Translation Quality and Awareness of Functional Translation Theories

The present article reports a study carried out to investigate whether or not awareness of functional translation theories has any impact on the translation quality of translator trainees. 2oo Iranian undergraduate students took part in this study. They were divided into four groups -two- experimental and two control groups. After homogenizing the participants by a TOEFL test, a translation pre-test was administered and then functional theories of translation like Translational Action and Skopos Theory were taught to the experimental groups who were later required to use the material taught in their classroom translation practice during one academic semester. The control groups were instructed traditionally as widely practiced in Iranian undergraduate translation classes. A translation post-test was given to all the groups at the end of the semester. The statistical results demonstrated a significant difference between the pre- and post- test in the two experimental groups as compared with the control groups.