Juliane House’s Model of Translation Quality Assessment: A Response to Subjective, Theoretical Methods of Assessment

Translation quality assessment is an ever-growing branch of translation studies. It attempts to evaluate translations and decide which translations were brilliantly performed and which ones lacked coherence and correctness. However, TQA has been accused of lacking objective criteria and of being unreliable in judging translations because of the differing views on the notion of TQA and the multiple criteria used by each researcher in building his method of evaluation. For this reason, subjectivity governed TQA from the start; yet, several scholars suggested methods that tried to counter this subjectivity. One of them is Juliane House, who designed an assessment method that is based on analysis, comparison, and description of errors. This paper sheds light on early methods of translation quality assessment and their subjective tendency. It also questions House's objectivity level and wonders whether she succeeded in defying subjectivity as opposed to her predecessors.