The Modular Assessment Pack: a new approach to translation quality assessment at the Directorate General for Translation

This paper presents a conceptual proposal for Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) and its practical tool as a remedy to the deficiencies detected in a quantitative quality assessment tool developed at the Directorate General for Translation (DGT) of the European Commission: the Quality Assessment Tool (QAT). The new theoretical model, the Functional-Componential Approach (FCA) takes on a functionalist and holistic quality definition to solve the theoretical shortcomings of the QAT. Thus, it incorporates the complementary top-down view of a qualitative module to build up a quality measurement tool, the aim of which is to increase inter- and intra-rater reliability. Its practical tool, the Modular Assessment Pack (MAP), is tested using a pretest-posttest methodology based on an ad hoc corpus of real assignments translated by professional freelance translators. The results of this experimental pilot study, carried out with the English-Spanish language pair at the Spanish Language Department of the DGT, are described and discussed. This analysis sheds some light on the benefits of adopting a mixed bottom-up top-down approach to quality assessment and reveals some weaknesses of the FCA which suggest the methods of further research. Although small-scale, the findings of this pilot study indicate that improvements can be achieved by remedying its limitations in broader experimental conditions and adjusting the tool for use in other language combinations.