The announcement followed the opening of the First
China International Forum on Translation Industry at Tongji University
yesterday. Nearly 200 scholars, officials and translation professionals from
about 20 countries and regions attend the two-day forum.
Organized by the Translation Association of China,
the assessment panel will consist of university translation professors, veteran
working translators and other organizational professionals with years of
translation theory studies and practice.
The panel will be responsible for assessing the
quality of translation products, translation training institutes and programs,
as well as evaluating translation service providers' qualifications according to
the country's existing translation industry standards and regulations.
Assessment results will likely be passed on to
government and market watchdogs. The group won't have the power to close down
companies that do unsatisfactory work, change school curriculums or force any
organization to change, however.
It will have the authority to send out public
warnings to businesses and consumers about translation companies that aren't
doing quality work.
The panel will also provide information service and
legal support for translation workers, TAC officials said.
"The country has been formulating standards to
regulate the booming translation market these years, but a rigid supervision and
assessment mechanism is more critical to the whole industry's quality
improvement and brand building," said Liu Xiliang, the TAC president.
China currently has more than 3,000 registered
translation companies, which reported revenues of 20 billion yuan (US$2.5
billion) last year, up from 11 billion yuan in 2003.
More than 60,000 translators are employed by
professional organizations, while several more hundreds of thousands of
translators work part time or on a freelance basis.
However, lack of quality supervision have left
loopholes for unqualified translators and misleading sloppy works, officials
said.
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