Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) in English to Persian translations of Where Crawdads Sing Based on House's Model

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to assess quality in Masoudi and Alooshi’s literary translations of Where Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, based on House's Model of TQA (1997). In order to do so, a descriptive and comparative design in mixed method approach was adopted. In the first step, 15 chapters of the books were selected as the main corpus. Next, the covert and overt errors were identified. Finally, the identified errors were analyzed and compared. The results indicated that, overt errors have outnumbered the covert ones and both literary translations were done overtly. Accordingly, it was found that both translations were in line with the hypothesis of House’s model (1997). However, the number of committed errors were different in these translations. Masoudi’s translation has committed less errors than Alooshi’s translation and it was more faithful to ST. Therefore, it was concluded that Masoudi’s translation is of higher quality.

Keywords: literary translation, overt and covert errors, translation quality, House’s model of TQA