An Investigation of Rater Effects on L2 Translation Performance Scores

This study examines the impact of L2 translation quality and rating experience on raters’ scoring behaviors and on the reliability and variability of scores. It also investigates frequently used decision-making strategies applied by raters assigning scores to different qualities of translation papers produced by Turkish EFL students. In total, 80 translation papers (40 low-quality and 40 high-quality) obtained from the participating students were given to 10 raters to score using a translation scoring rubric. Results revealed that less experienced raters were more positive while scoring the students’ translation performances and assigned higher and more consistent scores to the papers.