Trainee translators' performance and the quality of their self-evaluation

What is it about?

This paper presents a study of correlations between the performance of trainee translators, according to their teacher’s assessment, and the quality of their self-evaluation, according to their answers to metacognitive questionnaires. Two case-studies of two consecutive editions of a course in general translation from German into Spanish are dealt with. The course involved the use of post-translation metacognitive questionnaires designed to help trainees to evaluate their translating. A selection of the questionnaires (from the strongest and the weakest performances by students for each course edition) is considered. The study focuses on one item in these questionnaires that has to do with identifying translation problems and justifying their solutions.

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Why is it important?

An interpretive analysis of the trainees’ answers for this questionnaire item reveals that the best-performing students were more strategically and translationally aware in self-evaluating their own translating. Our conclusions are based on considering six parameters from the analysis of the trainees’ answers, which are tentatively regarded as indicative of the quality of their self-evaluation.