Translators need good reading skills, but first-year translation students oftendemonstrate only basic reading literacy which often results in inaccurate interpretationof the source text and a divergent message in the target text, often strongly influenced bythe prevailing opinion in the target culture and/or by the translator’s personal opinion.We tested first-year and third-year students in their reading literacy in the sourcelanguage (English), their ability to summarize what they read and to translate the textinto the target language (Slovenian). The results show that the freshmen’s basic readingskills are satisfactory, but more advanced reading skills, such as interpretative andcreative reading, present problems, which result in deficient summaries in the targetlanguage. In addition, the students’ creative reading is negatively affected byinsufficient general knowledge and, surprisingly, their (or their culture’s) ideologicalpoint of view. The ability of the third-year students to understand and re-write a text inthe target language was much improved, but the ideological influence was still there,especially in the parts of the text that were difficult, or close to the students’ personalexperience.
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