Translation quality assessment mostly looks at substantive quality criteria. However, when we assess handwritten translations, such assessment may be psychologically biased by the appearance of the text on the page. This article demonstrates how varying levels of legibility boost scores (in the case of neat handwriting) or depress them (in the case of messy handwriting), suggesting that penmanship standards could be unduly influencing appraisals of translation quality. The finding has relevance not only for the design of appraisal procedures in certification exams or competitions, but also for translation quality assessments performed by instructors in translator training.

Here are the PowerPoint slides for my presentation at the 27th International Conference on Foreign/Second Language Acquisition in Szczyrk (21-23 May 2015). I talked about the findings of my small scale study on translation competition entrants in which I used insights from positive psychology to propose improvements to the format, hoping to resolve some of the ambivalence with which competitions are approached in educational contexts.

The slides contain selected data from a larger dataset, to be written up for publication.

This article discusses a project where trainee translators were invited to translate and publish Wikipedia articles as part of their formal translator training. The findings suggest that this form of authentic assignment with real-life application is a powerful teaching format well suited for, and appreciated by, trainee translators.

Keywords: translator training; formal translator training; Wikipedia; Wikipedia in education; authentic translation projects, natural critical learning environments, social constructivism in education