The relevance of, and justification for, translation quality assessment (TQA)
is stronger than ever: professional translators, their clients, translation
studies researchers and trainee translators all rely on TQA for different
reasons. Yet whereas there is general agreement on the need for a translation
to be 'good,' 'satisfactory' or 'acceptable,' the definition of acceptability
and of the means of determining it are matters of ongoing debate. Many
quantitative models (e.g. Sical, CTTIC, SEPT) and qualitative models (e.g.
Berman, Reiss) have been proposed over the years, but such proposals are
inevitably criticized on the grounds of subjectivity, arbitrariness and their
reliance on “equivalence.” Partly as a result of this, the descriptive-
explanatory trend in translation studies has steered attention away from
judgments of overall quality toward the study of discrete norms and
conventions and “descriptive” quality analysis (Nord, House). That being
said, TQA models generating overall quality assessments from a criteria-based
analysis of specific translation components or traits seem to provide for the
greatest validity. Drawing on these models and the principles of Educative
Assessment developed by Wiggins, this paper will explore the feasibility and
advantages of a holistic-componential TQA model combining assessments of
macrotextual and microtextual components.
