Current assessment practices in Ukrainian translation classroom: teachers’ survey results

Discussion

The conducted research was aimed at the studies of the current assessment practices in Ukrainian translation classroom. In this vein, we surveyed 41 translation teachers from 16 Ukrainian universities. The questionnaire dealt with the main aspects of translation assessment arrangement in the context of recent advances in translation pedagogy. A similar survey was carried out in 2006 by Li (2006) in China. It comprised 95 respondents of comparable age and translation teaching experience. However, in contrast to our research, male teachers significantly dominated in that study (80% of the general cohort). The considerable difference was fixed in terms of the surveyed translation teachers' educational level. We did not have any BA holders involved in our research, in contrast to 44% of Chinese translation teachers almost 15 years ago. In this case, we may assume that modern Ukrainian translation teachers have a higher educational level than their Chinese colleagues. Dealing with the place of translation practice courses in the university training program, we may claim that in most Ukrainian universities (almost 44% of those who participated in our study) translation course begins much earlier, in the second year of studies, compared to Chinese ones, where only 10% of higher educational establishments start teaching translation at that time, according to Li (2006). Looking at the assessment role and value in translation training, we should stress that Ukrainian translation teachers are more aware of its extreme importance (78% of the respondents vs. 38%) than the Chinese ones were 15 years ago. The same trend is fixed in contemporary Croatian studies, where the skills to arrange and conduct an assessment, as well as to provide timely feedback on students' performance, take one of the key positions in the structure of the professional competence of a translation teacher (Pavlovic & Antunovic, 2019). However, only 12% of the respondents in this survey accept some need for the improvement of this aspect of their professional activity (Pavlovic & Antunovic, 2019), which indicates a high level of satisfaction with the applied assessment practices. Quite the contrary, Australian teachers opted for the improvement of their assessment skills as the primary aspect of professional development according to the survey conducted by Orlando (2019).

The concurrent domination of evaluative and formative functions of translation assessment revealed by our study conforms to the results received by Garant (2009) almost 11 years ago for Finnish universities. On the other hand, our data completely contradict the data obtained by Li (2006), since evaluative assessment function significantly dominated in the survey of Chinese translation teachers, only 3% of them considereding a formative function of translation assessment important. To our mind, these discrepancies can be explained by both national and chronological factors paralleling the gradual development of translation pedagogy. This fact is proved by the differences in the assessment frequency. Most Ukrainian teachers check and grade their students' translations on a weekly basis or at least each other week, while their Chinese colleagues (56%) did it from 1 to 3 times a term.

Only 15% of the translation teachers surveyed by Li checked up their students' translations as often as 7 times a term. According to Heidari Tabrizi (2021), evaluative and summative functions of the assessment are still dominant in the beliefs and practices of Iranian translation teachers, while in Saudi Arabian universities there is a trend to treat assessment as both an evaluative and formative tool (Al-Jarf, 2021). As we have mentioned before, this trend was fixed earlier by Garant (2009) and observed in our research as well.

It should be noted here, that in a similar survey conducted by Li (2006) assessment methods and tools were not differentiated according to the type of assessment they were used for. Therefore, in general, Chinese teachers preferred to assess students' translation theoretical knowledge with the help of open gap-filling tests (32% of Chinese teachers versus 37% of Ukrainian ones), multiple-choice tests based on answering the questions (21% vs. 80%), answering the questions in written form (20% vs. 63%). As reported by Heidari Tabrizi (2021), only one Iranian university out of four involved in his study, included tasks directed to the assessment of theoretical translation knowledge acquisition into their summative tests. In addition, some Saudi Arabian universities developed and used tasks aimed to measure the acquisition of terminological lexical units by their students in the summative tests according to Al-Jarf (2021).

