Does Using Monolingual and Bilingual Dictionaries Affect Translation Quality Differently?

Journal of English Language Studies

مقاله 2، دوره 1، شماره 3، خرداد 2010، صفحه 19-32   

نویسندگان

Masoud Motahari¹؛ Ailar Taherian²

¹Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics, Islamic Azad University Central Tehran Branch, Iran

²Instructor, University of Applied Sciences and Technology, Tehran, Iran

چکیده

This research was conducted to examine whether there was a significant difference between the quality of translations produced by translation students who used bilingual (English to Farsi) dictionaries with that of those using monolingual (English to English) dictionaries. To this end, 78 senior undergraduate students of English Translation took part in a piloted English proficiency test, 60 of whom were chosen on the basis of their performance on this test. Subsequently, the 60 participants were randomly divided into two groups and a nontechnical English text was given to both groups. One group used a bilingual dictionary while the other a monolingual dictionary in the process of translating the text. The works of these students were evaluated and scored by two raters who enjoyed inter-rater reliability. To respond to the research question posed in this study, the means of the scores of the two groups were compared through an independent samples t-test. The conclusion was that there was no significant difference in the quality of translation of the two groups. In other words, using a bilingual or monolingual dictionary was not a determining factor in terms of the translation quality of the students.

کلیدواژه‌ها

translation؛ monolingual dictionaries؛ bilingual dictionaries؛ Translation quality