Analyzing the Relationship between Creativity and Translation Quality: A Case Study of Students’ Translations

Abstract

Creativity is an area that has received limited attention in Translation Studies (TS). One reason for this could be that creativity is a complex concept to define and quantify, but it is also the case that translators are not usually regarded as creators. The present research tries to shed light on how creativity affects translation quality. Moreover, the participants are translation students, which is also rare in studies about this particular topic. The instrument used in this study was the Kaufman Domain of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS) to assess the students’ creativity. Another instrument was Waddington’s model for translation quality assessment. SPSS software version 24 was used to analyze the collected data. Then, the Pearson Correlation Test was employed to find the possible relationship between the variables. The results displayed that among 40 participants involved in this study, their level of creativity was in the range of ‘high’ as much as 60%, ‘very high’ 25%, and ‘medium’ and ‘low’ with 12.5% and 2.5%, respectively. In terms of translation scores, the mean score was 7.18, with the highest score of 8.55 and the lowest at 5.45. As revealed by the Pearson Correlation test, concerning the degree of relationship between variables, there was no significant relationship between creativity and quality. It indicates that more creative participants did not necessarily perform better in the work of translating. A recommendation is made for future researchers to involve more variables as well as a greater number of participants to enrich the research results and increase the likelihood of creating generalizations regarding the correlation between creativity and translation results.