At last, Julie McDonough (Lecturer at York University) has posted on her blog the main outcomes of the Portsmouth conference, and the innovative, twenty-first-century thinking discussed there. I had been waiting for it.
I particularly liked Julie's choice of topics and presentations:
one by Justyna Giczela-Pawtwa on how relevant undergraduate and graduate translation students consider translation theory, another by Akiko Sakamoto, who spoke about the positive and negative experiences of offering optional online translation workshops to students at the University of Leicester, and a final one by Agata Sadza, who spoke about developing a project management course for students at London Metropolitan University.
Why these three matter
These three elements are genuinely innovative and fit the requirements of twenty-first-century translator education and training. We need research-based translation and interpreting programmes that build in at least one of them.
The first, students' perceptions of theory at undergraduate and postgraduate level, is already worth considering on its own. It is good to have future translators believe in the usefulness of theory.
The second, a course on managing translation projects, is a very welcome idea. This work pattern already exists in professional practice, and many job advertisements ask for translation project managers. So why can we not find the tools, content and an appropriate pedagogical approach to embed it in the curriculum for final-year or MA students? An alternative is to offer it as an elective and gauge the demand.
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