Personality Traits and Translation Quality: An Investigation of the Relationship in Iran Context

Different translators with different personality traits make variant decisions in their translations. In this study, the effect of personality traits of Iranian translators on their performance quality was explored from a psychological perspective. In the first step, the BFI Test (Big Five-Factor Inventory) was administered to the 30 MA translation students in Tehran Islamic Azad University. In the second step, the researcher distributed two different English source texts among the participants for the purpose of translation. Having finished the task of translating, the target texts produced by the students were assessed to investigate the correlation between personality traits and the quality of the translation. Hence, three instructors of translation were recruited to evaluate the translations and correspondingly score them on the basis of Farahzad’s (1992). The analysis of the acquired results proved both of the hypotheses of the study. First, there was a positive relationship between personality traits and translators̛ performance quality in different text types and also, Psychological model of translators’ personality had a significant effect on assessing the translated works.


Introduction
The concept of personality is basic to the study of people and their behavior is the basis for the personality concept. The study of individual and personality differences is a central theme in psychology as well as the areas of social and behavior. There is no certain definition for the term personality. However, this term has been defined in different ways. For example personality is defined as an individual trait that determines all behaviors of a person. Personality trait is a durable disposition, www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/sll Studies in Linguistics and Literature Vol. 3, No. 4, 2019 268 Published by SCHOLINK INC. shown in a particular way in a variety of situations. Trait is called as a specific singularity and relative independence reactions of every mental process. Traits are some responses to specific stimuli and under a particular stimulus and a particular response must be defined. Therefore, personality trait is complex and varied and on this basis, each person may display different behaviors. In other words we can say personality trait includes the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make a person unique.
Translation is an interdisciplinary field of study. In fact, it relates to the psychology of language and studies the relationship between linguistic factors and its psychological aspects. The relationship between translation studies and the psychology as a field of study has been determined in recent years.
Studies on the psycho-linguistic analysis of translation by many scholars indicate the inter-dependency of translation and psychology (Maier, 2009). Chesterman (2009) argues that translation is a phenomenon beyond the transfer of source language to target language. In other words, beyond a translated text there is a human being with consciousness, feeling, culture, and belief who is named translator. Hence considering such factors like translator, cultural situation, gender differences, level of knowledge and skill in understanding the source language and convey it to the target text, psychological traits, style and many other items in a translation quality assessment are inevitable.
The basic concept of translation quality is associated with the relationship between the Source Text ( From a general perspective, the translation process varies due to the individual differences of the translators (Coba, 2007 problems in the process of translating, in order to produce high quality of translations. A high quality of translation refers to translation product that meets certain standards and criteria, as it is declared in the influence of translation techniques on the quality of the translation.
The quality of translation is determined by the accuracy of the delivery of messages from the source language to the target language. It means the quality of a translation has to be measured by the degree of accuracy with which the translator has captured the meaning of the author, and by the skill with which he has found the equivalent words and phrases, which will reproduce the meaning.
In the influence of the translation techniques on the quality of a translation, Acceptability is associated with compliance with the prevailing system of text in the target language, readability refers to whether or not a translation is easy to read and understand by readers. Therefore, quality in translation means that experience by a reader of the translation which transports him to the atmosphere contained in the original through the medium of his own language.

Translation Evaluation
Translation quality evaluation is of important topics in Translation Studies. Translation quality evaluation is a disputed issue in translation studies. There is no doubt in the role of evaluation and assessment in many fields of science and it can be said that there could be no science without Translation quality assessment focuses on the inter-relationships between the ST and TT. We consider all inter-relationships for example lexical, grammar, syntax, and semantics of both texts. Assessment of translation quality must be based on a testable, reliable, valid, applicable, and definable model.
Therefore, evaluation of translation can be carried out with many different objectives and accordingly different criteria and factors acquire varying importance.

