ABSTRACT
The utility of a metalanguage should ultimately be validated through its actual usage. This chapter describes the implementation of a metalanguage of translation issues in an English-to-Japanese translation exercise course for undergraduate students at a university in Japan. Assuming that the students are novices in translation, the course begins with instruction in the basic concepts and processes in translation, including an introduction to the metalanguage. Students then receive translation training by translating two English source documents from different registers. During document translation, students’ translations are assessed three times; the instructor identifies issues in the submitted translations, labels each identified issue with an issue type defined in the metalanguage assuming how it can be resolved, and provides the students with the labelled issues. Through four courses conducted in 2015 and 2016, each involving around 25 students, we confirmed that the given metalanguage covers all the translation issues in students’ translations, validating the sufficiency of the metalanguage. Comparison of the distribution of issue types, which characterises each student, enabled us to identify several student groups, each of which makes particular types of issues more than the others. Our chronological analysis also revealed that several types of issues can be reduced while taking the courses, suggesting the learnability of the metalanguage.
