A Skill-based Approach for Assessing EFL Students’ Translation Performance

Testing the translation performance of EFL students has not been paid due attention compared with the bulk of the literature on testing other language skills, namely reading, writing, speaking, and listening. This has led some translation teachers to face serious problems in measuring their students’ translation performance. In most cases, they have to opt for the existing developed rubrics presumably considered suitable for their own classrooms. However, the procedures leading to these developed rubrics are not usually well elaborated on by the original rubric developers. Furthermore, the rubrics that have been developed for measuring this skill are in some cases so detailed that EFL instructors prefer to resort to their own general assessment. Thus, reviewing some of the suggested rubrics for assessing students’ translation quality, the present paper which focuses on the testing model proposed by Hughes aims at providing translation instructors with a handy and practical rubric based on the skills and sub-kills needed in any translation practice.