Translation evaluation, assessment and criticism are widely studied concepts referring to quality control and enhancement in both professional translation and translation training. However, there is still a need for translator trainers to develop a specific competence in translation assessment in the academic context, since they must provide students with valuable information about their progress at different learning stages. Thus, lecturers, as translator trainers, must design and evaluate assessment systems which combine the professional and academic perspectives. In this article, we present a meta-assessment study aimed at validating a formative evaluation system based on the alignment of academic learning outcomes and professional assessment criteria using a rubric for the assessment of translated texts in an English-into-Spanish scientific translation course. This meta-assessment study involves lecturers in hetero-assessment and students, as trainee translators, in peer-assessment. We quantitatively analysed the different grades scored by students in our proposed rubric-based formative assessment system and qualitatively analysed the perceptions of both lecturers and students on this system. Results show that matching learning outcomes and assessment criteria increases students' awareness of their performance and lecturers' self-confidence in some translation assessments.