The Effectiveness of Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) Models in the Translation of Indonesian Students

Abstract

Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) has always been a subject of interest to the translation community, and with the progress of translation training and education in some parts of the world, including Indonesia, the need for translation assessment to measure students' skills also increased. This present study investigates the effectiveness of two translation assessment models in students' translation result. It aims to explore how students improve their translation after giving feedback based on two different assessment models. A mixed-method design, which is characterized by the combination of qualitative and quantitative research components, was employed. The data were collected from English Study Program students of Faculty of Cultural Studies (FCS) Universitas Brawijaya Indonesia from two translation courses at the even semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. The students were asked to translate two different types of texts, namely short story and news article. Data analysis involved providing a description of the results and performing a statistical test using SPSS, t-test in particular. The findings revealed that the students improved greatly in their translation after assessed with two different models. This can be seen from the mean scores of their translation. Waddington Method C as the holistic approach and ATA Framework as the analytical approach gave different results for different texts. Both models were similarly effective for literary text, while for journalistic text, ATA Framework was more effective than Waddington’s. The recommendation is made for future researchers to combine two types of assessment models and test them to see the effectiveness. In addition, focusing on different types of source texts, such as manual text, or legal text, or academic text, or others to be translated and assessed, may also be beneficial.