House’s Translation Quality Assessment Model In Practice

FIDIC Conditions of Contract is an internationally renowned and most widely used engineering contract form,the Chinese version of which is the must-read “Bible” for domestic practitioners in international engineering construction projects.However,at present,the research on FIDIC Conditions of Contract mainly focuses on the linguistic feature analysis of the source text,the specific methods and strategies for its translation,and little research has been conducted on its translation quality.As an important concept in translation studies,translation quality assessment plays a crucial role in the development of translation theory and translation practice.In 1977,Juliane House proposed the first translation quality assessment model based on Halliday’s SFL(Systemic-Functional Linguistics)theory in the translation field.After two revisions in 1997 and 2015,House’s translation quality assessment model has gradually developed into a comprehensive,scientific and systematic model,with its assessment more scientific,assessment scope more comprehensive,and assessment steps more optimized,thus receiving great attention and respect in international translation criticism and academic circles.Based on House’s translation quality assessment model,the thesis assesses the translation quality of the Chinese version of FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Plant &Design Build(2017 Yellow Book)in four steps,so as to explore the empirical effect of this model,objectively assess the translation quality of the Chinese version,analyze its remaining shortcomings,and make suggestions for further improvement.Step 1: Analyzing the source text.Firstly,the genre of the source text is analyzed,followed by the analysis of the three dimensions of the register at the lexical,syntactic,and textual levels and the analysis of the individual textual function.Step 2: Analyzing the target text.The specific analysis steps are the same as Step 1.Step 3: Conducting a comparative study on the analysis results gained in the first two steps,then analyzing and summarizing the mismatches and errors in the target text,and putting forward the author’s suggestions for dealing with such mismatches and errors.Step 4: Making statements on the translation quality of the target text and evaluating the translation quality of the Chinese version based on analysis results obtained in the first three steps.Through research and analysis,the thesis concludes that the Chinese version of FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Plant & Design Build(2017 Yellow Book)maintains a high degree of matching with the source text in various dimensions,the individual textual function of the two texts is highly equivalent,there are few mismatches in the register,and the Chinese version is of high translation quality.However,in the process of analysis,the author of the thesis finds that there are still some mismatches and defects in the target text,and puts forward some targeted suggestions for improvement.Therefore,on the one hand,the study can enrich the domestic empirical research on House’s translation quality assessment model.On the other hand,the thesis can also serve as a reference for the translation research of FIDIC conditions of contract,and provide some reference for the E-C translations of FIDIC conditions of contract in the future.