







































Education, Language and Sociology Research 
ISSN 2690-3644 (Print) ISSN 2690-3652 (Online) 

Vol. 2, No. 4, 2021 
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Original Paper 

On the Application of Translation Quality Assessment Model  

in MTI Teaching 
Qin Fangfang1* & Ding Ying2 

1 School of Foreign Languages of China Three Gorges University, Yichang City, Hubei Province, China  
* Qin Fangfang, School of Foreign Languages of China Three Gorges University, Yichang City, Hubei 

Province, 443002, China  

 

Received: September 3, 2021    Accepted: September 30, 2021   Online Published: October 9, 2021 

doi:10.22158/elsr.v2n4p1        URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elsr.v2n4p1 

 

Abstract 

The 21st century is an era of globalization with rapid development of information technology and there 

are more and more close exchanges among countries. Under this background, the importance of 

translation is self-evident, and MTI (Master of Translation and Interpreting) teaching, which is closely 

related to it, has also attracted increasing attention. On the whole, after over ten years of development, 

translation teaching in China has begun to take shape. Both major foreign language colleges and 

foreign language departments of various comprehensive colleges have set up corresponding translation 

courses. But at present, the teaching effect of MTI is far from satisfaction. Based on the translation 

quality assessment model of Malcolm Williams, the necessity and possibility of the application of the 

translation quality assessment model in MTI teaching is explored, and the concept of the application of 

the translation quality assessment model in the classroom is put forward, aiming to establish an 

objective and effective evaluation system in MTI teaching so as to further promote the development of 

MTI teaching. 

Keywords 

Malcolm Williams, Translation Quality Assessment Model, MTI teaching, application 

 

1. Introduction 

Juliane House, a German scholar, first proposed the concept of Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) 

model in 1976, which is the first set of systematic and scientific translation assessment model 

recognized internationally and plays a leading role in the research of subsequent translation criticism 

and translation quality assessment. Any translation quality evaluation is inseparable from vested 

standards, so House analyzes and compares the source text to the target text from the three aspects, that 

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is, meaning of words, pragmatics and the whole text, in light of the theories of system-functional 

linguistics and discourse analysis. In the process of comparison, problems in the target text are found 

and a reasonable evaluation is made on the target text. In addition, House also makes a comparative 

analysis of the original text and the translated text from eight dimensions: (1) Geographical Origin; (2) 

Social Class; (3) Time; (4) Medium (simple/complex); (5) Participation (simple/complex); (6) Social 

Role Relationship; (7) Social Attitude; (8) Province. The previous three aspects are considered from the 

perspective of language users, and the latter are closely related to pragmatics. In general, they all serve 

as translated text analysis parameters, from which to analyze whether the target text is equivalent or 

deviated from the original in ideational and interpersonal meaning (House, 1977, p. 42). It is believed 

that the translation quality assessment model proposed by House is a pioneer work in the field of 

translation studies. Besides, in terms of evaluation categories, House’s translation quality assessment 

model is a qualitative assessment with subjective factors. 

As a professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada, Malcolm Williams suggested that argument 

schema should be the ideal criterion for translation quality assessment in his book Translation Quality 

Assessment: An Argumentation-Centered Approach in 2004. Since all texts are argumentative more or 

less, arguments are widely present in various types of discourse, which is exactly in line with the 

universal appeal of translation quality assessment for different texts. Argumentation-centered TQA core 

parameters finalized by Williams are argument schema, prepositional functions/conjunctives/other 

inference indicators, arguments and narrative strategy. Among these parameters, the argument schema 

needs to be explained emphatically. The argument schema consists of Claim (C), Grounds (G), Warrant 

(W), Backing (B), Qualifier (Q) and Rebuttal/Restriction (R), and the translation quality assessment 

mainly depends on whether the translation accurately reflects the argument schema of source text. 

Inspired by the concept of “defect” for the ICQ (Industrial Quality Control), Williams microscopically 

defines errors in translation as critical defect, major defect and minor defect (Williams, 2004, p. 67). 

Williams’ TQA model takes into account both qualitative and quantitative evaluation at both macro and 

micro levels, and it is of great referential significance. 

At present, researches on translation quality assessment model in China can be divided into two 

categories: one is the critical research on the existing translation quality assessment models. For 

example, Chinese scholar Si Xianzhu not only analyzed House’s translation theory, but also pointed out 

its shortcomings. “For a scientific, complete and operable evaluation model, in addition to covering all 

necessary evaluation parameters, there must be clear operation steps” (Si, 2005, p. 83); the other one 

mainly focuses on the empirical analysis of the existing evaluation models of translation theories, such 

as the application in novels, essays, laws and other texts, involving various text types. On the whole, 

the effect of translation quality assessment model on translation improvement is worthy of expectation. 

