A Study on the Performance Differences in Translating an Academic Reading Text and a Conversation Text

The goal of the present study is to examine the performance in translating the sentence types of both the academic reading text and the conversation text derived from one of the KCSAT English tests, into Korean. To fulfill the goal, this study adopted the combination of both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the translation performances, seeking the answers to the research questions. A total of 53 high school freshmen in Korea participated in the current study. The data was analyzed utilizing SPSS 21 for descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-test, and correlations as well as the Excel program for the characteristics of the students’ translations in terms of vocabulary, idioms, and expressions used in the texts, so this study is the combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Findings revealed that the students performed differently in translating the sentence types of the two different texts. One of the findings was that the students outperformed in translating the conversation text to the academic reading text. Additionally, the students obtained the highest score on the simple sentences. The implication of the study discusses the necessity of the teachers providing the texts with various sentence types for translations to help the students improve their English proficiency.