The Study of Differences between the Iranian Academic and the Self-Taught Translators’ Performance based on English Complex Sentences

Abstract There has been a constant debate in the field of translation between theoreticians and professionals on whether formal education or self-experience is required to translate professionally, especially because university despite a rather comprehensive curriculum has failed to satisfy the needs of translators on the market. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible differences between the academic and the self-taught translators’ performance of English complex sentences and recognize the applied techniques through contrasting, comparing, and scoring a series of challenging complex sentences derived from six translated English novels whose translators were three academics and three self-taught, using Waddington Method C. The results, especially those gained from Mann-Whitney U Test, testified almost no differences unlike the general belief concerning the best job of the self-taught. Besides, no specific techniques were found. However, the secondary findings made the research prominent including the obvious impact of editorial skills on the quality of translation as the most significant one, which is noticeable for designing more practical teaching programs and curriculum.