Liaison Interpreting: Can Technology Make the Classroom Work Better?

Liaison interpreting is better known in the West, especially in countries with large immigrant populations such as North America and the Nordic countries, as community interpreting. It is carried out mainly in public hospitals and immigration settings. My question is simple: could we train it better if technology were part of the curriculum?

Why Interpreting Belongs in My Research

Although my research focus is translator education, it is difficult to leave interpreter training out of the equation. As Munday (2004, 2008, 2012) points out, translation and interpreting studies are complementary fields that are hard to split in research, with some differences of course. I also trained student interpreters for two years while teaching in higher education in Morocco, which makes the question even more compelling. My MA in Translation and Interpreting at Heriot-Watt University, completed while Prof. Basil Hatim was still there, was a rewarding experience.

What Worked in My Classroom (2008–2010)

Here are some tips from my earlier teaching in liaison and consecutive interpreting:

• Active pedagogies work well for organising group work, in teams of three.
• Scenario-based learning. I first prepared a case, a story or event, built around a thematic problem: immigration, a hospital, a trade centre, an airport. Then, in groups, we brainstormed and discussed the problem critically in class.
• Role play. Students formed groups of three (doctor/patient/interpreter, or buyer/seller/interpreter) and, following instructions I designed for the purpose, prepared a substantial dialogue and performed it in class as a real-time simulation.
• Peer assessment. In the next session, when they performed, I gave their classmates an evaluation grid. I added my own evaluation of the professional aspects: verbal and non-verbal behaviour, terminology, voice and articulation, and public speaking.

The Turning Point

Things went much better when I brought two YouTube videos of interpreter interventions into the classroom, one by a professional and one by a non-professional. This streamed video, as a learning object, had a great impact on students. I realised they needed a different type of learning environment: one enhanced by technology and multimedia.

I then designed further activities that combined media-enhanced technology with active pedagogies. The outcomes were striking, not only in learning but in students' self-esteem. They felt they could do it on the ground. For me, that is an educational outcome: if the learning objective was that the student could intervene in a given situation, the job is done.

What Comes Next

For interpreter training, integrating technology is a vital element in the learning curve. But which tools should we use, which pedagogical principles should guide course design and delivery, and how do we design a learning environment for this specific type of training? That is what I am working on in my current project. There is abundant research in educational technology, e-learning, educational studies and psycho-education that can help us design such courses for translators and interpreters.

Takeaway: educational studies can inform translator and interpreter training.

Interpreter Training Goes Online: A Conference Worth Watching

An interesting online conference is coming up: Innovative educational approaches to interpreter training: integrating technology and active pedagogies (IATIS). The topic is timely, and so is the format.

Why the topic matters

Technology, and blended, online and distance modes of training, are an emerging phenomenon in translator and interpreter education. With globalisation and changing work patterns in the translation and interpreting industry (immigration, shifting demographics, digital natives, the e-generation), it makes sense to rethink our existing pedagogical and educational models.

Why the format matters

Note that the conference is delivered on the Blackboard platform, which saves a great deal in airfares and hotels. I hope more conferences and discussions among translation and interpreting scholars, teachers, students and practitioners adopt this kind of virtual video-conferencing format.

In online education, encounters of this type enhance collaboration and the exchange of experiences and practices, and that yields better and more efficient results for the whole community. Some universities already run their doctoral seminars as live video-conference meetings.

Wikis, E-Learning and the Arabic Content Gap

King Khalid University's move to bring e-learning, online learning and technology into its languages and translation departments is a welcome initiative. King Saud University has taken a similar step with its Wiki Project to enrich Arabic content on the internet, and Qatar Foundation in Doha has supported the same project.

An official UN language with a poor online footprint

It is a shame that Arabic, one of the six official UN languages, has such thin online content. My next project is an Arabic-language blog publishing news, practice and research on translation and interpreting in Arabic. Another option is a multilingual online knowledge base. More on that soon.

Wikis as a training tool

I am well aware of how effective wikis can be for training students in revision skills through a collaborative, project-based approach (Kiraly, 2000). Have any of you used these tools in teaching? I would welcome your ideas. I can see the educational potential of wikis for nurturing competencies that translation practice badly needs: working in groups and in networks (local and international), coordination (who does what), meeting deadlines through online work, and coping with last-minute changes.

