Application Of J. House’s Model For Translation Quality Assessment To C-E Translation

Translation quality assessment (TQA) plays an important part in applied translation studies. However, for a long time, the activities of translation evaluation have almost always just reflected the intuitive and impressionist stances and opinions of critics of translation and eluded the grasp of objective analysis. This paper attempts to introduce J. House’s model for TQA, which has filled up a gap in the field of translation evaluation with its relatively objective, comprehensive and systematic scheme of analysis.House bases her model on the comparative ST-TT analysis. To begin with, both the ST and TT are analyzed along Field, Tenor, Mode and Genre, with situational dimensions of subject matter and social action included under Field, author’s provenance and stance, social role relationship and social attitude under Tenor, medium and participation under Mode. Then by comparing the resulting analysis of both texts, mismatches along these dimensions are picked out. Finally, the quality evaluation of the translation is stated according to the quantity of these dimensional mismatches, i.e. the fewer these mismatches are, the better the translation is.After a detailed introduction to House’s model, an empirical study is conducted to exemplify its operation and to test its applicability to C-E translation. By applying it to the assessment of English translations of Hu Shih’s Mr. About-the-Same and an excerpt from a Chinese government white paper, this thesis draws the conclusion that House’s model is generally applicable to C-E translation evaluation. However, shortcomings exist in the model. For example, the operation of the model is time-consuming; the categories for text analysis are not set reasonably; some of the linguistic methods used for analyzing texts are inappropriate for Chinese texts, etc.