Informational status of translation errors and translation quality assessment

Abstract

The survey is to verify the hypothesis of correlation between different types of translation errors and the reaction of target readers of newspaper articles to possible shifts of information caused by such errors. Considering different approaches to translation quality assessment (TQA), we analyze typical translation errors from the viewpoint of logical, emotive, expressive and other losses and/or distortions of the source information found in the target text. The preliminary results were compared with readers’ comments on both source and target texts. The divergence of readers’ reactions appeared to be rather narrow and only in part correlated with the major and even critical mistakes made by translators.