Translator Training and Transferable Skills

1
Translator Training and Transferable Skills

• Against the Academic / Vocational Dichotomy
• John Kearns IATIS / ITIA

2
Translation Academia

• ...universities in systems with strongly
  academic traditions will not formulate their
  overall aims in the same way as those with a more
  vocational tradition. One might indeed question
  whether the former would actually be interested
  in translator training programmes at all!
  Dorothy Kelly 2005 23

• Problems
• a) Presumes a one-size-fits-all curricular
  ideology.
• b) Doesn't sufficiently acknowledge variation in
  translator-training cultures (especially in terms
  of different levels of development).

3
Practice Academe

• ...an underlying question in our field and
  indeed in any other professionally oriented
  programme of university studies is practice
  versus academe or practice plus academe? Maria
  González Davies 2004 79

4
The Two Traditions

• Academia
• Development through trivium and quadrivium
• von Humboldt
• Newmans Idea of a University
• Cultivation of the Mind

• Vocational Education
• Apprenticeships
• Preparation for a job
• Upgrading of many vocational institutions to
  university status in recent years
• Concerns about front-end loading

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The Dilemma

• Are we training students to work in specific jobs
  or are we educating them for life?

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Problems with Vocational Models

• Universities cannot constantly factor
  technological change in industry into a coherent
  model of translation curriculum development (cf.
  Pym, Esselink).
• There is no longer one big labour market for
  translators anyway.

7
Translatorship is not conferred at degree awards
ceremonies it is granted by society.
8
Transferable Skills...

• ...enable mobility between different areas,
  rather than specific training for one particular
  job
• ...as such, are not typically vocational, (cf.
  Latin)
• Many already exist in what is being taught in
  university curricula (though need to be
  highlighted)

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References

• Belam, Judith (2001) Transferable Skills in an
  MT Course. MT Summit VIII Proceedings of the MT
  Summit Workshop on Teaching Machine Translation.
  Eds. Mikel L. Forcada, Juan-Antonio Pérez-Ortiz,
  and Derek Lewis. Geneva European Association for
  Machine Translation, 31-34.
• Galtung, Johan. (1981) Structure, Culture and
  Intellectual Style A Comparison of Saxonic,
  Teutonic, Gallic and Nipponic Approaches. Social
  Science Information 206, 817-856.
• González Davies, Maria (2004) Undergraduate and
  Postgraduate Translation Degrees Aims and
  Expectations. Translation in Undergraduate
  Degree Programmes. Ed. Kirsten Malmkjær.
  Amsterdam / Philadelphia John Benjamins, 67-81.
• Kelly, Dorothy (2005) A Handbook for Translator
  Trainers. Manchester St. Jerome.
• Pym, Anthony (2003) Redefining Translation
  Competence in an Electronic Age In Defence of a
  Minimalist Approach. Meta 484, 481-497.
• Toury, Gideon (1995) Descriptive Translation
  Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam / Philadelphia
  John Benjamins.

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Thank you!

• John Kearns
• kearns_at_pro.onet.pl