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TRANSLATION EVALUATION IN A NEWS AGENCY

Ali Hajmohammadi a
a
IRIB news agency, Tehran, Iran

Online Publication Date: 25 November 2005

To cite this Article Hajmohammadi, Ali(2005)'TRANSLATION EVALUATION IN A NEWS AGENCY',Perspectives,13:3,215 — 224

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 215

TRANSLATION EVALUATION IN A NEWS AGENCY

Ali Hajmohammadi, IRIB news agency, Tehran, Iran.
[email protected]
Abstract
In this article, I argue that most approaches to translation evaluation that are central to Trans-
lation Studies scholars and teachers are out of touch with market demands. I present the working
conditions of translators in a news agency and discuss the evaluation of translation performance
in the market. I am particularly keen on calling a�ention to the differences between academic
and market parameters for evaluation. First, there is a presentation of the purpose of evaluation
in news agency environments and subsequently, I describe the assessment of news translation. I
finish by examining two parameters of evaluation, which, in my opinion, distinguish translation
evaluation in the market from the academy.
The suggestions are based on my observations as a translation evaluator in IRIB news agency,
Tehran.

Key words: General; English-Iranian; translation quality assessment; market conditions;

translation of foreign news; revision; editing.

Introduction
The field of Translation Quality Assessment is problematic: the very notion
of assessment arouses controversy, and it is o�en difficult to tell the difference
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between, e.g., ‘translation evaluation’, ‘translation criticism’, ‘translation assess-

ment’, and ‘translation quality assessment’.
As far as I can see, some scholars are concerned with developing models that
satisfy the needs of practitioners, thus a�empting to bridge the gap between
theory and practice. Others a�empt to draw up ‘objective’ translation assess-
ment criteria by means of incorporating conventional frameworks of education-
al measurement, such as reliability, validity, and objectivity, into their overall
structures. It is true that they offer insight into overall assessment, but they are
still biased towards translator-training programmes rather than towards the cri-
teria that count on the market.
One weakness is that they do not take into account ‘cost-effectiveness’. The
academic frameworks of translation assessment have li�le regard for the finan-
cial aspect that is the driving force behind the practice of translation assessment
in the market. Let me expand on this with a few examples.
Katharina Reiss’ (1971) text-typological approach to quality assessment seems
relevant in that it distinguishes between the evaluation of content-focused texts,
including news material, and other text types. However, since it demands con-
stant reference to the source text, it is neither practical nor economical. Similarly,
Hans J. Vermeer’s notion of Skopos and commission may also seem to meet the
expectations of evaluation procedures in professional translation since it con-
siders the goal or purpose of a translation that is defined by the commissioner as
the ‘yardstick’ for decisions about the changes necessary to make it clear to the
target-audience (Vermeer 2000: 221-232). Yet, it seems to me that skopos-based
approaches to translation assessment fail to provide solutions to many of the
practical problems in the field, such as those I discuss in this article.
Juliane House’s functional-pragmatic model for translation quality assess-
ment (House 2001a: 197-200) also appears useful for drawing up practical pro-

0907-676X/05/03/215-10 $20.00 © 2005 A. Hajmohammadi

Perspectives: Studies in Translatology Vol. 13, No. 3, 2005
 216 2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 3

cedures for assessment since it provides such notions as cultural filters (2001b:
251-252). However, her demand for an analysis of the “textual profile” is not
feasible at a news agency for reasons of time and money. In a news agency
context, her suggestion that target texts should have “the same function” as
source texts is also problematic: news translation commissioners may well call
for some deviations from the source text content according to current ethics and
policies.
Stuart Campbell and Sandra Hale (2003: 207) provide a checklist of purposes
comprising “measuring aptitude”, “determining placement”, “providing for-
mative assessment”, “providing summative assessment”, “accreditation”, and
“credit transfer”. This categorisation is more market-oriented since the last item
specifically addresses the recruiting process on the market. However, further
modifications are needed to provide a truly market-oriented classification.
In brief, current approaches to translation evaluation, in general, are not
geared towards market demands.
In search of a market-oriented evaluation, Gerard McAlester discusses (2001:
229-241) a model potentially a�uned to the criterion of practicality, while also
answering the criteria of reliability, validity, and objectivity. He examines Ger-
man and Anglophone traditions of translation assessment to see to what extent
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they meet all the criteria, and convincingly argues that current models of trans-
lation assessment are not easily applied. He criticises the methods of assessment
used by Western accrediting bodies for being “frequently inexplicit” and for
following “fairly rough guidelines based admi�edly in the best cases on experi-
ence and common sense, but in the worst on mainly subjective impressions”
(2000: 231).
McAlester maintains that all assessment in Western accrediting bodies should
have three basic components in common.