Since the launching of the Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) teaching program in 2007 by 

the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council of China to meet the society’s need of 

professional translators and interpreters, more than 200 colleges and universities have been approved to 
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start this program. In order to improve the teaching quality, it is necessary to apply translation quality 

assessment model in the teaching. However, the author thinks that the application of translation quality 

assessment model in the current MTI teaching is still not enough. Therefore, it is of immediate 

significance to try to use a scientific and suitable translation quality assessment model for MTI 

teaching to enable teachers to quickly see students’ translation weaknesses and facilitate students’ 

self-examination. 

 

2. The Necessity of Applying Translation Quality Assessment Model 

From an artistic point of view, translation is characterized by its complexity. To put it simply, 

translation is to use one language to fully express the meaning of another language, but this process is 

easier said than done. Yan Fu, a pioneer in Chinese translation, said in his translation of Evolution and 

Ethics and other Essays, “There are three difficulties for translating—faithfulness, expressiveness and 

elegance. Content faithfulness has been hard enough. Without expressiveness, translation fails even if it 

is faithful to the source text. Therefore, expressiveness needs to be valued.” Besides, language is a 

special cultural phenomenon, closely related to various cultural backgrounds, which makes translation 

an activity of cross-cultural communication. It is generally believed that a language is mainly 

composed of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. If the difficulties in translation and these three 

elements are connected, the pronunciation reflects the rhythm; grammar corresponds to expression 

form and vocabulary carries meaning and stands for meaning. Among these three difficulties, rhythm is 

usually ignored. Except for poetry, translation of other text types rarely has requirements on rhythm. It 

is unwise to weak expression form and meaning for the sake of rhythm. Meanwhile, it is not hard to 

find that translation is also a dynamic activity with strong subjective initiative. Actually, simply 

pursuing expression form and meaning is not simple in translation, which also shows that it is difficult 

to achieve a completely unified standard of translation quality assessment model.  

However, translation has both artistic characteristics and internal laws of its own. The author views that 

the internal laws of translation itself are largely based on the application of translation criteria and 

translation theories. Moreover, translation criticism analyzes translations according to corresponding 

translation theories, or draws conclusions by comparing and analyzing different translation versions of 

source texts. Translation criticism is an essential step in the process of modifying and improving 

translation quality. The translation quality assessment model is equivalent to listing a formula for 

translation criticism on the basis of translation theory, and a relatively scientific and reasonable 

translation quality assessment result can be obtained only by inserting relevant parameters into the 

formula. Achieving a scientific, objective and relatively accurate evaluation is the highest and ultimate 

goal of translation quality assessment (Liu, 2018, p. 8). The complexity of translation itself determines 

no translation theory can be efficacious forever. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the translation 

from the whole text in the process of applying theories. If the translation quality assessment model is 

complete and feasible, and the translation quality analysis can be quantified, accordingly, the efficiency 
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of translation analysis and revision will be greatly improved. “The in-depth study of the scientific 

translation quality assessment model not only has a broad application prospect in translation education, 

but also is of great theoretical significance for the translation studies system in the future” (Li & Xiao, 

2020, p. 72). 

 

3. Translation Quality Assessment in MTI Teaching 

There is no doubt that MTI teaching is a discipline that requires a great deal of practice. Colleges and 

universities offering MTI teaching generally have requirements on the amount of practice, and only 

those who meet the requirements of translation can graduate successfully. It is against this backdrop 

that many students are already struggling to cope with the monthly translation practice, and the 

application of translation theory has become impractical. Although translation skills can be summarized 

from translation practice, it may be more efficient for MTI students to apply the theories summarized 

by predecessors. Of course, relevant theoretical courses are provided in the school, so that students can 

systematically learn the knowledge of translation theories, and teachers will give examples of the 

application of translation theories in class. However, translation theory is not widely used in translation 

practice. 

From the perspective of MTI students, many students cannot achieve ideal results in the process of 

modifying the translation by themselves due to subjective preferences for their own translation. And 

then if their teachers give guidance, students will be enlightened suddenly. This phenomenon occurs 

because translation activities are subjective to some extent. As translators hold the initiative in 

translation, when they get the source text, they will inevitably bring their own ideas into the translation. 

Even obvious mistakes such as grammar, vocabulary or spelling are sometimes not caught in time.  

From the perspective of MTI teachers, it may be the most effective way for teachers to directly and 

clearly mark students’ translation problems, so that students can be aware of their own shortcomings in 

a short time, but the workload of teachers deserves attention. Initially, it is impractical for MTI teachers 

to correct a large number of translation assignments after heavy teaching work. Besides, translation 

does not have standard answers like other science assignments, and even if there is a reference 

translation, it still needs to be analyzed by comparison. Most importantly, each student’s translation is 

different, so are the problems. Therefore, MTI teachers, with limited time and energy, cannot review 

the translation work one by one in the face of a large and tedious workload.  

