constructing pathways to translation - Higher Education Commission

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Some characteristics can be underlined for each of the three levels of competence in the
given table:
Table 3.1 Characteristics of Three Levels of Competence
Level of Competence Characteristics of the Text in this Level
Sub –Standard Spelling is very inaccurate, source text is not fully translated and
target text is short; function words are often omitted, so that text
contains high proportion of content words, especially norms;
translation is rather indirect because of efforts to cope with poor target
language repertoire.
Pre-Textual Spelling is accurate; source text is fully translated; text is long and
strung-out, because of use of function words rather than
lexicalizations; vocabulary is not varied, translation is structurally
very close to the source text; style is more ‘verby’.
Textual Spelling is accurate; source text is fully translated; text is short and
syntactically dense through the use of lexicalizations; style is more
nominate and words are longer than more varied, the text is
structurally more distant from the original, because of grammatical
shifts and indirect translation of source text words.
(Adapted from Campbell, 1998:69)
Thus, what is evident at all the three levels is considerable amount of Linguistic
proficiency in order to translate any type of text undertaken by students.
This leads one to the most crucial stage which is a pre-requisite for all translators:
independence in the execution of the task. Translation is a task that requires selfassessment,
without which translation activity cannot be undertaken.
There are four fundamental principles that follow from the idea of modelling translation
competence:
1. Translation competence can be separated into relatively independent components,
which can be used as building blocks in curriculum design.
2. Translation education is a matter of intervention in the development of various
components of translation competence.
3. Students are likely to attain different levels of achievement in the various
components of translation competence, given difference in their bilingual skills.