- They must have “considerable agreement as to the most suitable proce-

dures employed”,
- They must be “defined in explicit terms”, and
- They must be “based on the finding of a solid body of research on the sub-
ject” (2000: 230).

The first and second components could be affected directly by a “solid body
of research”, which may also generate, however, differences in assessment mod-
els design.
One might suspect that the gap between real-life translation work and mod-
els in Translation Quality Assessment literature will also grow wider because of
insufficient research on the characteristics of translation evaluation in the mar-
ket. While Susanne Lauscher blames professionals for ignoring academic ef-
forts (2000: 149), the reverse might also be the case, as evaluation scholars focus
largely on academic environments when they develop models of translation
assessment and ignore market-related conditions.
My vantage point for this article is my work at an Iranian news agency (the
IRIB News Agency), where I have been a specialist and senior translator for
more than three years, and thus participated in professional translation evalu-
ation. My choice of a news agency is not accidental, because news agencies are
 Hajmohammadi. Translation Evaluation in a News Agency. 217

close to the centre of the global translation market, notably with the presentday
information explosion in all fields.
Let me hasten to add that my use of one news agency also puts limitations
on my conclusions. Therefore, I will do my best not to over-generalise from the
environment I describe and will not argue that it necessarily applies to all news
agencies, let alone the entire translation market. There will always be features
that are confined to one workplace. With this in mind, I shall try to focus on
common features, because I am convinced that these types of comparisons and
contrasts are helpful in the field of Translation Quality Assessment by helping
scholars and practitioners to understand one another.

Market evaluation: Some considerations

Nicole Martinez Melis and Amparo Hurtado Albir note (2001: 273) that evalu-
ation encompasses three research areas, each with its own purpose: ‘assessment
of published works’, ‘assessment of trainee translators in translation teaching’,
and ‘assessment of professionals at work’. This classification is useful for distin-
guishing between evaluation of news translation (professionals) and the other
two.
Christiane Nord’s thinking is relevant here. Making Vermeer’s concept of the
Downloaded At: 23:44 18 February 2009

Skopos a central component of her functional method of evaluation, she states

(1991, as quoted by McAlester 2000: 233) that “¼ it is the text as a whole whose
functions and effects must be regarded as the crucial criteria for translation criti-
cism.”
News materials are produced to ‘inform’. In other words, news translation
serves as a tool to transfer information to target recipients. To this end, Nord de-
fines a translation error as a deviation from a pre-selected model of action from
the translator’s standpoint, or the recipient’s frustration of expectations about a
certain action (Nord 1991, as quoted by McAlester 2000: 233).

Recruitment
In the news agency I discuss here, translators are recruited to render news
materials from an assortment of foreign languages, including English, French,
Arabic, and German into their mother tongue, Persian. The translated versions
are edited (and possibly revised) by senior translators who then pass them on
to the news agency’s national subscribers. These comprise the domestic press,
broadcast organisations, and government institutions.
Nevertheless, having stressed above that news material is to ‘inform’, it is
also obvious that professional agencies and market commissioners like the IRIB
are hesitant about using university degrees as indicators of translation quali-
fications, and this applies in particular to those from translator training pro-
grammes that are specifically focused on literary translation. The reason for this
is that literary translation and source-text-oriented approaches instill in students
a respect for the source-text lexis and structure, which proves counterproduc-
tive in news translation, which is target-recipient oriented.
Small wonder that news agencies apply their own assessment methods in
the form of an examination and an optional interview. They wish to recruit
translators who, unconcerned about target text regularities, provide them with
translated texts devoid of the ‘taste’ of the source text. This o�en means that
 218 2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 3

candidates who have never passed an academic exam may well be hired on the
basis of a brilliant performance at the recruitment test, thanks to practical ex-
perience. In a news agency, production takes pride of place of training. I would
say that academic instructors train students to translate for educational aims,
whereas in news agencies, translators are to produce news by means of transla-
tion for the ‘subscribers who pay’. For them, the only thing that ma�ers is the
end product.

Quality assessment in a news agency context

The purpose of evaluation dominates both assessment methods and training
procedures. Though simple, this fact should play a decisive role in the design of
evaluation models, but Translation Quality Assessment literature has paid li�le
a�ention to it.
News agency evaluation may be conducted for various reasons:

• to check whether end products are sufficiently good to be passed on to

clients.
• Commissioners (the agency) may also occasionally evaluate new transla-
tors to make sure that they are a�uned to
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- the ethics of news translation, as well as

- the internal guidelines for news translation and writing. And they may
be
• evaluated in terms of their vocational conduct, and for
• promotion.

