CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Various empirical research fields look at translators and interpreters as key populations to test a wide range of hypotheses. However, measures of translation competence in relevant experiments are either absent or based on informal, ad hoc instruments. This scenario casts doubts on the ensuing findings and hinders comparability across studies. To address this problem, we introduce the Translation Competence Questionnaire (TCQ), a customizable online tool to collect quantitative and qualitative data on multiple aspects of translation and interpreting skills. The TCQ includes three parts. Section A taps into the participants? demographics, language acquisition history, and bi- (or multi-) lingual competence. Section B assesses translation competence and Section C focuses on interpreting competence. The latter two sections comprise self-rating scales on modality-specific skills, questions about professional practice and knowledge, and items addressing procedural aspects of key processes.Studies on translators would use sections A and B, while those targeting interpreters would use sections A and C. The TCQ is freely available via LimeSurvey. It can be customized, run online to save logs on the cloud or locally, or downloaded for pen-and-paper administration. The ability of the TCQ to discriminate between participants with more or less experience has been tested with a large group of participants from relevant populations. In brief, the TCQ offers comprehensive, fine-grained subject-level information for empirical research on translation and interpreting, while revealing the extent to which samples are comparable within and across studies.