its perturbative qualities, PIE allows for more reliable and more valid measurement of product quality.

Constructing Standards in Communities

Assessment practices on translation programs provide a valuable lens through which to view current understandings about the nature of translation pedagogy. In the context of competence-based training, the last decade has seen the proliferation of assessment instruments aimed at enhancing students' learning by prioritising competence development and the translation process. Using the University of Westminster as a case study, the authors have sought to provide a clearer insight into the current understandings of translation and assessment practices on the MA Translation courses in the light of the current debates in translation pedagogy. The authors undertook a two-pronged approach by surveying not only the tutors, but also the students. This chapter will present and analyse the findings of the two surveys on assessment practices using the framework of the six tenets of good assessment practice set out by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and, in particular, assess to what extent assessment literacy has been developed.

Exploring Process-Oriented Translation Competence Assessment

In translation education and training, competence assessment plays an essential role in fostering students' competence development. This chapter promotes process-oriented assessment from a translation problem-solving perspective, with supporting evidence from a longitudinal study. Although process-oriented competence assessment is increasingly becoming more important in translation education and training, the relation between the development of translation competence and the translation process remains underexplored. This chapter provides a translation problem-solving perspective to understand the rationale for and the necessity of process-oriented competence assessment and suggests practical and feasible process-oriented assessment tools in the translation classroom.