Farahzad's Model of Translation Evaluation
The first step in translation assessment is to establish a model of quality and then to transform it into a set of metrics that measure each of the elements of that quality. Farahzad (1992) introduced her model for translation quality evaluation. She introduced the following criteria: 1) Accuracy which refers to information of source text precisely and translation transfers the norms of ST.
2) Appropriateness which refers to the sentences sound fluent and native and are correct in terms of structure.
3) Naturalness means the end product of translation must be natural in the target text. 4) Cohesion refers to the transitional and appropriate use of pronouns, linkage, and etc. 5) Style refers to the choice of words, grammatical structure, and etc. Farahzad (1992) believes that scoring a long text can be done in two different ways: 1) It can be scored holistically. Since the item assesses a wide variety of competencies, the examiner may find it convenient to approach the text as the unit of translation and adopt this system, especially with a large number of students. According to a rubric for translation assessment, the examiner may, for instance, come up with the scheme as demonstrated in  2) It can be subjected to objectify scoring. In this system, the target text must be read two times, first to check the accuracy and appropriateness, then for cohesion and style (the details of which appear in Table 2). Although time-consuming, this system is more reliable. Farahzad continues that sentence and clause might be the units of translation. Thus each verb in the source language text marks a score. The main clause receives one score and each sub-clause another score. As suggested by Dollerup and Lindegaard (1994), cohesion and style cannot be checked and scored at the sentence and clause level. The elements of cohesion (e.g., transitional, appropriate use of pronouns, linkages, etc.) are spread all over the text as are the elements which form the style of discourse (e.g., choice of words, grammatical structures, etc.). If for instance, the source text is fairly neutral, one may allow a smaller number of points to it than in other cases where the preservation of style is important. Rahimi (2004) states efficiency and adequacy of a translation are based on the use of the natural form of the receptor language.

Five Personality Traits
With reference to development of personality in early and middle adulthood, McCrae and Costa (1999, p. 145) argue "traits develop through childhood and reach mature form in adulthood; thereafter they are stable in cognitively intact individuals". As a result of a thorough research on Cattell's (1965) and Eysenck's (1952) personality trait theories, the Big Five theory was formulated by John and Srivastava (1999). This theory incorporates five different variables into a conceptual model for describing personality. These five different factors are often referred to as the "Big Five" (Ewen, 1998, p. 140). Popkins (1998) declares, "as it became evident to many psychologists that, mathematically, combinations of five factors were useful in describing personality, there was a need to clearly define what these factors were". This five-factor model of personality represents five core traits that interact to form human personality. The Big Five traits have been subjected to rigorous testing over the past several decades. According to the five-factor theory, personality traits are "insulated from the direct effects of the environment" (McCrae & Costa, 1999, p. 144). In this theory each dimension exists as a continuum and an individual's personality can lie at any point on that continuum for that particular trait.
In personality test, the five traits assessed by the big five personality test are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism, which are easily remembered by using the acronym "OCEAN" as follow: 1) Openness: In general, openness refers to how willing people are to make adjustments in notions and activities in accordance with new ideas or situations. People who like to learn new things and enjoy new experiences usually score high in openness. Openness includes traits like being insightful and imaginative and having a wide variety of interests.
2) Conscientiousness: Refers to how much a person considers others when making decisions. People that have a high degree of conscientiousness are reliable and prompt. Traits include being organized, methodic, and thorough.
3) Extraversion: Extroversion also is sometimes referred to as social adaptability. In five big factor model, extroversion is defined as "a trait characterized by a keen interest in other people and external events, and venturing forth with confidence into the unknown" (Ewen, 1998, p. 289). Extraverts get their energy from interacting with others, while introverts get their energy from within themselves.
Extraversion includes the traits of energetic, talkative, and assertive. 4) Agreeableness: Agreeableness measures how compatible people are with other people, or basically how able they are to get along with others. These individuals are friendly, cooperative, and compassionate. People with low agreeableness may be more distant. Traits include being kind, affectionate, and sympathetic.

5) Neuroticism
: Neuroticism is the other trait to play a role in most of the contemporary factor models for personality. Nc Popkins in some studies believes that an adjustment is examined as a factor, instead of neuroticism. In this case, higher scores will indicate a positive result, consistent with the other four factors. Popkins (1998) mentions that the bases of neuroticism are levels of anxiety and volatility.
Within the bounds in five big factor models, neuroticism is "a dimension of personality defined by stability and low anxiety at one end as opposed to instability and high anxiety at the other end" (Pervin & John, 1989, p. G-7). Neuroticism is also sometimes called Emotional Stability. It means this  (John & Srivastava, 1999), the 60-item NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI; Costa & McCrae, 1992), and Goldberg's instrument comprised of 100 trait-descriptive adjectives (TDA; Goldberg, 1992). According to a very brief measure of the big five personality domains, John and Srivastava (1999) have estimated that the BFI, NEO-FFI, and TDA take approximately 5, 15, and 15 minutes to complete, respectively. Recognizing the need for an even briefer measure of the Big Five, Saucier (1994) developed a 40-item instrument (40 item questionnaire motivation construct study), derived from Goldberg's (1992) 100-item set.