The two-stage evaluation procedure

Douglas Robinson describes translation competence as “the ability to operate
on autopilot for most of the time when translating, pausing only for conscious
reflection and reasoning where a previously unencountered or infrequent trans-
lation problem arises in a specific situation and context, for a given text” (Rob-
inson 1995, as quoted by Adab 2000: 219. Italics in original).
Given the urgency of sending news to subscribers, this notion of ‘autopilot’ is
highly relevant to news agency translators. They must hurry in order not to lag
behind the pace of foreign telex transmission lines.
However, when they are recruited, applicants are not required to have auto-
mated procedures. They may well be hired by the agency even if they demon-
strate a level of translational competence below this. To that effect, new transla-
tors are evaluated at two different stages: a ‘short-term evaluation’ and a ‘long-
term evaluation’.
This procedure means that in the beginning they are hired for a trial period,
and therefore it is not surprising that the agency does not trust one-off perfor-
mance assessment. It is certainly true that some Translation Studies scholars are
also dissatisfied with the type of assessments practiced at training institutions.
Basil Hatim and Ian Mason consider “hit-and-miss methods of evaluation” as
unsatisfactory (Hatim and Mason 1997: 198). They quote Christiane Nord, who
objects to “the practice of testing solely by means of an unseen wri�en text and
of selecting such texts on the basis of degree of difficulty alone”, because “all
the skills involved in translating are tested at once and errors do not necessarily
 Hajmohammadi. Translation Evaluation in a News Agency. 219

show which skill is deficient.” Hatim and Mason extend her argument to the
assessment of test-takers’ transfer competence, positing that in one-off exams,
testees do not demonstrate their potential transfer skill, “simply because the
source text is too difficult for them to analyse and understand properly” (Hatim
and Mason 1997: 198).

The assessments
The short-term evaluation is conducted immediately a�er potential staff apply
to the agency. At this stage, the aim is to establish whether they have the mini-
mal qualifications for translation work or not. In addition to an (optional) inter-
view, applicants to IRIB news agency are asked to translate three news items
on various subject ma�ers, including politics, economy, science, and sports, all
from the day’s foreign news. These items must be rendered into Persian by the
applicants, who are allowed to use monolingual and bilingual dictionaries as
well as encyclopedias.
In order to avoid subjectivity, three evaluators assess the translations. The
evaluation goes beyond a summation of errors, by combining error analysis
with a holistic view. It suffices that it is an accurate translation of the informa-
tion in the source-language news story. The testing at this stage is relatively lax,
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because it is assumed that translators become professionals only by working

under demanding conditions.
The long-term evaluation takes place later and takes into account whether the
new translator has acquired the skills required for the news agency’s needs. At
this stage, evaluators check whether translators have become accustomed to
team work, whether they have acquired the optimal ‘translation speed’, wheth-
er their writing skills are aligned to the agency’s style-guide and news ethics,
and whether they have learned to approach news in a professional manner.
If they are found not to be up to standards in the long-term assessment, they
may lose their jobs or be transferred to less important assignments. Failure is
rare since the ‘cooperative’ nature of translation in the news agency helps boost
translators’ skills and knowledge over time and gradually to perform optimal-
ly.

Evaluators
There are several agents who evaluate translators in the news agency. The
‘translators’ themselves may serve as the first evaluators of their products. This
self-assessment can be conducted according to the three-phase checklist pro-
posed by Hatim and Mason (1993: 22):

1) Readability,
2) Conforming to generic and discoursal target-language conventions, and
3) Judging the adequacy of translation for specified purposes.

The checklist may seem subjective at first glance, since ‘readability’ is ill-de-
fined and ‘conformity’ and ‘adequacy’ are based on the assessor’s taste. How-
ever, the existence of a database of news material at the agency, which has been
created by means of the staff’s collective work, provides a framework for de-
termining adequacy and conformity. Incorporating both translations and news
 220 2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 3

stories wri�en by native editors, this database provides a news translation desk
with ‘parallel texts’ that help translators to see authentic options easily. Polished
by means of the agency’s routine activities, the database sets norms for the trans-
lation of news material and specifies the pros and cons of news production from
foreign sources. Once accessible as running texts, the database may also be used
for designing a “corpus-based evaluation” of new staffers’ performance, which,
as Bowker argues, can provide more objective assessment than can traditional
tools for evaluation, such as dictionaries, printed parallel texts, subject field ex-
perts, and unverifiable intuition (Bowker 2001: 345).
News translators might also be evaluated by colleagues. What would be
looked upon as ‘cheating’ at many universities, namely team work, is a crucial
factor for identifying efficient staff in a news agency. This cooperative assess-
ment makes the news translation desk a single body that shares the minds of a
range of translators with diversified background knowledge.
Evaluation is also found in the ‘feedback’ from the recipients (the agency’s
subscribers). This feedback prompts translators to perform at a level that out-
siders deem adequate. This adequacy is determined by the news writing norms
reflected in the huge database of daily news (in the press, TV, radio, etc.) and the
style-guides or style-sheets of agencies.
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Parameters of evaluation in news agency

