Assessing the Website Translation Quality: with Special Reference to the Website of Ministry of Tourism, Sri Lanka

Abstract

It cannot be denied that translation bridges two societies, and also with the span of time, translation has nurtured globalization which is the process of integrating geopolitical, socioeconomic and state relations on a global scale. In this background, websites and web pages act as a primary source of information in this digitalized 21st century. Web translation makes the web content accessible and usable to the worldwide customers. Due to the criticalness of information, quality of the web content should be measured to confirm that clear-cut ideas are transmitted to the customers. The main objective of the present study to assess the ‘Translation Quality’ and the ‘Target Reader Response (TRR)’ in tourism - related web translation. Further, the study takes a mixed approach where a questionnaire and content analysis method were utilized to collect data. Accordingly, excerpts from the website of Ministry of Tourism, Sri Lanka were selected using the purposive sampling technique after an extensive content analysis. Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) of website texts was assessed on the basis of a developed TQA framework which is labelled as ‘LISA QA model’ and in subsidy the TRR was also analysed through a questionnaire involving fifteen (15) foreign tourists as respondents. In sum, it was clarified that the web translation requires major revision work – C Grade, since 40% Language errors and 52.3% transfer and presentation errors were found in TQA and only four (4) were satisfied out of eight (8) respondents who referred the webpages from total fifteen (15) respondents. In conclusion, it is recommended that the translators must highly be concerned about the quality of the web translation.