In order to assess their students' practical translation skills, Chinese colleagues actively developed and used multiple choice questions based on selecting the adequate and equivalent translation for the given sentence/passage (30% vs. 35% of the respondents who participated in our survey), tasks to translate separate sentences (59% vs. 52%), tasks to translate separate sentences using the pre-determined translation technique or transformation (36% vs. 45%), tasks to translate the whole text or text fragment (94% vs. 57%). Such differences can be explained by the gradual widening of the range of available assessment tools due to the development of translation pedagogy. Chinese teachers also actively suggested and implemented their own types of translation assessment tools: tasks to translate a separate sentence in different versions (13% of Chinese teachers, while our colleagues did not mention them at all), tasks to translate the given ST in several different ways according to the translation brief (12% vs. 21%), task to translate the lacking text fragment in the given TT (35% vs. 26%), tasks to translate idioms and other set expressions (15% vs. 0%, since our colleagues did not single out this task type at all); tasks to define the list of the translation techniques and transformations applied in the given target sentences (12% vs. 0%, this task type was not represented in our survey again). At this point, we may conclude that albeit slowly Ukrainian translation teachers still start developing and employing more complicated translation tasks, which combine process and product assessment, and involve self- and peer-assessment aspects. As reported by both Heidari Tabrizi (2021) and Al- Jarf (2021), all the translation tasks presented in their university summative tests were poorly formulated in terms of the requirements and assessment criteria from the viewpoint of both teachers and students. Multiple choice tests based on choosing equivalent and adequate translation for a particular passage were quite rare at Iranian universities (see Heidari Tabrizi, 2021) and practically obsolete in the assessment practices of Saudi Arabian ones (see Al- Jarf, 2021), being still rather popular with our Ukrainian respondents (almost 34%).

According to §ahin & Dungan (2014), Turkish translation training programs do not involve any training in machine translation editing at all. As a result, their translation tests do not contain any tasks connected with detecting and correcting mistakes and errors, evaluation and analysis of the received TTs. In the survey carried out by Li (2006) this assessment object was actively measured with the help of the following assessment tasks: 1) to criticize the given TT from the viewpoint of its strengths and weaknesses (43% of respondents vs. 21% of the surveyed teachers in Ukraine); 2) to detect and correct errors and mistakes in the given TT (42% vs. 61% respectively); 3) to compare different versions of translation of the same ST (38% vs. 51%); 4) to select and ground the most appropriate version of translation (30% vs. 40%). Based on these figures we may assume that Ukrainian teachers care more about the assessment of their students' translation editing skills. However, Ukrainian and Chinese translation teachers opt for quite different task types for this aim.

As specified by our survey almost 98% of the translation teachers consider feedback to be an important device to boost students' translation competence development. These indices are even higher than 80% support of constructive and timely feedback delivery in translation training stated by Huang & Napier (2015) fixed by a survey of 21 translation teachers at Australian universities. Talking about the preferred grading method in the modern translation classroom, we may assume that the gradual refusal of penalty-based grading revealed by Garant (2009) is taking place at Ukrainian universities as well. However, some differences should be outlined for this issue. Thus Ukrainian translation teachers more extensively use analytical grading methods based on a particular set of criteria rather than holistic ones. Holistic grading methods also dominate in teaching translation according to the survey carried out earlier by Waddington (2001). Yet the penalty-based grading method takes the second leading position in this list (Waddington, 2001). On the other hand, in Turkish translation classrooms, the penalty-based grading method is still highly credible, as claimed by §ahin & Dungan (2014). Almost 87% of Ukrainian translation teachers believe in the objectivity of the received assessment results that correlates with the attitude to the grading objectivity of 10 Iranian translation teachers questioned by Sharififar, Beh-Afarin, & Younesi (2018).

As for the most challenging issues of assessment, Ukrainian teachers expressed the most concern about self-assessment, objectivity in grading methods, and selection of text materials. On the one hand, their Australian colleagues were also focused on different grading methods and their use as well as self-assessment arrangement and implementation into the training process. However, they also cared about peer-assessment procedures and introducing them at different stages of the training process, the ways to formulate the specific translation task effectively, feedback, and response on translation assessment results (Orlando, 2019). It is also noteworthy here that Ukrainian translation teachers were the least concerned about the ways to respond to their students' assessment results.

Finally, almost 63% of our respondents consider translation assessment procedures applied at Ukrainian universities either excellent or good. In the survey conducted by Li (2006) 77% of the respondents were absolutely dissatisfied with the state of translation assessment practices at Chinese universities (Li, 2006) 15 years ago.

