Who does it better? Comparing L1 to L2 translation results between foreign language students and translation students

Abstract

The translation market is often characterised by a diverse group of translators, which includes those with formal education in translation and those who study foreign languages. Foreign language study programmes in Slovenia have on occasion claimed to prepare students for the Slovenian translation market in a similar way to translation programmes; however, a previous study has shown that this is not the case in translation from a foreign language into Slovenian. The study reported on here set out to uncover any differences in skills between the students of translation as opposed to foreign language programmes. The study focused on their ability to translate from Slovenian into a second language (L2), as this is an expected skill on the translation market. In the article, we first compare three foreign language study programmes and a translation study programme in terms of translation into an L2. Secondly, we present the results of translation quality assessment of translations from Slovenian into an L2 (English, German and Italian). The results show that the two groups of students approached and performed the task differently, in several of the analysed categories, highlighting the role of translation training and enhancement of L1 competence for the development of translation competence.