Prospective Philologist Translation Assessment Triangulation: Screen Video Recording and Think Aloud Protocol Combination

Abstract

The article strives for the enhancement of the efficiency of translation competence assessment in philologists’ university training with the help of the triangulation method. It is deemed in the concurrent involvement of different assessment agents (teacher, peer and self) into integrated and collaborative translation performance evaluation from two perspectives, i.e. translation product quality and process workflow, with the use of diversified methods based on different theoretical approaches. This research aims at the study of students’ video screen recording contribution combined with think-aloud protocols (TAPs) to increase the assessment objectivity and reliability of the received translation product. Method. A mixed research design was developed and implemented. It involved 40 third-year university students majoring in Philology, who were asked to perform a written translation of the excerpt of English popular science article in Marketing (c. 250 words) into Ukrainian in MS Word using any reference sources at hand, video record the process of their translation and accompany it with their comments. The research was completed with the questionnaire on students’ attitude to the screen recording and TAP involvement into translation task performance and assessment. Findings. The findings of this study reported on the positive impact of screen recording on the assessment accuracy, informative value of the collected data and formative effect of triangulated assessment method on students’ translation competence acquisition. Implications for research and practice. The received results can serve for the optimisation of the procedures of translation task difficulty measurement and competence assessment in the translation classroom.