Reflections on my expereince as a teachers and research in translation pedagogy( and studies).

   In the MA course I facilitated between 2009-11 (Translation Studies and the real world), I tried to bring in the real life situation of the translation profession through creating my own innovative approach, resulting from my early readings on   translator pedagogy literature and else. The course was made for the first time and I had to choose, plan and deliver, assess the contents myself. I had a preliminary outline about my intervention, but I was lucky to find the students had just been back from their internship so I had asked the course administrator for their reports, and spent about half of the time during the first day discussing their internship experience. This discussion had helped me to reshape my course outline, and I presume that the more the teachers know about their students learning styles and needs the better they will be in a position to assess their teaching and improve it accordingly ( Viau et Bouchard, 2006, p1).

   Being a course about professional issues in practice, I resorted to use active pedagogies, workshops mixed with ICT tools. The focal point was to create simulations of the real world of translation, how language services are carried out in the real world or the virtual world (online freelance) and the constraints. I was trying to link between the course at hand and the profession ( Viau et Bouchard, 2006, p. 38). From time to time I present a brief lecture to students to guide them through some declarative knowledge they might need to help them apply it and reflect on it while dealing with Problem Situations or Case studies.

     Nevertheless, I must admit that I faced problems in trying to apply the active pedagogies as well as the ICT tools in the MA class due to:

·         -Students uneasiness with these types of activities, since they are still influenced by the old paradigm whereby knowledge is and should be transmitted from one fountain (the teachers) and that students should absorb that knowledge and compete with each other to be distinguished. The professor is judged on how bright she or he is in delivering the course content.

·        - I tried to incite them to bring in their lap tops or use internet at home to communicate with each others on online discussion groups and do research on special sites to get them used to the online environment since it takes a big chunk of their future work. Nevertheless, neither the university infrastructure nor students financial situation helped me to run this activity smoothly.

 Fouad