It is sometimes argued that, for example, checklists of criteria might provide
both evaluators and translators with a common framework for their work, as fa-
miliarity with evaluative expectations might be useful for the selection of trans-
lation alternatives as well as for revision in texts (Adab 2001: 216).
However useful this may be for passing exams, professional translation cen-
tres cannot use “clearly established criteria” or a “pre-determined list of crite-
ria of evaluation” for the recruitment and assessment of staff translators, since
these criteria do not pay much a�ention to cost-effectiveness, which is vital to
survival in the market.
On the other hand, we should not reject the existence of evaluation param-
eters and downplay assessment as being “carried out in a subjective, undisci-
plined, ad hoc fashion” (Melis and Albir 2001: 2) or based on “unsystematic and
hit-and-miss methods” (Hatim and Mason 1997: 198). Again, cost-effectiveness
and the existence of ‘subscribers who pay’ and serve as the actual recipients of
translated news materials discourage ad hoc or subjective evaluation as well
as one-off assessment in professional centres. Market managers evaluate their
translators according to some, o�en unwri�en, parameters that are determined
partially by the demands and expectations of customers. These parameters are
used both for the recruitment and for the long-range assessment of staff. In rela-
tion to the agency, they take into account not only the translators’ actual trans-
lations (which is also found with educational institutions), but also a range of
supportive skills, such as background knowledge, work capacity, professional
conduct, etc.
There are two parameters in particular that I shall adduce in order to sub-
stantiate my claim that the market requires different evaluations than does the
academy. These are ‘additional skills’ and ‘time pressure’.
 Hajmohammadi. Translation Evaluation in a News Agency. 221

Additional skills
As noted, the end products from news agencies provide clients with the lat-
est daily news, which is vastly different from the university’s education-driven
demands and evaluation procedures. Accordingly, translators are challenged
with more translation problems. To illustrate, we can compare the two environ-
ments, using Katharina Reiss’ discussion to clarify the basic principles of news
translation.
According to her definition of text types (2000: 27-31), news items are con-
tent-focused texts that are “designed to provide information rapidly, accurately,
and comprehensively” (2000: 28). She argues that such texts “require invariance
in transfer of their content” (2000: 30. Italics in original) and therefore call for a
translation method concerned with “effective communication and accuracy of
information” (2000: 28). In her view, then, translators must transfer the content
accurately, including the application of appropriate conjunctions (in Persian) to
communicate the content effectively. Similarly, evaluators might consider the
translation of a news item satisfactory as long as the topic and its essential sub-
stance are fully represented (Reiss 2000: 32).
A news translator must master additional skills in order to produce news ma-
terial that satisfies the recipients. They must follow the conventional ‘format’ of
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news writing, e.g., the rendition of time, location, and quotations. Some news
agencies may assign translators to edit texts, typically by adding background
information to the final rendition of news or eliminating certain paragraphs
according to agency policies. In broadcast news (TV, radio, the Internet), trans-
lators must observe the rules concerning the style of news writing. When they
translate for the Iranian radio, they must thus choose simple vocabularies and
syntactical structures in order to make it easy for the audience to understand
the news.
Professional agencies have to be cost-effective in translation activities. They
may demand therefore that translators transfer only the gist of some news.
Paraphrasing and skip-through skills are sometimes required for foreign news
material. Translators may be called upon to provide news summaries.
Furthermore, they may have to learn to select news suitable for translations
according to agency policies. Translators must have a ‘command of the back-
ground of news’. Although all specialist translators must know their fields thor-
oughly, the corresponding ‘mastery’ is more crucial to news translators who
must be updated on the latest developments. News translators must cope with
‘neologisms’. Few translation teachers in the academy insist that students pro-
vide translations of new phenomena and coin new words. In fact, coinage in
translation is rarely considered a requirement at university, unless ‘neologisms’
are the subject at hand. But it is routine in news translation, especially when the
target language is not a major world language and its users face a daily inunda-
tion of new words and phenomena.
The ‘style-guide’ (style-sheet) mentioned earlier is drawn up by the agency
commissioners. In addition to including guidelines for writing news, the style-
guide outlines the general principles that condition the production of news ma-
terial. These procedural principles serve as the ‘translation brief’, which Basil
and Hatim consider (1997: 199) vital to translation assessment for specifying the
evaluator’s goals. It should be noted that the style-guide also limits the options
 222 2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 3