From the perspective of current MTI academic performance evaluation, it is not enough to evaluate 

only by the final exam. It would be too arbitrary to judge such a practical subject as translation only by 

one exam result. Fortunately, more and more teachers are evaluating students in combination with 

classroom performance and the final exam. Nevertheless, class performance is not as concrete as the 

final exam. In order to make classroom performance more concrete, the evaluation should be more 

closely related to classroom translation practice.  

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After analyzing from the above perspectives, it is not difficult to find that students’ translation practice 

is not combined enough with translation theories in the current MTI teaching. In addition, efficiency is 

in urgent need of improvement in the teaching. Both students and teachers hope to find translation 

problems in time to improve the quality of translation. In order to achieve this goal, it is expected that 

the translation quality assessment model can be applied to the whole process of MTI teaching to carry 

out quantitative analysis of translation. 

 

4. The Assumption of Applying Translation Quality Assessment Model 

“Translation criticism cannot be separated from descriptive or prescriptive research, so it must be 

well-grounded” (Xiao, 2010, p. 129). The translation quality assessment model is not just an empty 

shell. As long as the model is reasonably designed and applied scientifically in MTI teaching, it can be 

highly feasible in practice.  

4.1 The Application of Translation Quality Assessment Model 

As mentioned above, there are 8 parameters in House’s TQA model. Even though the specific content 

of parameters is not concerned, too many parameters are not conducive to evaluation. The efficiency 

improvement is the primary purpose of applying the translation quality assessment model to MTI 

teaching. If the assessment process is too complicated, it will lose application significance. In terms of 

evaluation, Williams’ micro quality assessment is more practical in MTI teaching, and the defects in 

translation are mainly summarized into three categories: critical defects, major defects and minor 

defects. Critical defects can affect translation’s usability. For example, a translation error in an 

instruction manual leads to malfunctions in use. A major defect is one that obstructs the translation’s 

actual effect, but is not the most serious. Minor defects are those that do not substantially affect the 

meaning of the source text. Under this classification, specific parameters can be selected or added 

appropriately according to different text types. For instance, terminology can be used as a parameter in 

the translation assessment of scientific and technical texts. Therefore, the author believes that the 

translation quality assessment model can be designed from the following three aspects on the premise 

of ensuring feasibility in the MTI teaching:  

 

Table 1. Design of Translation Quality Assessment Model in MTI Teaching 
Critical Defect 

 50% 
Information Accuracy 1.Whether there are translation errors (including 

translation errors caused by misunderstanding or 
translation errors of terminology)  
2.Whether there are over translation or under 
translation  

Major Defect 
30% 

Language 1. Grammatical errors 
2. Poor word selection  

 
Minor Defect 

20% 

Expression 1. Whether the expression is smooth and the 
narration style is close to the source text 
2. Whether there are spelling mistakes or 
punctuation errors 

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The expression of the text in one language into another language is called translation. It can be clearly 

seen from the definition of translation that the transmission of original information is fundamental. 

Therefore, it is reasonable to treat information accuracy as the primary criterion of translation quality 

assessment model. It is particularly necessary to focus on whether the original information is added or 

deleted randomly in the translation, especially whether the translation has any deviation in 

understanding. Moreover, considering that this translation quality assessment model is mainly used in 

MTI teaching to evaluate students’ translations, the language quality is specially added as a parameter. 

Some students are careless to make grammatical mistakes in the translation, which could have been 

avoided by conscious checking. A good translation should be equivalent to the source text to the 

greatest extent in terms of ideational function and textual function, so lexical expression and stylistic 

style of translation are also emphasized here based on lexical meaning, pragmatics and discourse. As 

various factors affecting the quality of translation should be taken into full consideration in parameter 

selection, the relationship between form, content and effect between original text and translation should 

be properly handled（He, 2012, p. 27). The three assessment parameters listed in this paper are 

relatively common and easy to evaluate. In practical teaching, MTI teachers can appropriately adjust 

the parameters according to the characteristics of different text types.  

After the parameters are confirmed, each parameter can be assigned its own weight to make the 

evaluation more objective. For example, information accuracy is crucial to the whole translation, and 

such mistranslations caused by students’ understanding deviation will affect the utility of the whole 

translation, so this parameter can be assigned to 50%. In addition, if this parameter scores 8 on a scale 

of 0-10, then its weighting score is 8×50%. In this way, weight scores of other parameters can also be 

calculated quickly, and the final score of students’ translation is the sum of each weight score. In this 

way of assessment, not only are the evaluation results more quantitative and intuitive, but students can 

find the deficiencies of their own translation better according to the weight score.  

4.2 MTI Teaching in the New Mode 

“Teachers should weaken the traditional indoctrination teaching and carry out more task-centered and 

diversified teaching activities. We advocate task-based teaching in the syllabus” (Zhong, 2014, p. 43). 

