My First Day Teaching Professional Issues in Translation Practice

In 2010 I taught the course Professional Issues in Translation Practice for the first time. It was also the first time the course had been offered in the programme, and it taught me a lesson on day one.

Starting from the students

I wanted to bring the real life of the translation profession into the classroom, using an approach I had built from my early readings in translator pedagogy. Because the course was new, I spent a long time selecting and planning material and activities and designing assessment methods.

I had a preliminary outline, but I was lucky: the students had just returned from their internships. I asked the course administrator for their reports and spent about half of the first day discussing their internship experience. That discussion helped me reshape the course outline. The more teachers know about their students' learning styles and needs, the better placed they are to assess and improve their own teaching (Viau et Bouchard, 2006, p. 1).

Active pedagogies and simulation

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

Where it got difficult

I must admit, though, that applying active pedagogies and ICT tools in an MA class ran into two problems:

• Student unease. Students were still shaped by the old paradigm in which knowledge flows from a single fountain (the teacher), and students absorb it and compete with one another to stand out. The professor is judged on how brilliantly he or she delivers the 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, so that they would get used to an environment that will take up a large share of their future work. Neither the university's infrastructure nor the students' financial situation allowed this to run smoothly.