Type, level and function of in-text comments in written feedback on specialised translations: an exploratory study

ABSTRACTFeedback can be conceived as a scaffolding strategy aimed at knowledge construction and self-regulation. Despite its pedagogical value in fostering learning processes, empirical studies on feedback in translation pedagogy are scarce. In this paper, we focus on the written corrective feedback provided by lecturers in specialised student-written translations. A corpus of 379 specific in-text comments was analysed in terms of the type of feedback, the level of the translation on which it impacted and its pragmatic function. The results show the prevalence of task-focused feedback, in-text comments on specialised terminology and a mainly corrective function of feedback, concerned with rectifying errors in the student’s translation. The feedback emerging from the results can be described as a unidirectional teacher-to-student model of communication, which does not correspond to the conception of dialogic and student-centred feedback advocated in the most current literature on this topic at university level.KEYWORDS: Feedbackin-text commentstranslation teachingsworn translation AcknowledgmentsThe authors would like to thank the lecturers who kindly contributed to this research, as well as the reviewers and the editor, whose insights have helped to improve this study.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. This and all subsequent extracts from our corpus have been translated from Spanish and Catalan.2. To preserve their anonymity, the lecturers are identified by a number. The names of students appearing in quotations are pseudonyms.3. When categorisation was complex because there were ‘combined’ comments to express different ideas, the two researchers contrasted the options and chose the function they considered dominant depending on the context.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under grant PID2020-113236GB-I00 (RetroTrad: Formative feedback in translation teaching and learning).