An empirical study on multidimensional summative assessment in translation teaching

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The purpose of this paper is to present an experimental study on summative assessment in translation teaching. The paper emphasises the need to use, as an alternative to traditional assessment (i.e. the translation of a text under exam conditions), multidimensional assessment based on a range of criterion-referenced and competence-based assessment instruments and tasks. In order to study their applicability, we designed and empirically tested a proposal for summative assessment for BA students taking Spanish-to-Italian translation. We designed a teaching unit which features various assessment tasks. After completing the unit, students compiled a portfolio and were given a traditional summative assessment test. The students also completed a survey about teaching and forms of assessment. We used several assessment rubrics for each assessment task. We subsequently compared the information collected via the different summative assessment tasks and the portfolio with the results of the traditional exam in order to analyse the differences. We also compared the assessments provided by three evaluators, i.e. the tutor and two external assessors. The results show that our assessment proposal provides data about the acquisition of different translation sub-competences and the effectiveness of the assessment rubrics.