Translator Assessment: Suggestions For NAETI Test Designing And Translation Evaluation

As professional translators are in great demand in society today, the expert committee on National Accreditation Examinations for Translators and Interpreters (NAETI) was founded on 16th of July, 2003. This accreditation authority aims at assessing candidates' competence for translating and interpreting and accrediting those who are ready to reach corresponding level. NAETI, being a nation-wide professional certificate test, should be designed meticulously to meet this objective. This dissertation intends to study the test-oriented translator assessment conducted by the official accreditation authority.Based on language testing theory, the author scrutinizes the status quo of current NAETI and points out the existing problems in reference to test designing and translation evaluation. The current Examination is characterized by the following points in weakness: (1) the only test item used in this examination is text translation, and therefore it is unitary and excessively integrative and subjective. Seemingly, this unitary test instrument measures the overall competence of a translator; however, this design is too simplistic to save expenses because it reduces validity and reliability of the test. It could not reflect completely, effectively and objectively the candidates' comprehensive competence of translation. (2) As far as the levels of test are concerned, the changing of length and complexity of selected texts is the sole means to discriminate the levels of translators' competence. It is doubtable that this means can effectively fulfill the discrimination. The distinction of three accreditation levels is so vague that they can hardly function as guidance for designing the tests of different levels. (3) The error deduction marking scheme is the primary grading method, with the holistic grading out of the general impression as subsidiary. It is also subjective, and too flexible to control. Some merits worth awarding are omitted because of this grading method. Generally, the current Examination needs revisions and improvements to meet its professional translators' accreditation purpose in terms of validity, reliability, discriminability and evaluation method.For the effectiveness of assessment, it is recommended that an analytic test testing candidates' sub-competencies in translation be carried out. This recommendation is proposed out of the findings from the correlation analysis of reading and translation. The author argues that in the translator assessment context, translator competence could be decomposed into sub-competencies, such as linguistic competence, communicative competence between cultures, inference competence, transfer competence, assessing competence and translators' professionalism. These sub-competencies are in complementary relation with each other and function as a whole in the translating process. The analytic test involves the sub-tests or different test items designed for testing one or more sub-competencies, which is assumed to make the test more objective and reliable than the current single-item test. Instead, four test items rather than one (text translation) are suggested. They are: vocabulary and structure (multiple choice), reading comprehension, translation assessment and text translation. Different test methods in each item are designed in order to cater for different levels of examination. This concept of designing is for test validity and discrimination. Evaluation is the key link in testing system, especially in such integrated translation test. In terms of translation evaluation, it is a synthetic process, involving the establishment of evaluation criteria and the implementation of evaluation criteria. To solve the problems in current evaluating method, some principles in establishing and implementing the evaluation criteria are put forward, and the good solution awarding scheme are recommended to the grading method. For the sake of operability, the author also defines dimensions in evaluating criteria on two aspects: (a) accuracy, (b) expressiveness. One of the dimension...