Emotional Intelligence and EFL Students’ Translation Ability

Abstract

Emotional Intelligence is a challenging topic in the area of language research. Among other factors that might manipulate translators’ mind, their Emotional Intelligence level might be an influential element, too. The present research focused on examining the relationship between emotional intelligence and the students’ translation ability. It was carried out among 59 translation students in the Payam-Noor University in Iran, Mazandaran. After homogenizing the sample, the sample size was reduced to 32. The participants were required to translate some paragraphs of the short story 'A rose for Emily' and answer the Bar-On EQ-I questionnaire (1997). The results indicated that there was no relationship between EQ and the learners’ translation ability but some of the main subscales of emotional intelligence (i.e., problem solving, happiness, and flexibility) had statistically weak relationship with the learners’ translation ability. The results also showed that the combination of EQ and gender were positively correlated.

Keywords

• emotional intelligence
• Translation ability
• Translation quality assessment