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INTRODUCTION
This thesis focuses on translation quality assessment. The idea
emerged when I was offered a translation course at the University of
Umm Al-Qura in Saudi Arabia. I had to teach translation to a class of
undergraduates in the Department of English, Faculty of Social
Sciences. Only then did I find myself face to face with a serious
problem which I was, then, ill-equipped to handle, that is, assessment
of the quality of my students' translation assignments. I relied,
almost exclusively, on my translational expertise, intuition, and
insight. But intuition and insight are mere abstractions.
Consequently, I began to think of a set of objective and norm-
governable criteria for the measurability of translation quality.
Despite the fact that the general outlook to translation in the
department was no more than a 'transfer' operation manageable only
through a high level of proficiency in two languages, I started to look
into the Arabic linguistic tradition in the confident hope that I might
find some theory, or at least terminology, wherewith I could bring the
notion of translation quality assessment closer to my students'
comprehension and, at the same time, justify my own judgments in terms
of objective, impersonal, and norm-governable criteria. It took me
years trying to work out some plausible, reliable model on which I
could base my assessment of translation quality.
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