Accuracy in Translations by Visually-Impaired Students and Its Implications for Competence and Improvement Aspects

Abstract

Translation is a career that can also offer benefits to the visually impaired. Visually impaired translators face the normal technical and non-technical challenges of translation-common for all translators. This means that the quality of the visually impaired translation is not an easy task, as certain categories can be compromised by accuracy. Case studies, which researched the accuracy of translations of two visually impaired students, who majored in translation studies, emphasized a need to improve their competence in translation. The analysis of two categories of translation tasks, from these case studies revealed two conclusions. Firstly, the two visually impaired students were able to accurately translate all non-academic texts. Secondly, however, when translating academic texts, the two students faced difficulties with the quality, as measured by the inaccuracies in these translations. The conclusions from these case studies are there are implications of needing to develop, and improve, the competence of translations by visually impaired students. Translation education must be able to maximize the competence and ability of visually impaired students based on their special characteristic.