The traditional mode of student translation plus teacher comment has been adopted in many translation 

classes. The advantage of this model is that teachers can directly point out the shortcomings of students’ 

translation. However, its disadvantages are also very obvious. First, students are given a certain amount 

of time to translate, then students are asked to share their own translations, and finally the teacher 

makes comments. As a result, the teaching content of one class is not enough, and the pace of class 

slows down. Under the new mode, students are required to translate after class, and the teacher to share 

the reference translation. All in all, there are four steps to evaluate translation quality. The first step is to 

encourage students to compare their translations with good translation and evaluate the translation by 

themselves. The second step is to evaluate in groups. Of particular note is to give specific scores and 

give reasons for deduction based on confirmed parameters. The third step is to show the mutual 
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evaluation between the groups. In the last step, the teacher is responsible for the comments. Specifically, 

teachers evaluate whether the scores of translation are reasonable on the basis of the mutual evaluation 

scores of students. By leaving the error correction to students themselves, students can better 

participate in the class, and more directly discover the problems in their translations, which is 

conducive to improve their translation ability.  

 

Table 2. Class Flow Chart 

 
 

In addition to allowing more students to participate in the classroom, such a class arrangement can 

make classroom performance more quantifiable and specific. It is worth noting that group presentation 

also needs to take turns, so that all students have the opportunity to present, but also to avoid some 

students fishing in troubled waters. As a leading role in class, teachers can have more time to share 

good translations instead of spending time on translation correction, and even lead students to do some 

reading appreciation when there is enough time. After all, translation is a process from quantitative 

change to qualitative change, which requires continuous accumulation. Only with continuous inward 

input can produce excellent translations.  

4.3 Various Evaluation Methods in MTI Teaching 

The evaluation methods in the MTI teaching need to be diversified to maximize the effectiveness of the 

translation quality assessment model. The first is the diversity of evaluation content. There are various 

types of texts in MTI teaching. So it is inappropriate to select one or more fixed texts to evaluate the 

quality of students’ translations. “Different text types constitute different language expression forms, 

including word features, style and norms, rhetorical devices, etc. and also form different language 

functions, text emphases, translation purposes, translation strategies and methods” (He, Si, 2009, p. 97). 

If only one type of text is selected to evaluate students’ translation practice, the results are often biased. 

Therefore, teachers should not be limited to a certain type of text when selecting the text type for 

evaluation. The second is the diversity of evaluation methods. The traditional form of evaluation 

represented by examination is not quite reasonable to some extent, which causes many students to only 

pay attention to the final result and ignore the process. Students’ mutual evaluation, exchange and 

presentation and classroom participation can be integrated into the evaluation method to fully mobilize 

students’ enthusiasm and make the evaluation method more reasonable and effective. The last is to 

combine the process evaluation and final evaluation. A single process evaluation may be subjective, 

while relying only on the final evaluation is inevitably too arbitrary. In the above MTI teaching mode, 

every student can use the translation quality assessment model to join in class discussions, and teachers 
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can clearly know about the class performance of each student. Scoring according to the performance 

can make the process evaluation of students concrete, quantitative and practical, although it is tedious 

for teachers to record each student’s class performance.  

 

5. Conclusion 

Translation quality assessment model is an efficient way for translators or translation learners to 

quickly find out deficiencies to improve the quality of their translation. At present, however, the TQA 

model is not widely used in MTI teaching in China. By analyzing the current MTI teaching, this paper 

demonstrates the practicability of the translation quality assessment model in the current MTI teaching, 

and on this basis, it proposes a new mode applying the TQA model of Malcolm Williams in MTI 

teaching. This mode has two advantages. One is to lay out an outline for MTI teaching, which is not a 

restriction, but a standardized process that teachers can arrange reasonably according to the actual 

teaching needs. Secondly, diversified evaluation methods break the fixed evaluation mode like 

traditional final examination to make evaluation results more objective. Nowadays, MTI teaching is 

flourishing, especially translation education has ushered in an era of large-scale and standardized 

development (Zhong, 2019, p. 69). It is necessary to construct a scientific and reasonable TQA model 

for teaching so as to improve the teaching efficiency and the students’ translation ability to link with the 

CATTI(China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters ) examination and to meet the goals of 

MTI program. However, at present, there are not many researches on the TQA model in China as well 

as its application in translation teaching. The author proposes the idea of applying translation quality 

assessment model of Malcolm Williams to MTI teaching, which needs to be further examined and 

discussed by more scholars.  

 

Acknowledgements 

This work was supported by the Teaching and Research Fund of China National Committee for 

Translation & Interpreting Education in 2019 (No. MTIJZW201917) and the Postgraduate Course 

Construction Fund of China Three Gorges University in 2020 (SDKC202019). 

 

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