In the case of Arabic, a wiki platform could serve two purposes:

1. Training translators in the skills the real world of translation demands most: revision and collaboration.
2. Filling a gap by strengthening Arabic-language content online. Think how often we translators turn to a Google search to fix a terminological or phraseological problem, only to find how poor the Arabic resources are. When I work on a technical translation from French or Spanish into English, researching documents (parallel corpus data, for instance) or terminology is far easier.

Emerging Trends in Translator Training: Portsmouth 2012

The 12th Portsmouth Translation Conference, under the banner 'Those Who Can, Teach': Translation, Interpreting and Training, signals where translator education is heading. The programme is worth a close look.

Conference page: http://www.port.ac.uk/research/translation/portsmouthtranslationconference/

For the first time I see themes such as:

• Best practice for practical translation workshops
• Translator training and cognition
• Translators, interpreters and CPD
• Translator and interpreter training online (distance learning)
• Training the trainer
• Relevance of translation theory in and outside the classroom
• Educational theories
• Employability
• Clients need educating too

These are genuinely twenty-first-century topics and the innovative trends to watch. Several of them fall squarely within my ongoing research as a PhD candidate.

New UAE Law on Translation Practice: What Universities Must Do Now

Sheikh Khalifa Al Nahyan has issued a decree regulating the translation profession in the UAE, and it is very interesting news for translator education. Read the report in Al Bayan (Arabic).

اصدار قرار من قبل الشيخ خليفة آل نهيان لأجل تعديل مهنة الترجمة بالإمارات

A Diploma Is Now Compulsory

Under the new law, a diploma in translation is compulsory for certification. Imagine how many new training opportunities this creates. Universities need to respond to this kind of demand by creating certificates, online and distance courses, diplomas, and full BA and MA degrees.

A New Kind of Student

These diplomas should also be geared to a new demographic: existing practitioners, people who already work and have family commitments. That means new training content and new educational approaches. Courses in translation studies, ethics and the relevant history of translation may well be on the menu.

The practising adult translator is coming back to university for more education and training, to transform and improve their previous ways of working. In the UAE there will even be practitioners who need a linguistic upgrade alongside conceptual and technical development. That will only work if there is a team of translator trainers, researchers and scholars able to build twenty-first-century competencies and beliefs into the curricula. It demands thorough market awareness, confident use of technology, and familiarity with recent dynamic and active pedagogies in translator education, for both returning professionals and traditional students.

Training traditional students is one thing. Training adult clients who are back at university to improve their career prospects, or to comply with a legal requirement to continue practising, is quite another.

ضرورة تفعيل جانب الإرشاد الأكاديمي في الجامعات العربية – Academic Advising in Arab Universities: A Shared Responsibility

An Asharq Al-Awsat article on the absence of academic and career advising at Arab universities, and the need to mobilise both institutional and individual efforts to solve the problem.

ضرورة تفعيل جانب الإرشاد الأكاديمي في الجامعات العربية: مسؤولية فردية ومؤسساتية؟

Learning In and Beyond the Classroom: A Video for Translator Trainers

This video on new approaches to learning and teaching is aimed at anyone, whether teacher, trainer or staff in a private organisation, who needs to embrace new working practices and approaches.

Watch the video: Learning in and beyond the classroom

For translator trainers and researchers, it is a useful prompt to rethink training practices and the issues that arise in a translation programme or course. Two ideas stand out:

• Create a translation certificate or diploma programme for non-traditional students, that is, people already working as freelancers or in-house translators who want further professional development or accreditation, for instance a diploma in translation they do not yet hold.
• Apply the same thinking to standard BA and MA translation courses in a bi-modal university (one that offers both classroom-based and distance courses). Some translation competences are better developed through a learner-centred, collaborative approach (project work in practicums), supported by educationally sound technology, especially web-based tools such as email, forums, discussion threads, chat and synchronous tools.

From Classroom to Online: Redesigning a Terminology Course Outline

Before starting my PhD in 2011, I completed a teacher training course in higher education. For one assignment I took a real course outline, a first-year course in terminology and documentation taught by a professor in the translation and linguistics department of a university here in Montréal, and asked how it could be converted for online delivery.

