Geoffrey S. Koby

Dr. Koby (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a full professor of Translation Studies and German. His research focuses on translation assessment and evaluation and translation pedagogy. He has co-edited three volumes on translation pedagogy, financial translation, and translation quality, co-translated a major work on translation theory, co-authored a dictionary of translation teaching terminology, and published articles on translation practice, translation assessment and evaluation, and translation pedagogy. He is also the translator of Einstein’s Opponents by Milena Wazeck and co-translator of the poetry cycle Stoppelbrand [Stubble Fire] by Henning Ahrens (with Mark Herman & Ronnie Apter). He has made numerous presentations at national and international professional and scholarly translation conferences.

Dr. Koby teaches undergraduate courses in German translation, phonetics, foreign language and culture, and Business German, and graduate courses in literary translation, commercial/legal/financial translation, and scientific/technical/medical translation, and occasionally teaches a Ph.D. seminar on translation assessment. He is an ATA-certified German>English and Dutch>English translator, a certified Oral Proficiency Interview tester, a grader for the ATA certification exam (German>English), and former chair of the ATA Certification committee. He is founding past president of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association (ATISA) and served six years on the Board of Directors of the American Translators Association (ATA) and five years as president of the ATA’s affiliate non-profit American Foundation for Translation and Interpretation. He currently serves as president of the American Translators Association (2024-2025).

Selected Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities

Co-Edited Books

Koby, Geoffrey S. and Isabel Lacruz, eds. Translator Quality—Translation Quality: Empirical Approaches to Assessment and Evaluation. Linguistica Antverpiensia New Series – Themes in Translation Studies 16 (2017) (published January 2018).

Gallego Hernández, Daniel, Geoffrey S. Koby, and Verónica Román Mínguez, eds. Economic, Financial and Business Translation: from Theory to Training and Professional Practice. MonTI 8 (2016)

Baer, Brian James, and Geoffrey S. Koby, eds. Beyond the Ivory Tower: Rethinking Translation Pedagogy. American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series 12. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2003. 

Refereed or Invited Articles/Chapters 

“Case Study on Intercultural Errors and Translation Assessment: German>English.” In Deconinck, Julie, Philippe Humblé, Arvi Sepp, and Helene Stengers (eds.) Towards Transcultural Awareness in Translation Pedagogy. Repräsentation – Transformation 12. Vienna: Lit-Verlag, 2017, 181-207. 

“Developing a specialized corpus database for ATA translator certification examinations.” In Alonso Almeida, Francisco, Laura Cruz García, and Víctor González Ruiz (eds.) Corpus-based Studies on Language Varieties. Linguistic Insights 210. Bern: Peter Lang, 2016, 191-216.

“The ATA Flowchart and Framework as a Differentiated Error-Marking Scale in Translation Teaching.” In Cui, Ying and Wei Zhao, eds. Handbook of Research on Teaching Methods in Language Translation and Interpretation. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2015, 220-253.

Melby, Alan, Paul Fields, Daryl Hague, Geoffrey S. Koby, and Arle Lommel. “Defining the Landscape of Translation.” Revista Tradumàtica: tecnologies de la traducció 12 (2014): 392-403.

Fields, Paul, Daryl Hague, Geoffrey S. Koby, Arle Lommel, and Alan Melby. “What is Quality? A Management Discipline and the Translation Industry Get Acquainted.” Revista Tradumàtica: tecnologies de la traducció 12 (2014): 404-412.

Koby, Geoffrey S., Paul Fields, Daryl Hague, Arle Lommel, and Alan Melby. “Defining Translation Quality.” Revista Tradumàtica: tecnologies de la traducció 12 (2014): 413-420.

Koby, Geoffrey S. and Gertrud G. Champe. “Welcome to the Real World. Professional-Level Translator Certification.” Translation & Interpreting 5:1 (2013): 156-173.

Koby, Geoffrey S. and Alan K. Melby. “Certification and Job Task Analysis (JTA): Establishing Validity of Translator Certification Examinations.” Translation & Interpreting 5:1 (2013): 174-210. (With on-line appendix.)

Translated Books

Wazeck, Milena. Einstein’s Opponents: The Public Controversy Surrounding the Theory of Relativity During the 1920s. Translated and with a Preface (pp. vii-xviii) by Geoffrey S. Koby. 355 pp. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Krings, Hans Peter. Repairing Texts: Empirical Investigations of Machine Translation Post-Editing Processes. Edited and with an introduction by Geoffrey S. Koby. Translated by Geoffrey S. Koby, Gregory M. Shreve, Katja Mischerikow, Sarah Litzer. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2001.

Expertise:

•    Translation Assessment
•    German Translation
•    Dutch Translation
•    Financial Translation
•    Legal Translation

Affiliations:

•    American Translators Association
•    American Foundation for Translation and Interpretation
•    American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association
•    American Association of Teachers of German (AATG)