Evaluating the quality of a translation presupposes a theory of translation. Thus different views of translation lead to different concepts of translational quality, and hence different ways of assessing it. In trying to make statements about the quality of a translation, one thus addresses the heart of any theory of translation, i.e., the crucial question of the nature of translation, or more specifically, the nature of (1) the relationship between a source text and its translation, (2) the relationship between (features of) the text’s ) arid how they are perceived by human agents (author, translator, recipient (s) ), and (3) the consequences views about these relationships have for determining the borders between a translation and other textual operations.

The translating profession clearly distinguishes between literary and non-literary translation, and many consider Bible translation as a third major branch. For the theorist, the question arises as to whether these distinctions are based only on textual characteristics of these three major classes of document or are also rooted in different approaches to the translation of the Bible, of literature and of other texts. Let us look at the following major functional classes of writing: