ANALITIČKI I HOLISTIČKI PRISTUP OCENjIVANjU PREVODA

Abstract

Assessment of translation quality can be quite challenging, as the evaluator must strive to maintain objectivity and adhere to the established criteria of evaluation. The paper explores positive and negative aspects of analytical and holistic approach to translation quality assessment at university level. The qualitative analysis has been conducted on a corpus of final‑year students’ exam tests with the aim of determining reliability of these approaches, by comparing the final grades awarded by the same evaluator after a period of three months. The study has shown that both analytical and holistic method result in the same grade in 80% of assessed papers, whereas in the remaining 20% grades are higher when the holistic method is applied. Having closely examined the exam tests once again, we have concluded that this mismatch could be attributed primarily to the students’ language skills. Namely, highly proficient students tend to translate in a natural, fluent manner, thus diverting attention from some minor errors, which would otherwise be visible to analytical method. It appears that the crucial difference between the two methods lies in the expressive type of errors, which are generally not taken into consideration in the analytical approach. Consequently, combined approaches and other steps for improving the validity and objectivity of translation assessment are considered as well.