Here is the abstract of that mini-paper, which I would like to develop into a publishable article.

In this assignment, I present a course outline designed by a professor in the translation and linguistics department at the Université xxxxxxx for first-year undergraduates. The course covers terminology and research documentation. The professor agreed to let me use his outline as data for the assignment.

I discuss the structural aspects of the document, analyse its components, and conclude by proposing how the same course could be delivered online, with the necessary justifications and suggestions. The move to an online platform is treated only briefly, since the main purpose of the assignment is to highlight what makes an efficient course outline and the role of aligning objectives, learning outcomes and assessment tasks. I analyse those elements and offer my own appraisal of the document, drawing on new insights from learning theories, instructional design and andragogy (how adults learn) as applied to translator and interpreter training.

Lessons from an Online Workshop on Freelance Translation

In 2011 I gave an online workshop on tele-translation, or online freelancing, for ATIDA (the Arabic Translation and Intercultural Dialogue Association). Forty-eight participants, one facilitator, no moderator: it taught me more about online teaching than any lecture could.

The preliminary syllabus is here: http://atida.info/training/course_details.php?course_id=66 (the presentation was given in Arabic).

What Happened

The workshop ran in Arabic and English, with some colloquial Arabic where the informal nature of the session allowed it. ATIDA offered the course free of charge for promotional reasons, and around 48 participants joined online. Managing the facilitation was a challenge because of the sheer flow of questions. A moderator, with whom I should have agreed the activities beforehand, was not available, so I had to pick out only the relevant questions on the spot. There was no way to answer every query in an hour and a half.

On the other hand, that flow showed how interactive and dynamic the audience was. Some participants were answering their classmates' questions in the chat box, which I greatly admired: interaction took place not only between me and them but also among students who did not know each other. This is the kind of collaboration that translation pedagogues such as Kiraly (2000, 2003) have written about, though not in a technology-enhanced, online or distance-learning space. These Arabic-speaking students came from many different countries, including Spain, Germany and France.

What I Learnt

I learnt a few things I will avoid next time I run the same workshop, whether online or face-to-face. Online facilitation differs from the classroom in its learning design, in the teacher's role and in the physical environment: bricks and mortar against an online platform or learning management system (LMS). Instructors who want to take on such initiatives need training for it.

A PowerPoint version of the course is available on request: contact me at fouadelkarnichi@gmail.com.

Teaching Online Freelancing: An ATIDA Workshop

In 2011 I ran an online workshop on tele-translation work (online freelancing) for ATIDA, the Arabic Translation and Intercultural Dialogue Association. It taught me as much about online facilitation as it taught the participants about freelancing.

The preliminary syllabus is available here: http://atida.info/training/course_details.php?course_id=66

The workshop was delivered in Arabic and English, with some Arabic dialect, since the nature of the session allowed for a degree of informality. About 48 participants joined online. ATIDA offered the course free of charge for promotional reasons.

Managing the online facilitation was a real challenge because of the massive flow of questions. I had to pick out, on the spot, only the relevant ones. From this I learnt a few things I will avoid the next time I run the workshop, whether online or face-to-face in a classroom. Online facilitation differs from face-to-face teaching in its learning design, in the teacher's role and in the physical environment: bricks and mortar versus the online platform or learning management system (LMS).

The PowerPoint slides:

Teaching Translation Theory in Blended Mode: A Moroccan MA Case

In 2010 I taught the course Approaches in Translation Studies for the first time, to MA students at Hassan II University in Mohammedia, Morocco. The experience convinced me of one thing: a theoretical subject like translation studies (TS) is best taught in blended mode, bridged to practice, and aimed squarely at critical thinking.

Choosing the Content, Facing the Expectations

I did my homework and settled on Munday's book as the backbone of the course, supplemented by other readings in TS. Then came the harder question: how to deliver it. Should I rely on lecturing alone, or add other pedagogical techniques?

