An Analysis of the Readability of English Translation on Major City Governments' Wesites in Korea
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참고문헌
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초록
The objective of this study was to assess the readability and vocabulary size of the translated texts on the English websites of Seoul and five metropolitan city governments. This study evaluated the translated texts taken from the six cities with the use of four readability formulas including Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, SMOG, and Dale-Schall for measuring readability and RANGE for analyzing vocabulary size of the sampled texts. The readability measurement showed that the translation of the history sections of these six cities was too difficult for virtually all readers to comprehend the contents. The vocabulary size analysis yielded that around 80% of the words in the texts were covered by 3,000 word families, quite lower than 95% lexical coverage for adequate comprehension of a text, which can be interpreted as saying that the vocabulary demands are high for such public sectors' informational texts. The findings demonstrate that readability levels and vocabulary size of the sampled texts should be adjusted to help foreigners have a more comfortable and adequate understanding of the translated contents.
Abstract
The objective of this study was to assess the readability and vocabulary size of the translated texts on the English websites of Seoul and five metropolitan city governments. This study evaluated the translated texts taken from the six cities with the use of four readability formulas including Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, SMOG, and Dale-Schall for measuring readability and RANGE for analyzing vocabulary size of the sampled texts. The readability measurement showed that the translation of the history sections of these six cities was too difficult for virtually all readers to comprehend the contents. The vocabulary size analysis yielded that around 80% of the words in the texts were covered by 3,000 word families, quite lower than 95% lexical coverage for adequate comprehension of a text, which can be interpreted as saying that the vocabulary demands are high for such public sectors' informational texts. The findings demonstrate that readability levels and vocabulary size of the sampled texts should be adjusted to help foreigners have a more comfortable and adequate understanding of the translated contents.
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