The Interaction between Text Difficulty and Translation Accuracy
Sandra Hale and Stuart Campbell
Difficulty is a subjective and yet an influential matter in translation. It is always a matter of much importance in translating testing. The difficulty of a text is determined by some criteria as register, tone and idiomatic expression, etc.
The writers of the paper propose that the difficulty of a text can be determined by counting the number of renditions in a group of subjects translating it.
On the other hand, each text type has its own level of difficulty. Reiss believes that the level of difficulty of the text depends on five aspects, which are subject matter, register, type of language, pragmatic aspect and the historical cultural context.
Accuracy is a subjective matter and translating accurately is as some say somehow impossible due to the lack of direct equivalence across languages. Some believe that accuracy is possible through pragmatic reconstruction
The subjects of the research have some options in translating the text, and they make the decision in choosing one of them. In this study, the data is gathered around four scenarios. Based on the results of these four scenarios and what was referred to in theory the writers conclude that the causes of difficulty were different in different items. Then they propose that accuracy can be achieved by seeking pragmatic equivalence.