This study was designed to provide an index of translation quality, by means of which several translations of the same text could be compared for research purposes in Translation Studies (TS). It is part of a more comprehensive research on the relationship between some of the translator’s cognitive characteristics and various features of the translated text (Rothe-Neves, 2002). Instead of dealing exhaustively with the issue of translation quality assessment from a theoretical point of view, in this article I will concentrate on the question of how to provide empirical information that allows a researcher to compare translations based on quality. I will first discuss some points that seem important to translation quality assessment for the sake of empirical research on the process of translating. The discussion is organized around the perspective that traditional methods of assessment could be improved by refining their data collection techniques. Then, I will deal with the construction of a quality scale using external evaluation and appropriate statistic tools to investigate reliability. Finally, further developments will be suggested.
