Application Of J. House's Model For Translation Quality Assessment To English-Chinese Translation

In an age when international exchange is ever increasing, the importance of translation is noticeable. The research on translation quality assessment and its models helps improve translation behavior, enhance the level of translation quality, and promote the efficiency of translator training. The thesis sets out to bring Juliane House's model for Translation Quality Assessment into the field of CE and EC translation, introduce the model's theoretical bases, formulation and structure, and evaluate the effectiveness of the model in EC and CE translation practice.The paper firstly introduces and analyzes several approaches to Translation Quality Assessment, namely, anecdotal and subjective approaches, response-oriented approaches, and text-based approaches. Anecdotal and subjective approaches for TQA value the translators'personal knowledge, intuitions and artistic preferences, which is in nature subjective and atheoretical. Response-oriented approaches focus on the relationship between translator and reader, and the relationship between the original and the translation. But some criteria in the approaches such as criteria of the communicative process, comprehension of intent, and equivalence of response are somehow vague and unverifiable. The three forms of text-based approaches have their respective defects and disadvantages as well.The TQA model proposed by House is based on functions of text and pragmatic theories. The operation of House's model means an analysis of the original based on a set of situational dimensions. The resulting textual profile of the original determines original text's function, which is taken as the norm used to measure a translation. How the textual profile and function of the translation match the profile and function of the original determines the degree to which the translation is equivalent to the original. In the last step, a qualitative judgment of the translation is made. The judgment is composed by two types of errors, including dimensional mismatches and non-dimensional mismatches, and by a statement of the match of the two functional components.The paper then conducts a case study to examine the effectiveness of House's model for TQA in the EC and CE translation practice. The materials for analysis are extracts from Uncle Tom's Cabin and Dream of the Red Chamber and their translations by different translators. The result is quite satisfactory as an objective and convincing statement can be achieved by applying the model. House's model is practical in its operation for translation involving Chinese. However, this model also has certain defects such as, the operation of the model is a little cumbersome and some of the subcategories are overlapping. The model can be successfully applied to EC and CE translation and will develop with its better combination with practice.