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:
- Training translators in the skills the real world of translation demands most: revision and collaboration.
- 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.
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