A critical perspective on the translation quality assessments of five translators organizations: ATA, CTTIC, ITI, NAATI, and SATI

The present paper discusses translation quality assessments by adopting a critical perspective on fivetranslators organizations, which are intended to assess the quality of non-literary translations with aparticular focus on their objectivity, validity, and inter-rater reliability. Within this framework, itaims to contribute to the related literature (1) by discussing the objectivity, validity, and inter-raterreliability of the quality assessment methods of five translators organizations, namely the AmericanTranslators Association (ATA), the South African Translators’ Institute (SATI), the CanadianTranslators, Terminologists and Interpreters Council (CTTIC), the Institute of Translation andInterpreting (ITI in UK), and the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters(NAATI in Australia), and (2) by making suggestions on quality assessment concerning non-literarytranslation in view of the findings hereof. The study qualitatively analyzes the content of the guidesand rubrics provided on the websites of these five organizations and discusses the objectivity, validity,and inter-rater reliability of their assessments in consideration of seven parameters, i.e. “purpose ofassessment”, “purpose of assigned translation”, “duration”, “source text”, “assessor”, “marking”, and“grading”. The findings showed that each organization suffers from varying degrees of objectivity,validity, and inter-rater reliability issues.