Based on the results of the descriptive statistics we have compiled the aggregated profile of the modern Ukrainian translation teacher in terms of assessment practices. In Ukraine, a typical translation teacher is a female aged from 30 to 50. She is likely a PhD holder with a comparatively short experience in translation teaching (from 1 to 10 years). This fact can be explained by the emergence of new translation training programs at Ukrainian universities and the growing need for translator trainers. In this context, we may assume that many of the surveyed teachers were requalified from foreign language teachers to respond to the need. This specialist is mainly aware of the assessment importance for the efficiency of translation teaching. Evaluative assessment is still highly appreciated by them. However, its formative power is highly rated at the declarative level, gradually being implemented at the practical one. They tend to check up their students' translations quite frequently (up to 10 times per term). In most cases, they stick to the same two or three task types to assess the required translation competence components of their students within both borderline and summative assessment. These task types are predominantly traditional and predictable such as answering theoretical questions in written form, translating separate sentences or whole texts/fragments, and detecting errors and mistakes in the given TTs. Typical Ukrainian translation teachers acknowledge the importance of the translation process assessment theoretically but do not always apply relevant assessment tools in practice. Their range of alternative assessment tools is limited to translation projects, translation portfolios and translator's diaries. They theoretically appreciate the importance of both peer- and selfassessment procedures but do not provide their students with the opportunity to apply them in their translation classroom on a regular basis. They typically tend to use both quantitative and qualitative assessment methods in their practice, prioritizing the last one. Mostly, they employ either an analytical grading method based on the list of predetermined criteria or a holistic one built on their general impression of the submitted translation. Typical Ukrainian translation teachers consider their grading practices objective enough. However, they still believe it to be one of the key problems of their professional activities, together with the arrangement of selfassessment and selection of text materials for translation tasks. They complain about the lack of time for the grading of their students' translations and development of necessary translation tasks as well as about insufficient advance in translation assessment methods and techniques. Mostly, they are happy with their translation assessment practices (63.4% of the respondents). The translation teachers with 11-15 years of experience manifest the lowest level of satisfaction with their current assessment practices that is statistically significant compared to the other groups of teachers.

The obtained data outline a variety of prospective directions in which to further investigate translation assessment practices. Only some of them include:

1) the development, selection, and logical alignment of varied innovative assessment methods and tools for the measurement of different assessment objects at the relevant translation teaching stages from the viewpoint of both translation product and process;

2) the search for ways to improve and extend current peer- and self-assessment practices in the domestic translation classroom;

3) the design of algorithms to choose and apply relevant grading methods at the particular translation teaching stage for a particular category of students to ensure sufficient objectivity and formative effect;

4) the inspection of the ways to increase translation assessment practicality and productivity for both teachers and students.

Limitations. Our survey was directed to the study of current assessment practices applied in Ukrainian translation classrooms. Definitely, it had certain limitations, which may influence the generalizability of the received data. The first limitation is that the given survey involved a rather small sample of only 41 translation teachers working in English to Ukrainian language pair and representing 16 Ukrainian universities. The second one is caused by the lack of previous data on the assessment practices dominating the Ukrainian context. This means that the research findings may be universalized with some caution. Similar surveys can be conducted over some period among larger respondents' cohorts from other Ukrainian universities offering BA programs in Philology.

The survey revealed the main assessment trends in Ukrainian translation classroom. Even though the majority of the surveyed translation teachers acknowledge the importance of the assessment in the translators' training in general and the synergy of its formative and evaluative effects in particular, they still lack some experience in using appropriate ingenious assessment methods and tools, feel puzzled and confused as for the arrangement of relevant peer- and self-assessment procedures in their classrooms, and seek for ways to improve their personal assessment practices in terms of practicality, objectivity, and positive washback effect. We have also fixed some limited and cautious use of alternative assessment tools by Ukrainian teachers and current insufficient variation in the correlation of assessment types, objects, and tools within the training process. The correlation between translation teachers' experience and their satisfaction with the current assessment state at Ukrainian universities was also fixed and statistically substantiated. Thus, the received results should trigger further investigations in the outlined directions in order to develop an integral system of translation competence assessment to be efficiently implemented in Ukrainian translation classroom.