On Application Of House's Translation Quality Assessment Model In Evaluating English To Chinese Translation

Translation quality assessment is an integral part of translation studies.Long before translation studies evolved into an independent subject,there had been numerous quasi-theories and remarks on how to evaluate a translation,most of which,however,were limited to impressionistic or experience-based summative statements without systematic and rigorous theories as basis,and subjectivity played a strong role.Besides,these theories lacked valid steps for an assessor to follow,just giving a"guideline" or some individual points on evaluation.This could hardly produce comprehensive assessment results.In 1977 German scholar Juliane House put forward the first TQA model based on systematic-linguistics,discourse analysis,pragmatics and stylistics and revised the model in 1997 and 2015,making the steps in the model more simplified,the scope broader,and supporting theories more scientific.House's TQA features systematic theoretic bases and valid operation steps,comparing ST and TT from the perspectives of cultural,situational and textual contexts and producing mismatches along a series of dimensions.House coined such terms as overt translation,covert translation and cultural filter,which are used to analyze the mismatches.And the quality of a translation is based on the nature of the mismatches.Since its birth,House TQA model has been widely chased after in the field of translation studies.The researches on the model cover theoretical reviews,applications,and application-based revisions,all of which have to some extent pushed the model forward.The literature review shows that voluminous studies on the model in China focus on applying this model in assessing E-C or C-E translations.Some scholars even dabble into the field of poem translation assessment which House did not recommend to apply her model to.All this demonstrates the huge potential and strengths of House's model.This study applies House's newly revised 2015 version of TQA model in assessing a reference Chinese translation of an English article The Man in the Water,which is chosen for the contest of "Han Suyin Awards for Young Translators",in a bid to on the one hand check the quality of the translation with the model and examine the validity of this model on the other hand.The analysis of the ST and TT strictly follows the steps in House's model;meanwhile,statistics are made on some parameters to make the assessment more objective.According to House's model,the quality of the reference translation is "basically satisfactory";this result runs counter with the supposition that the translation should be "highly qualified" as it is an officially released one.Two tentative reasons may explain this difference:House's model and the judging panel focus on different aspects of the translation assessment;or maybe the reference translation is indeed not of high quality as it is clearly showed in the analysis that the mismatches between ST and TT along register and genre do exist and affect the function components of the TT.It is hoped that this study may attract more scholars into the field of TQA,especially the research into House's TQA model.If more studies on applying the model to contest translations are made,an upgraded TQA model may result.This would be a big step for TQA studies as well as translation studies.