The Effect of Self-revision on the Quality of Texts Translated by Trainee Translators

Abstract

This study investigates whether the quantity of self-revisions affects the quality of texts translated by translator trainees. The study was conducted on nine translator trainees who translated texts of intermediate difficulty in the Translog II from English to Croatian. Translated texts were evaluated using the TAUS DQF model. The results showed that there is no correlation between the number of self-revisions and the evaluation score. The results suggest that editing the text more does not necessarily mean that the quality will improve since not all revisions might be necessary. These findings carry important implications for translator training, i.e., more emphasis should be placed on training the translators on how to recognise the self-revisions that are necessary to raise the quality of the product, so the trainees learn how to balance time restrictions and quality requirements that accompany any professional translation task.