Analyzing the Efficiency of the Translation Brief in Translating Electronic Commerce Websites: A Functionalist Skopos Approach

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effect of the translation brief on the quality of translation by translation major students. The problem is that previous studies showed that in the real practice of translation, many translation task providers (agencies, clients) do not provide the translators with a brief to guide them and ensure the purpose of the translation is clear. Accordingly, this situation represents an obstacle for translators in general and translation students in particular who are on their way to the translation market. This paper adapts translation-oriented model of text analysis by Christiane Nord (1991), to analyze source texts on an e-commerce website, to establish the purpose of this translation, and therefore adapting it in a brief. This type of translation (e-commerce translation) is chosen because it is one of the main types that a new translator in the market will find available. Further, a sample of translation major students are chosen to perform two translation tasks, first without a brief and then with one, to examine the effect of the brief on the quality of translation and achieving its purpose. The present researcher hypothesis that when translating with a brief the performance will improve, which is proven by the results of the tasks, as their percentage of achieving the purpose improved by 100%