Cultural Orientations of Iranian English Translation Students: Do Gender and Translation Quality Matter?

The present exploratory study aimed to construct and apply a localized questionnaire to investigate the cultural orientations of Iranian English translation students. It also examined the relationship between cultural orientations of Iranian English translation students, their gender, and translation quality. This mixed-methods study, in the first phase, used focus group interviews to form a pool of cultural orientations to provide for the first draft of the questionnaire items. Initial draft of the questionnaire was subjected to the revision by experts and potential participants to determine the face and content validity of the data to collect. Eventually, a 53-item questionnaire was finalized, and the responses of a cluster sample of 473 Iranian English translations at undergraduate and graduate levels were obtained. In the second phase, the data collected using the revised questionnaire were analyzed through a number of inferential statistical procedures. National identity, cultural heritage, local traditionalism, collectivism, and social attachment were the revealed categories of the cultural orientations of the participants. Findings did not indicate any significant relationship between the Iranian English translation students’ cultural orientations, their gender, and translation quality.