A Tentative Study Of Translation Competence And Its Development

Translation is a complex activity, involving expertise in a number of areas and special skills. To perform their task, translators need to have the required knowledge and skills, i.e., they need to be competent. Optimal performance of any action, for example, driving a car, is based on a competence, which relies on the interaction of different subordinated and interrelated competences. Translation as a purposeful activity (Nord 1997) requires a unique competence, which has thus far proved difficult to identify, let alone to quantify. There has not yet been a specific research focus within Translation Studies on how translation competence can be defined and developed, although the aspect of translation competence has been addressed more generally by scholars(Wilssl996, Neubertl994); nor has much been published on the organization of translator training programmes and on how the systematic evaluation of translation competence, once defined, can be built into such programmes. The questions that this thesis seeks to address, are therefore as follows: What is translation competence? How can it be developed? How can the product of the performance be used to measure levels of competence? These questions will be addressed with specific reference to the present training situation.In order to explain this unique competence, translation competence is broken down into a set of interrelated sub-competences, which can be studied in isolation as well as in combination with each other. The first chapter focuses on the identification of such sub-competences and studies the interrelationship among them.The next chapter looks at aspects of bilingualism and at the relationship between bilingual competence and translation competence. It is argued that, contrary to popular belief by lay persons, untrained bilingual competence is not sufficient to guarantee translation competence. Instead, it only constitutes the psycholinguistic foundation upon which it is possible to develop translation competence. On the other hand, translation competence is not simply an improved bilingual competence. The development of translation competence requires the specialization of certain' skills of the bilingual person and therestructuring of certain mechanisms.The third chapter constitutes the core of this thesis. With respect to the development of translator ability, what we are really talking about is the change in the nature of the transfer process. The differences in the different translations may be associated with differences in the characteristics of the transfer. The different transfer competence is in turn derivable from the nature of the acquisition history because they are learned. All translation ability is learned; even the rudimentary translation ability of bilinguals derives from the parallel or consecutive learning of the second language. One way of looking at the translation ability is to look at it as a set of schemata for the transfer across culturally bound form-function sets. These translation schemata are knowledge organizational structures stored in memory, and they undergo successive transformation or modification during the process of learning. During the process of learning to translate, translators develop more specific, more detailed, and more inclusive schemata for transferring. Based on Dreyfuses' hierarchy of learning stages(1986), students progress from the novice stage to that of advanced beginner; from there to the competence stage, then on to the proficiency stage, culminating in the expertise. These stages could be related to the design of a translation course.The last chapter deals with an equally important issue which itself is an integral part in the evolution process of translation competence, i.e. how to measure progress at different stages on the way to achieving translation competence. This refers to the evaluation of the product in relation to more or less pre-determined or expected levels of translation competence. We argue for a clearly defined set of criteria for evaluation, providi...