Analysing Translation Errors of Higher Education Learners Using MQM and ISO 17100: Implications for Language Education

Abstract

Translation enhances communication, political cooperation, economic growth, and cultural acceptance in today's globalised society.  As the world gets increasingly interconnected, translation becomes more important for understanding diversity.  Due to the many cultures and languages in Malaysia, mastering translation is crucial for higher education learners to bridge communities and perform global competency.  Unfortunately, the lack of a quality benchmark will only aggravate the quality issue if translated work varies greatly in correctness, fluency, and coherence.  The MQM framework with an emphasis on linguistic is used to identify common translation errors in learners' works concerning Malay language conventions and formal standards.  This study examined 50 target texts in Malay derived from a single source text translated by the LG120 Diploma in English for Professional Communication program.  The result shows 13 linguistic convention error categories and non-applicable errors in the index, TOC, images vs. text, and whitespace.  This shows that learners were unaware of translation issues, which could be a concern if not addressed during learning.  This article provides important information on linguistic convention errors and MQM, although the number of learners was limited and their language proficiency in both languages was not measured. Filing this gap with future research would deepen the findings' interpretation and provide more specific translation training pedagogical ideas.