The students' conception of TS was that it is "only theory" and that they did not need it. This was a professional MA; they were there to sharpen their practical skills. I explained from day one that the course would embed both theory and practical insights from the real world of translation, so there was no need to panic. My position was that MA students should not merely sharpen practical skills (that belongs at BA level) but develop a translation-specific metalanguage and learn to approach translation work and texts critically. A chance to reflect a little. We do two things: educate and train.

Getting to Know the Students

As I always do, I spent the first days getting to know the group and asking key questions to reduce the distance and learn about their characteristics and profiles. This helps me design better content and learning environments, including assessment measures and activities (formative, summative and performative).

Bringing Practice into Theory

MA students need theoretical insights to build a metalanguage they can use to comment on their translations and to write research in translation. Because TS was a new domain for them and their prior knowledge was limited, I started with something familiar: the equivalence issue from a linguistic perspective, followed by a brief discussion of Nida, whom everybody knows.

From there I showed the shift that took place after Holmes's map, and used the map to draw their attention to the areas of research and knowledge that inhabit the field. A chronological presentation of modern approaches then followed, according to Munday's classification. This gave the students a visible picture of the field and of how the course would be organised over the term.

I taught approach by approach, from the linguistic up to the most current trend in the discipline: all seven approaches in Munday's book, enriched with insights from other recommended references. For research-based MA students, this is exactly what they need.

Blended Delivery: Chat, Forums and Reflective Summaries

To help students reflect on the lectures, I integrated some technology. I asked them to synthesise each approach in pairs, outside the classroom, using chat or forum tools to discuss the approach critically and relate it to the real world of translation: problems and issues encountered in their practicum classes or, for those with professional experience, actual instances they had lived through themselves. I formed the pairs according to profile, chiefly degree of translation experience.

At the end of each chat, students copied the conversation into a Word file and sent it to me, together with an individual reflective summary of the approach discussed in class. This assignment was assessed formatively.

What I Learnt

Reading the synchronous conversations they had pasted, I saw several things to adjust in the syllabus for 2011: students' prior knowledge, and how they could genuinely practise critical thinking and activate their discussion through the technology, which in turn would help them use the metalanguage and practise good writing. I realised that the blended mode could be a better way to facilitate a student-centred approach to a theoretical subject like TS.

In 2011 I began working this way with a new cohort, but I could not complete the whole programme that year (we covered four of the seven approaches) before I emigrated to Canada for family reasons.

So, translation studies can be taught:

• in parallel with technological support tools (Skype, chat, or other Web 2.0 and 3.0 learning objects);
• as a programme-based subject, bridged to the other courses in the programme;
• with the aim of developing critical thinking and a metalanguage for translation studies.

Tony Bates on Online Learning as a 21st-Century Requirement

Tony Bates gave a talk at the Université de Sherbrooke, where I am pursuing my doctoral studies, on online learning and teaching as a 21st-century educational requirement. He opens Part 1 with a few seconds of French, then delivers all three parts in English.

The full recording is available as a video file here: http://www.usherbrooke.ca/ssf/index.php?id=21389

Note: this is precisely the subject area I am working to adapt to translation programmes in my doctoral research.

From Linguistics to Translation Pedagogy: A Journey Across Disciplines

The last couple of years have taught me a great deal about changing career direction: how to embrace the change, accept it, and benefit from it. A shift of field does not erase your earlier background; it strengthens it, because you start comparing and contrasting fields, approaches and epistemologies.

What Educational Sciences Gave Me

I was about to finish a PhD in translator training back home in Morocco. Then I came to Canada, started from scratch, and chose to enrol in the Faculty of Education rather than in linguistics and translation. It has worked well. It allowed me to think differently about my own domain, translation and interpreting. Educational sciences hold knowledge, methodologies and insights that can inform translator education, and a research methodology we can put to use in the field of language mediation.

Things became more challenging, and more interesting, when I decided to specialise in online learning, including distance education, for translator and interpreter training. It is a different world, though it shares some ground with the face-to-face classroom. I am still learning, and I intend to keep learning. In a few years I hope to offer the translation community innovative, and needed, training alternatives, methods and approaches.

