Ongoingly redesigning metacognitive questionnaires helping trainees to self-evaluate their translating

This paper presents a study of the redesign of metacognitive questionnaires carried out along a two-part German-Spanish translation course. The study focuses on post-translation questionnaires used by trainees to self-evaluate their translating, as a function of their strategic subcompetence. Post-translation questionnaires were redesigned ongoingly, as needed, in order to improve their effectiveness in meeting the trainees’ evolving needs. This redesign was based on the students’ feedback combined with the teacher’s perceptions, and led to three types of changes. Firstly, questions not optimally meeting the intended target were modified. As the mental action involved in these questions was not specific enough to prevent off-target answers, each was reworded accordingly and occasionally given an interpersonal dimension favouring intermental reflection. Secondly, certain questions were newly designed, so that they included such interpersonal dimension from the very beginning. These also presented the students with open tasks promoting learner autonomy and asked them to justify their answers, thereby enhancing their translational reflection. Thirdly, a group of questions were suppressed from one part of the course to the other, as the mental action involved in each no longer matched the trainees’ increased procedural knowledge.