Translators need good reading skills, but first-year translation students often
demonstrate only basic reading literacy which often results in inaccurate interpretation
of the source text and a divergent message in the target text, often strongly influenced by
the prevailing opinion in the target culture and/or by the translator’s personal opinion.
We tested first-year and third-year students in their reading literacy in the source
language (English), their ability to summarize what they read and to translate the text
into the target language (Slovenian). The results show that the freshmen’s basic reading
skills are satisfactory, but more advanced reading skills, such as interpretative and
creative reading, present problems, which result in deficient summaries in the target
language. In addition, the students’ creative reading is negatively affected by
insufficient general knowledge and, surprisingly, their (or their culture’s) ideological
point of view. The ability of the third-year students to understand and re-write a text in
the target language was much improved, but the ideological influence was still there,
especially in the parts of the text that were difficult, or close to the students’ personal
experience.
