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Although translation assessment is central to translation studies on both its theoretical and didactic levels, it still finds itself on somewhat uncertain ground. The following discussion seeks to highlight central issues arising from the attempt to objectivize translation evaluation with the aid of a specific textual example. The attempt to measure the quality of a translation raises important questions about the very nature of textual transfer between languages, the relationship between source- and target- language texts, and translation functions. Not least it leads us into an area where -- in view of the degree of adaptation implicit in functionalist views of translation -- the concept of "translation" itself becomes problematical. Examination of a typical advertising text illustrates the degree of freedom with which texts are manipulated in professional practice and demonstrates the difficulties which such intertextual transformations present for quality assessment.
1. Parameters, procedures and problems of translation assessment
Over the last twenty years a large number of approaches have been proposed for the evaluation of translations (for a survey see Ranke 1989, and for a recent critical account House 1997). In their emphasis on specific aspects of the translation process and their degree of differentiation they vary considerably. With regard to fundamental principles, however, there is broad agreement on the basic general criteria by which the efficacy of translations is to be judged. The following assumptions appear common to virtually all approaches (my formulation):
the assessment of a translated target text (TLT) seeks to measure the degree of adequacy of that text with regard to the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic givens of the source text (SLT) on the one hand and to the cultural frame and expressive possibilities of the target language on the other, always with a view to the function ascribed to the target text.
Divergences of opinion are especially apparent with regard to the following questions:
i. Which properties of a text are to remain invariant in the process of interlingual transfer? Koller (^sup 4^1992), typically, identifies five parameters: the denotative, connotative, text-normative, pragmatic and formalaesthetic. In each specific act of translation one or more of these values would, according to determinants such as text-type and text function, need to be prioritized to produce a hierarchy of equivalence relations and...