Technology Is More Than a Tool

My experience as a freelancer, an in-house translator, a teacher and a researcher taught me to work in various contexts, virtual and face-to-face, and to use a range of tools and strategies to communicate. Technology should not only be a tool for translators to learn how to translate; it is also a means for faculty to teach differently. Yet teaching with technology in a face-to-face classroom is not the same as teaching in an online, technology-enhanced environment. It means a change in roles, new competencies and skills, and a move from teacher-centred to student-centred pedagogies.

In a connected, networked and digital era, we need to rethink our pedagogies and approaches. We need research-based knowledge, not only practice-based insight. That research may be transient, but it is still scientific knowledge, grounded in learning and design theories and in the literature on human-computer interaction. All of it can be fitted to translator training in the hope of arriving at an innovative approach that actually works.

I will keep posting here about my experience as a student researcher in new territory.

Online Teaching and Learning of Translation: Is It Possible?

Translation practicums are best facilitated with information and communication technologies, paired with a suitable pedagogical approach. That is my firm belief, and it is the core of my doctoral research.

We can no longer imagine a translator or language service provider who is not versed in the internet, word processing, and the translation databases and tools needed to handle assignments of every size. So why are we not designing programmes and learning environments that enable this kind of virtual training? Translation practice in the cloud and across networks is a must for the twenty-first-century language professional.

Competencies Nobody Has Put on the Table

A set of competencies that translation curriculum designers have never seriously addressed needs to be reconsidered and embedded in translator training programmes. Linguistic and general knowledge is not enough to build the translator of tomorrow. Employers keep asking for other, more important competencies that universities do not offer because they "do not form part of the disciplinary courses". Consider:

• social competencies;
• using technology to translate, and to train translators in practical workshops through active pedagogies rather than lectures;
• teaching translation content through multimedia tools, such as recorded lectures combined with other technology-enhanced methods that engage students and lift them out of the boredom of "lecture mode".

The Online Environment as a Training Space

The online environment is a natural space for trainee translators. They will spend their working lives in technology-based environments, networking with clients and colleagues as they move from one space in the cloud to another. That is what the future workstation, and the future working pattern, will look like.

It therefore makes sense to organise the knowledge base, resources, teaching methods and evaluation (or quality) criteria into a curriculum or programme of study that can be delivered fully online or in a blended mode that mixes face-to-face and online learning.

A large part of my PhD research addresses precisely this question. I will share further briefings and reflections here as the work progresses.

When Interpreting Serves Ideology: The Morsi Speech in Tehran

The article linked below (in Arabic) shows how a source text can be translated, or interpreted at a conference, with little regard for its actual wording or intentions.

The Iranian interpreter made major changes to President Morsi's speech in order to serve national interests and protect Iran's allies, Syria and the resistance in Bahrain, by every available means. In this context, the notion of equivalence simply collapses.

This is an important topic in translation studies. See the literature on censorship, translation and ideology, and note that it is a thoroughly practical aspect of the discipline, not a theoretical curiosity.

Read the article (Youm7, in Arabic)

Issues in Advanced Translator Training at Moroccan Universities

Very little has been published on translator education at Moroccan universities. This article, which appeared in Turjuman in 2012, is my attempt to sketch the state of advanced translation teaching in the country and to measure it against developments in the wider discipline.

Reference: El Karnichi, F. (2012). Issues in advanced translator training programmes at Moroccan universities. Turjuman, 21(1), 52–65. Tangiers, Morocco.

Abstract

Given the lack of extensive literature on translator education and training at university level in Morocco, this article offers a brief overview of the teaching of translation in advanced translation courses at Moroccan universities. Reference is made to the scarce published literature available locally on translation teaching, supported by publications and experiences from other parts of the world that address the same issue. This gives a basic picture of the current situation in the country's academic corridors. We hope to benefit from it by cross-checking the status of our syllabi, teaching methods and models against the fast-growing innovations, findings and approaches in the discipline. The main focus of the article is one of the most challenging issues in the new translator pedagogy: theory and practice within a university-level translator training programme.

Earlier Reflections on Teaching Translation in Morocco

Some earlier reflections of mine on teaching translation at university level in Morocco, published on ProZ.

