Major Indexes of Source Text Difficulty in Translation: Can They Construct a Model?

Text difficulty is a common concern for stakeholders in translation. In academia text difficulty is generally used as a criterion to sequence the presentation of teaching materials in translation practice classes. Professional translation accreditation bodies, on the other hand, use text difficulty to select test materials. Various studies, both experimental and theoretical, were carried out which attempted to identify indexes of source text difficulty in translation or attempted to develop a model for translation-oriented text analysis. The present study aims to answer the questions of “What are the major indexes of source text difficulty in translation identified in previous studies? Can they be used to construct a model for text analysis in translation?” To this end, a library research was carried out; the major works on the topic were compared and contrasted. Then their shared features were identified and grouped together. The results showed that while some of the indexes identified cannot be grouped together most of the others can fall into intratextual factors’ category of Nord’s (2005) model for translation-oriented text analysis. Hence, it seems that Nord’s model can be used as a practical tool forsource text analysis in translation.