Method
A sample of 30 MA translation students at the Islamic Azad University of Tehran, regardless of their gender, were chosen as the participants of this study, based on a convenient sampling method. Two instruments were used to gather data in the current study a follow: (A) Personality Traits Inventory: It is one of the most widely used personality assessment in the world.
In addition, the evidence indicates that Big Five is fairly stable over time (Digman, 1989). The first adopted instrument for data collection is the personality Trait inventory. The personality inventory has 49 items to measure five domains of personality. It is 5-point scale, ranges from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree". The Big Five questions used on this site are from an instrument known as the Big Five Inventory (BFI) developed by John and Srivastava (1999). The respondents were asked to respond to the questions within 5 minutes. The time that assigned for participants was determined according to the results obtained from the source site.
The BFI measures the five personality traits of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism by creating a scale that averages each domain. The BFI consists of 44 questions that are on a Likert response scale. The BFI uses short phrases as it has been found that short phrases that have been elaborated upon are answered more consistently than single adjectives from which people choose (Goldberg & Kilkowski, 1985). This is a self-report inventory where the taker may answer the following: 1 for disagree strongly, 2 disagree a little, 3 neither agree or disagree, 4 agree a little, to 5 agrees strongly.
The BFI is in public domain and may be used for non-commercial research. The items for the BFI were selected based upon a factor analysis using a large sample of college students. In samples from the United States and Canada, the Cronbach's alpha reliabilities ranged from .75 to .95 and averages above .80. Three-month test-retest reliability ranged from .80 to .90 with the average being .85 (John et al., 2008). Evidence of the validity included extensive convergent correlations (John & Srivastava, 1999 and Secondary Care" received from ncbi-nlm.nih.gov will be selected. They will be given to the students, in order to test their translation ability and quality. The direction of the translation is Mother Tongue Translation, from English into Persian. The scoring procedure for the translations will be that of Farahzad's (1992) model which is based on a text as a unit of translation.
Data for this study will be collected at two stages. At first stage, the participants will be asked to answer personality inventory and the result of this stage will be collected by the researcher. At the second stage, the target texts will be distributed among the participants to be translated from English to Persian. Preventing any bias and achieving a more accurate result in TQA process, three raters, will be selected to evaluate the translations, under the supervision of Kanoon-e-Kargrouhhaye Hamyari Noor-e-Afarineshn which deals with different experts and skillful Instructors, in various fields.
The scoring procedure for the translations was that of Farahzad's model which is based on a text as a unit of translation, categorized into five items: 1) Accuracy which is defined by Rahimi (2004) as the suitable and detailed explanation of the source message and the transmission of that message as exactly as possible. If in a translation, according to Rahimi, some pieces of information inadvertently is omitted, or added, and makes the analysis of the text inappropriately, it will be inaccurate.
2) Appropriateness which refers to fluency and nativity of sentences and correctness of sentences in terms of structure.
3) Naturalness which is defined by Khomeijani Farahani (2005) as the extent to which a work of translation sounds natural in the target language. He states that all readers have experienced texts which are instantly acknowledged as translation and sound very artificial in the target language, and alternatively there are translated texts that sound quite natural and amazingly enjoyable to read.

4) Cohesion which is defined as the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which link
various parts of a text. These relations or ties organize and, to some extent, create a text, for instance, by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs. 5) Style of discourse refers to appropriate choice of words, grammatical structures and, etc. In this method the raters read the translation once and considered 20 percent of the total score for each index.
This study is a descriptive research that will be used the qualitative method and analytical linguistic for data analysis. Collected data will be analyzed for correlation and regression through the statistical package of SPSS to identify the strength and direction of the relationship between variables.
The degree that quantitative variables are linearly related in a sample is assessed by the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r). Each individual or case must have scored on two quantitative variables (i.e., continuous variables measured on the interval or ratio scales). When a linear relationship exists between the two variables in the population, the significance test for r is applied. The appropriate correlation coefficient depends on the scales of measurement of the two variables being correlated.
SPSS© computes the Pearson correlation coefficient, an index of effect size. The index ranges in value from -1.00 to +1.00. This coefficient indicates the degree that low or high scores on one variable tend to go with low or high scores on another variable. As it is showed in Understanding the Pearson Correlation, a score on a variable is a low (or high) score to the extent that it falls below (or above) the mean score on that variable.
The values of the Pearson Correlation range from -1 to +1 with negative numbers representing a negative correlation (as one variable increases, the other variable decreases) and positive numbers representing a positive correlation (as one variable increases, the other also increases). The closer the value is to -1 or +1, the stronger the association is between the variables.

First Question Analysis
In this study, three raters were selected for evaluation of the translated texts based on Farahzad's (1992) model. By applying Pearson's Correlation, the raters' marks of participants' translations are analyzed and inter-reliability is checked. Based on the Results shown in Table 3, all three raters enjoyed a significant inter-rater reliability and there was an acceptable correlation among these three raters.  Based on Table 4, Openness, agreeableness, and extraversion personality types have the highest mean among other types of personality types of BFI.

Second Question Analysis
Having proved the existence of a positive correlation between the two variables of the study (translators' scores and BFI personality indicator), now the results of regression analysis are brought in to see if the BFI variable is a predictor of learners' translation quality. Table 6 presents the model summary findings of regression. Besides, to see whether the coefficient of the regression demonstrated by R 2 is significant or not, Table   7 is brought. The Table 8 demonstrates that the coefficients reported by R 2 is significant (Sig.=.000). Now to pinpoint the Beta value of the variable, Table 8 needs to be examined. The Table 9 indicates that BFI is a predictor of translators' translation quality. In other words, by examining the Beta value reported in the same table it can be inferred that with regard to translators' scores, the BFI significantly contributed to the prediction of translation quality, β=. 366, p < 0.01.

Discussion, Conclusion and Pedagogical Remarks
In the present study, the researcher would endeavor to investigate the relationship between the translator's personality traits under study (neuroticism, extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) and the quality of translation in a scientific text and a poem through the psychological test Big Five Inventory (BFI). The acquired results proved both of the hypotheses of the study that psychological model of translators' personality has a significant effect on assessing the translated works and also there is a positive relationship between personality traits and translators̛ performance quality in different text types. The findings confirmed that MA students' personality traits guide their process of translation.
The researcher suggests the following pedagogical guidelines, according to the achievements of the current study: Firstly, the impact of personality on the quality of translation should not be ignored. That is why translation students should be given opportunities for self-awareness and a better understanding of their own personality by being offered the psychological courses at the university. As it has been declared in Individual Differences and Quality of Translations, they can find their own strengths and weaknesses, leading to their success and helping them develop their potential abilities. Hence, curriculum designers of translation courses must pay a specific attention here.
Secondly, students should also take a test of personality upon their arrival at university so that their individual peculiarities can be revealed and the translation educational system can meet the needs of students through providing them with the appropriate training in both theory and practice with regard to their personality types. It is believed that personality inventories should not be neglected in academia since individual differences in personality and higher learning programs are interrelated.
There are many specific hypotheses that can be tested about translators' personality type and its effect on translation quality. For example, with a greater sample we should be able to identify gender For further researches, other variables of individual characteristics like self-esteem can be accounted to be investigated. Learners can be classified into different proficiency levels. Further analysis can also focus on the type of translation problems, and thus greater or lesser propensity to risk-taking associated with the personality types. On these issues, we hope to be the witness of more reports in the near future.
What is more, translation educators should not ignore is the important role of their students' personality types in the act of translation. They should not expect all students to translate all text types equally well.
Some are more capable of translating texts of certain functions. Remembering the students' personalities, the Different approaches should be offered for translator training. It is also recommended that the translation educational system develops a comprehensive curriculum for the benefit of all students with respect to their personality types to restructure the curriculum for supporting all students and increase their output.
It is hoped that the findings of the present study will open new horizons for the translation trainees and translation trainers, leading to a better insight into the role of individual differences in the act of translating.