Read the article on ProZ

Bringing the Real World into the MA Translation Classroom

Between 2009 and 2011 I facilitated an MA course called Translation Studies and the Real World. My aim was simple: bring the working life of the translation profession into the classroom. What I learnt along the way says as much about students and institutions as it does about pedagogy.

Starting from the students, not the syllabus

The course was being taught for the first time, so I had to choose, plan, deliver and assess the content myself, drawing on my early reading in translator education. I arrived with a preliminary outline, but I was lucky: the students had just returned from their internships. I asked the course administrator for their placement reports and spent about half of the first day discussing their internship experiences.

That discussion reshaped my course outline. The more teachers know about their students' learning styles and needs, the better placed they are to assess their own teaching and improve it accordingly (Viau et Bouchard, 2006, p. 1).

Active pedagogies and simulations

Since the course dealt with professional issues in practice, I relied on active pedagogies: workshops combined with ICT tools. The focal point was to simulate the real world of translation, showing how language services are delivered in physical and virtual (online freelance) settings, and under what constraints. The intention was to link the course directly to the profession (Viau et Bouchard, 2006, p. 38). From time to time I gave a short lecture to supply the declarative knowledge students needed, so they could apply it and reflect on it while working through problem situations and case studies.

Where it got difficult

I must admit that applying active pedagogies and ICT tools in the MA class ran into two obstacles:

• Student unease. Students were still shaped by the old paradigm in which knowledge flows from a single fountain (the teacher), is absorbed by learners, and is displayed through competition to stand out. In that paradigm the professor is judged on how brilliantly he or she delivers content.
• Infrastructure and means. I encouraged students to bring their laptops, or use the internet at home, to communicate in online discussion groups and research specialised sites, since the online environment takes up a large part of their future work. Neither the university infrastructure nor the students' financial situation allowed this to run smoothly.

Takeaway: a professionally oriented course lives or dies on two things the teacher does not fully control: the learning culture students bring with them, and the resources the institution puts behind the course.

Why the Course Plan Matters More Than the Content

For years I treated the course outline as paperwork. I now think it is the single biggest predictor of whether students actually reach the learning outcomes we set for them.

When I taught in higher education between 2008 and 2011, content was king. What we stressed was topics and the teacher's objectives. It turns out that what really matters is the reverse: target the learning outcomes first, design learning activities for those specific outcomes, and then build assessment tools that tell you whether learners have achieved them. The alignment between these three elements is everything. Without it, course objectives are derailed.

I doubt any of the colleagues I worked with on the MA or the diploma in translation had a proper course plan before their first class, one that spelt out, consciously and responsibly, the pedagogical approach, the intended learning outcomes and the assessment tools. That gap cripples the quality of learning and misguides the student. In translation teaching it is worse still: instruction rarely reflected real-world requirements and practices. We need to know why we use a practicum in an MA course, and how best to engage students in activities that resemble the work done in translation offices and bureaux, or between online freelance translators and outsourcers.

In 2011 I took a graduate development programme in teaching in higher education at the Université de Sherbrooke (Canada). It was thoroughly practical. It made me reflect on how to approach content, the classroom, student characteristics and learning styles, and the choice of a pedagogical approach (or a harmonious mix of them), and then apply all this to translator training and education. Yes, education.

I took the course fully online, and that paved the way for me to specialise, a year later, in online education applied to translator training for my PhD. Two years in, I changed the topic to pedagogical and curriculum practices in face-to-face translation programmes. But my exposure to online, interactive education and scholarship taught me a great deal about educational technologies in general, and about those adapted to translator education in particular.

Takeaway: a course lives or dies by the alignment of outcomes, activities and assessment. Plan that first; the content will follow.

Educational technology in translator training, research and practice

Educational technology in translator training, research and practice

Welcome to a Shared Space for Translator Education

This blog is a resource and a discussion space for students, teachers, researchers and practitioners in translation and interpreting: a place to exchange ideas and build knowledge for our community of practice and research.

Everyone in the community is welcome. Translation students seeking help or wanting to trade ideas; teachers reflecting on their practice; researchers working through problems in translation studies, interpreting studies or teaching.

For my part, I will post reflections on my earlier experience as a translation and interpreting lecturer, and share my current work as a PhD student researching e-learning in translator training in higher education.