Test Development And Validation Of Test For Translation And Interpreting Majors Band 8 (Translation)

As of January 2018,252 Universities,approved by the Ministry of Education,officially offer Bachelor of Translation and Interpreting in foreign language and literature.Most universities offer translation programs,mainly Chinese-English.Assessing the translation competence of the undergraduates from translation majors is a crucial process during talents cultivation.Translation competence test is an important part of the teaching quality assurance system for BTI(Translation).At present,the assessment for undergraduates from BTI depends on the scores of China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters(CATTI)(?).The achievement test for Bachelor of Translation and Interpreting(BTI)has not been available.Although CATTI(?)can assess the translation proficiency of the candidates,its construct lack the alignment with the goals of talent cultivation regulated by National Standards of Teaching Quality for Undergraduate Translation Majors.Therefore,it is in great need for developing a translation test to assess the teaching quality and measure students' translation competence.The research will develop and validate Test for Translation and Interpreting Major Band8(Translation),short by TTIM-8(Translation)concerning with the improvement of the teaching effectiveness and the sustainable development of translation teaching.Test construct is the major task of test development.For translation test,translation competence should be defined first.This research will base on the objectives in National Standards of Teaching Quality for Undergraduate Translation Majors,relating to the existing translation competence models at home and abroad as well as the competence research contribution by other disciplines,and then put forward a framework of students' translation competence for BTI.At the meanwhile,according to the operationalization of test construct,the translation competence will be defined in the framework of achievement test for the undergraduates from BTI.After the establishment of the construct,the research will choose the students in the fourth grade of BTI as candidates.According to the test types,the criterion-referenced and achievement test will be employed.On the basis of excellent experiences from the international institutions of test research and development,the research will design the translation test development process so as to ensure the reasonable development and the reliability,validity and fairness of the test.In order to ensure that the translation competence test can assess and guarantee teaching,test validation should be emphasized.Under the guidance of relevant theories of testing,Psychology and Translation,the social-cognitive framework of test validation is established.By both qualitative and quantitative research method,such as interview,test,questionnaire,the validity evidences are to be collected and analyze the data from the perspectives of context validity,theory validity,criterion-related validity,scoring validity and consequential validity.At the end,TTIM-8(Translation)is proved to be with higher validity.TTIM-8(Translation)can bean important tool to assess the teaching quality of BTI.The result of this test will represent different levels of translation competence for the undergraduates.The interpretation of test scores can provide feedback for teaching,improve the teaching quality,and be reference for workplace recruitment.The results and conclusion of this research can be useful for translation test development in other languages.These results and conclusions will provide a reference for the development of translation competence test in other languages.