Translation Education, Effective Teaching, and Translation Competence: The Case of Iranian EFL Learners

The present study is an attempt to investigate the relationship between English translation student s perception of effective teaching and their translation competence. To fulfill this objective 90 (40 males and 50 females) students majoring in English translation from two, Sistan and Baluchistan and Zabol, universities participated in this study by completing two instruments, translation competence inventory (Orozco Albir, 2002) and perception of effective teaching questionnaire (Moafian Pishghadam, 2007). Furthermore, a semi- structural interview was used to investigate participant s attitude towards the curriculum for English translation education in Iran. The results of Person Product Moment correlation revealed that there was a significant relationship between learner s perception of effective teaching and their translation competence. Likewise, the results of Regression analysis indicated that learner s translation competence could act as a predictor of their perception of effective teaching. Besides, the results of semi- structural interview showed that participants believed that translation education system in Iran missed components like multilingualism and multiculturalism. They believed that incorporating multilingualism/ multiculturalism based curriculum can help learners to gain a better understanding of their native language, develop learner s critical thinking, decision-making, and communication skills, which lead to producing high quality translation. It also provides more job opportunities. The findings of the study can be of great use to translation syllabus designers, material developers as well as teachers.