Despite the importance given to culture and cultural competence in Translation Studies, these concepts have only been developed at a theoretical level thus far. The lack of empirical and more specifically experimental studies on cultural competence and its acquisition in translator training is the main reason behind the author’s study. The aim of this article is to present the research design used in an ongoing study on cultural competence and its acquisition in the case of translation students. This study is part of PACTE’s (Process in the Acquisition of Translation Competence and Evaluation) research into translation competence and its acquisition. Since the purpose of this article is to provide an in-depth revision of the experiment’s methodological issues, the conceptual framework, the hypotheses, the population and sample, the variables and the data collection instruments are presented. Finally, the justification of the research design and its limitations are discussed.
In this chapter, I consider the role that cultural competence has been given in different translation competence models and I will discuss different options for assessing cultural competence, both as a separate construct and as part of translation competence as a whole. With regard to the latter option, I will contend that a norm referenced assessment method is best suited to put cultural competence on a par with all other subcompetences of translation ability. Not only does this method allow the reliability of the assessment to be checked, but it also has two important advantages when it comes to the validity of measuring (cultural) translation competence: it takes into account that sub-components of translation ability are more or less inextricable in actual performances, and it subscribes to the notion that the manifestation of cultural competence is always dependent on the interaction of a particular translator with a particular text.
this failure of Europanization in these countries is correlated with the preferences of the ruling elites in these countries.