open to translators. It prohibits the use of certain expressions and words and
bans structures that the agency commissioners consider to be deviations from
their news policies, in terms of their background or because they convey nega-
tive socio-cultural shades of meaning.
As part of their team work, translators have to solve problems within the
group, help newcomers a�une, share their knowledge with colleagues, etc., es-
pecially in ‘night shi�s’, which are an onerous part of news translators’ work.
Team work and night shi�s concern individual translators rather than trans-
lation procedure or processes. In the market, translators’ professional records
go beyond an evaluation of the product alone, since the translators themselves
are subject to evaluation. In other words, the market environment evaluates the
‘translator as producer’.

Time pressure
In the literature on translation quality assessment, there is, as noted by Camp-
bell and Hale (2003), very li�le discussion of time pressure in translation evalu-
ation, let alone any theoretically or empirically based findings on the subject.
But it is central to the realities of a news agency evaluation. At an agency, news
and time connect directly. News material has a short life. A well-known adage
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among news workers likens news to a newborn baby that dies on its birthday.
This makes time, urgency, central to news translators’ work and makes the pa-
rameter of time crucial in the evaluation of them.
We can examine the role of time in the evaluation of news translation by ad-
dressing three questions:

1) How long does it take for a translator to translate a certain amount of news
material?
2) How many words can a translator translate in a session (a working ses-
sion)?
3) How long does it take for an evaluator (senior translator) to revise (edit) a
translated bit of news and to produce a version that can be posted to sub-
scribers?

The first item is considered both at the recruitment test and occasionally as
assessment in daily work. Speedy translation is central to daily activities.
The second item concerns the amount of news translation a staff member
can produce. Because of their limited duration, most university exams are not
geared towards assessing translators’ output capacity under real-life conditions.
But at a news agency, evaluators have to assess the capability of applicants and
staff. This applies both to quality and quantity. Accordingly, one important pa-
rameter is the amount a translator is capable of translating, and the amount
translated in a single session, a working shi�, can be used for evaluation. The
question, however, is not simply a question of the relationship between time
and amount of translation produced.
It is a well-known fact that translators find it more difficult to translate the be-
ginning of a text than later sections, as they gradually get to know the text and
it provides them with contextual information. But the human brain gets tired in
the long run – it is not a machine.
 Hajmohammadi. Translation Evaluation in a News Agency. 223

Furthermore, the issue of ‘subject’ must also be considered in calculating the

time-length ratio. Five separate texts of 200 words do not correspond to a text of
1,000 words. When the subject ma�er changes, translators face new vocabular-
ies, syntax, and they must familiarise themselves with new contexts and back-
ground information. This is an important factor at a news agency where staff
translators usually have to shi� from one news item to another.
It should be noted that this is different from what most students meet with
at universities: there they complete translation assignments, which usually deal
with only one topic as part of their preparation for class, whenever it suits them,
they have an extensive deadline, and can spend several days on finding ad-
equate solutions. Conversely, news translators must complete their task in a
single session. There is no room for delay and waste of time. They o�en have to
tackle texts that are much longer than the assignments at universities. Besides,
they have to deal with much longer texts than those normally demanded at uni-
versity during a single session. The unpredictable influx of news also implies
that there is no fixed limit to the length of a given assignment.
The third item on the list concerns the final stage of the news production
in which the evaluator (senior translator) checks translations, gives them the
finishing touches, and prepares them for distribution to customers. The less ‘ed-
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iting time’ spent on producing the final version, the more adequate the transla-
tion. The editing time is an effective criterion for evaluating a news translator’s
competence (McAlester 2000).

Conclusion
Universities are not operating in a vacuum in today’s globalised world. They
are expected to have market expectations as their educational goal. Translator
training programmes are also expected to cater for the needs and demands of a
market clientele. It would be useful to have cooperation between theoreticians
and practitioners for developing more market-oriented models of translation
evaluation. Similarly, I am convinced that a replication of market evaluation
environments would improve universities’ training programmes.
This would involve such features as brief-based translation tasks, single-ses-
sion translation tasks, handling longer texts at examinations, extending evalua-
tion beyond a one-off final exam, etc., in order to familiarise trainees with realis-
tic market conditions and provide the market with more professionally oriented
recruits.

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