التعليم عن بعد في الجامعات العربية: هل أصبح عن قرب؟ – Distance Learning in Arab Universities: Is It Now Up Close?

An Asharq Al-Awsat feature on distance learning in Arab higher education and whether it has finally come of age.

Read the article (in Arabic)

Empowering Future Translators to Face the Real Market

New freelance translators, students among them, have been exploited for as long as I can remember. Translation agencies demean us, yes, but the problem is social too: society underestimates who translators are and what they do. Whose fault is that? Ours. Here is an initiative I took a couple of years ago to do something about it.

The Initiative

I designed and facilitated a training course on translation ethics and professional realities at the university where I worked, on an Arabic–English MA programme in Morocco. Its aim was to empower future translators by engaging them with authentic, real-life scenarios so they could recognise the unjust and, frankly, pathetic behaviour they might meet from translation agencies, online or at home. The material came from online resources and from my own experiences in my early days as a translator.

Study material of this kind, combined with the trainer's personal experience, pushes students to think critically and intelligently about how they will position themselves in the online translation market. The objective is that they transform the deplorable status quo once they are in the field: negotiate a just and fair rate, and be the ones who decide what to ask for their language services, not the other way round. This is a risk-calculation strategy for future translators who may work for themselves. Like any business, translation carries a margin of risk. That is normal practice.

Why Education Is the Answer

My conviction is that the solution lies with what the new cohort of students can do to improve and, eventually, transform the market. The rot sets in when parasites enter a trade as "artisans" who never sought professional development and never considered taking a decent (I repeat: decent) university translation programme.

This does not mean current translators, freelancers and virtual translators especially, can do nothing. On the contrary: they need to hold their heads up, pursue professional development and get informed. Our profession should no longer be seen as a merely artisanal activity. It has moved far beyond that. Conferences are held on translation and translators; academic programmes, even PhDs, and research on translator behaviour and practice are mushrooming. We need to take part in this trend of institutionalisation to improve our status as social actors and earn respect. Society has its own way of perceiving things. Let us play the game as well.

The Result

Some of my former students have since formed teams of translators and run their own virtual or physical agencies, and their business approach and philosophy are different. The educational and social objectives of the course were met; there has been an impact. Students had a meaningful, lifelong learning experience. I hope to see more examples like this, because it is a viable solution to a problem our profession keeps discussing.

It all starts with education: knowing how to do things, how to be someone, and how to become that someone, the translator.

Do We Need a Translation Degree to Work? The Canadian Context

A colleague on a LinkedIn professional forum asked whether translators really need a degree to work. Here is what I answered, drawing on the Canadian context.

Original thread: http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem

How Canada trains translators

Canada has a long tradition in both translation practice and translator training. The Federal Government's Translation Bureau is the largest recruiter in the country, and a BA in Translation is compulsory for recruitment. Why? Because the four-year university programme follows a rigorous and practical process. In Canada you may take a 'co-op' BA, which includes paid internships over about three years, or a traditional BA with content in linguistics, translation theory and practice and translation technologies, but no fieldwork. Co-op students gain experience in the field, in companies and agencies, and get paid for it.

Degrees and professional status

My second point concerns the value of taking degrees and pursuing professional development. I see resistance to this as degrading our professional status as social actors. Why should we not have the same standing as older, traditional professions such as medicine or law? Doctors, too, once learnt by doing, on a hit-and-miss principle, but their practice developed into a profession over time and was institutionalised through education and training, with the social and political recognition that follows. Why must translators always be timid and lacking in self-esteem when it comes to making our voices heard? We do social work of the same importance as doctors, lawyers or engineers. Acquiring disciplinary knowledge and staying informed matters for our lifelong learning and for our social status.

Our contribution deserves recognition

We make the unknown known through language, build powerful relations between nations and peoples through linguistic communication, and build a heritage of knowledge. This is serious. It is not only about producing excellent translations and keeping clients. That is good, but it is not the end of the story. We need to look at our profession from various angles, and we need education at a higher level alongside 'the artisanal job'.

All professions go through the same process: from learning by doing, the artisan's way, to theorising and institutionalising the profession, and finally to gaining social recognition and respect. We cannot stay invisible and go on acting behind the scenes. We need to act. We need a metalanguage for talking about our work and our profession, one we can develop in professional and academic training contexts and, above all, by taking part in conferences and symposia on translation, just as we do here on LinkedIn as an online community.

Found in Translation: The Making of a Skilled Interpreter

A Middlebury Institute blog post on what we know about expertise development in interpreting – how skilled interpreters are actually made.

Found in Translation: The making of a skilled interpreter – what we know about expertise development in interpreting

RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms

The RSA Animate version of Sir Ken Robinson's talk on changing education paradigms – still one of the sharpest ten minutes on why schooling looks the way it does.

Online and Distance Courses in Translation and Interpreting: A Growing List

The trend towards online translator training is growing, and no wonder. In Europe, Asia-Pacific, South Africa and North America we now find full BA programmes, not only certificates and MAs, that are fully recognised by employers. These are degrees delivered by traditional universities themselves, in fully online or hybrid (semi-online) formats.

Not a single university from the Arab world appears on the list. Perhaps the trend is still new here, or perhaps something else is at work.

See the full list: Online and distance learning courses for translators and interpreters