Abstract

This document is a supplement to the article entitled “The Multidimensional Quality Metric (MQM) Framework: A New Framework for Translation Quality Assessment”, which has been acepted for publication in the upcoming January volume of JoSTrans, the Journal of Specialized Translation. The article is a coauthored project between Dr. Alan K. Melby, Dr. Troy Cox and myself. In this document you will find a preface describing the process of writing the article, an annotated bibliography of sources consulted in my research, a summary of what I learned, and a conclusion that considers the future avenues opened up by this research. Our article examines a new method for assessing the quality of a translation known as the Multidimensional Quality Metric, MQM. In our experiment we set the MQM framework to mirror, as closely as possible, the American Translators Association's (ATA) translator certification exam. To do this we mapped the ATA error categories to corresponding MQM error categories. We acquired a set of 29 student translations and had a group of student raters use the MQM framework to rate these translations. We measured the practicality of the MQM framework by comparing the time required for ratings to the average time required to rate translations in the industry. In addition, we had 2 ATA certified translators rate the anchor translation (a translation that was scored by every rater in order to have a point of comparison). The certified translators' ratings were used to verify that the scores given by the student raters were valid. Reliability was also measured, which found that the student raters were not interchangeable, but that the measurement estimate of reliability was adequate. The article's goal was to determine the extent to which the Multidimensional Quality Metric framework for translation evaluation is viable (practical, reliable and valid) when designed to mirror the ATA certification exam. Overall, the results of the experiment showed that MQM could be a viable way to rate translation quality when operationalized based on the ATA's translator certification exam. This is an important discovery in the field of translation quality, because it shows that MQM could be a viable tool for future researchers. Our experiment suggests that researchers ought to take advantage of the MQM framework because, not only is it free, but any studies completed using the MQM framework would have a common base, making these studies more easily comparable.

Degree

MA

College and Department

Humanities; French and Italian

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2014-12-01

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd7404

Keywords

translation quality, translation evaluation, translation assessment, Multidimensional Quality Metric, MQM, practicality, validity, reliability

Language

english

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