Mentoring Novice Translators on Real Projects, Outside the Classroom

What happens when you hand students a paid client project instead of a classroom exercise? In 2011 I found out, and the results convinced me that mentoring belongs in the translation curriculum.

The Experiment

I was lecturing on the MA in Professional Translation at Hassan II University in Morocco. At the end of the year, I put together a team of four competent students whom I felt could be mentored to carry out some of the paid freelance assignments I received from clients over the internet. All year they had been asking me to show them how online freelancing in translation and revision works. Early in the programme I was not sure they were ready: this kind of work demands particular skills, attitudes and aptitudes that they did not yet have. So I waited for a suitable project and then invited them in.

They were excited. When the documents arrived, I divided the work among them and supervised their process by email and telephone, so my support was delivered entirely at a distance through online communication tools. For the students this was something new. They were producing real, authentic translations for clients in another country, not a piece of work to be handed back and marked by the teacher. It was real.

The Risk

For me, it was a gamble. My reputation with the client was on the line, and working with unknown, novice co-workers for the first time was a risky move. But I had waited for the right moment and the right project, and sometimes we need to take calculated risks.

I set a firm deadline, monitored it closely, and revised the assignments to secure the quality of both the translation and its format. The following week we met in a café, and I was thrilled by how much they had enjoyed the experience. "Now we feel we can do it," they said. If they can do it online, they can easily do it face-to-face in an office as in-house translators.

Of course, they did not yet have every quality needed to run online translation projects as entrepreneurs. But they had worked through part of the project lifecycle (the translation itself) and were involved, by email, phone and Skype, in the operational phase. They now knew how it works.

A Question for Curriculum Designers

In Canada, a graduate of a BA programme in translation who wants to be certified by the professional body must first complete a six-month mentoring process, which they pay for themselves.

Could this kind of activity be integrated into the translation curriculum, given how directly it applies to professional practice? And how could it be organised, in budget and logistics, by the institution delivering the programme?