Training Quality Evaluators

Abstract

In the present age of fluid and prolific content, notions about the quality (or fitness) of texts are changing. We may now contemplate a text continuum, with the enduring and critical at one extreme, and the ephemeral and inconsequential at the other. Having focussed on the former, traditional translation and translator education approaches struggle to keep pace with the ‘fast and fit’ imperative of the latter. Accordingly, there is a drive towards pinpointing both translation quality and purpose in a more transparent and consistent way. New approaches to formal assessment and the corresponding application tools are in development. Graduates who encounter them early in the classroom will be better prepared to allocate their time, self-assess their output, and revise that of others. Thus equipped, professional translators could assert their standing by designing custom solutions, writing scopes of work, and signing off at completion using the relevant QA procedures.