Although translation assessment is central to translation studies on both its theoretical and didactic levels, it still finds itself on somewhat uncertain ground. The following discussion seeks to Highlight central issues arising from the attempt to objectivize translation evaluation with the aid of a specific textual example. The attempt to measure the quality of a translation raises important questions about the very nature of textual transfer between languages, the relationship between source-and target-language texts, and translation functions. Not least it leads us into an area where -in view of the degree of adaptation implicit in functionalist views of translation -the concept of "translation" itself becomes problematical. Examination of a typical advertising text illustrates the degree of freedom with which texts are manipulated in Professional practice and demonstrates the difficulties which such intertextual transformations present for quality assessment.
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