Evaluating pragmatic competence

This paper presents an investigation into the impact of teaching pragmatic competence to translation students who translate from English (L2) to Persian (L1). For the experiment, the participants were requested to identify implicit discourse markers in a source text and to transfer them into the target text. This investigation used Think Aloud Protocols (TAP) to monitor students’ inferential translation processes. The results of this study pinpointed the challenging role of pragmatic competence for translation students. Translation performance in an experimental group of participants exposed to a period of pragmatic classroom instruction was compared to that of a control group which did not receive this training. Finally, the data analysis indicated that pragmatic teaching improved the translation students’ pragmatic competence in the experimental group through identifying both implicit and explicit discourse markers in the source text. This was clearly lacking in a number of students’ translations in the control group.