Translation Quality Assessment From The Functional Approach: Agreement Matters

Evaluating the quality of translations remains one of the most difficult areas in translation studies.Many translation theorists have tried to solve this problem by presenting certain models or criteria to evaluate translation quality, but most of these criteria have failed either because of their impracticality or unreliable assessments. This has prompted me to carry out this study in the hope of assisting critics and readers to make fairer judgment on translations.The purpose of this study, therefore, is to provide an applicable and acceptable guideline based on the functionalist approach for making assessment of the quality of non-literary translations.Functionalists hold that every translating activity has its specific purpose or skopos which is the decisive factor to judge the quality of translation. To a great extent, this skopos-oriented approach could provide support to a great number of translation evaluations. The problem is that skopos itself is not defined explicitly for it may refer to:a) the translation process, and hence the goal of this process; b) the translation result, and hence the function of the translatum; c) the translation mode, and hence the intention of this mode. This ambiguity may result in problems in quality assessment. We argue that the functionalist approach, especially the skopos theory, can be an applicable guideline for translating activity as long as the skopos is defined as the purpose of the translated text.We propose that an explicit translation brief or specification should be provided by the commissioner or negotiated by the commissioner and the translator before the actual translating begins. As long as the translation brief or specification is consented, the translator must do translating in a way that the specification requires him/her to do. Some problems would certainly rise during the process of translation, when the translator should work them out by himself. What he needs to do is slightly modify the specification by adding the problems to it afterwards.The point is that the specification must be available to all the critics and readers before they judge the translated text, without making evaluations out of subjective feelings. The essence of this approach dwells upon the agreement between the commissioner and the translator on the translation brief, the agreement in the translator himself on unexpected problems, and the agreement between the translation brief and the readers on the text. If the readers agree on the specification, and the translated text fulfills the requirements of the specification, then the translated text could be evaluated as a "good" translation.This process of evaluating translations will eliminate discrepancy among the readers and people involved in the translation. At the same time this process can act as a strong basis for judgments.The thesis is divided into six sections. Section one simply introduces the background, the purpose, the significance and the organization of the study. Section two summarizes some of the models for assessing translation quality, according to House's categorization. Section three outlines the basics of functionalist approach to translation quality assessment. Section four proposes guidelines for translation quality assessment. Section five gives a discussion on the guideline. Section six provides the recommendations for further studies.