Internships are one of the best extracurricular activities a translation programme can offer. A recent visit to the placement service at the Université de Sherbrooke showed me how much the ground beneath them has shifted.
A Changed Industry
As part of my ongoing research, I met the person in charge of placing student translators in organisations across Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, where they gain experience and build their self-concept and competences as future professionals. I was struck by how much globalisation and technology, mainly the Internet, have changed the Canadian translation industry.
In Canada the number one employer is the government's Translation Bureau, because all official documents must exist in both French and English. The Bureau did not only offer internships to students; it recruited them, and it gave universities financial support to maintain their translation programmes. Recently, according to the head of the placement service, that budget was cut. Why? The government went global too. It began outsourcing work to countries where translation is done more cheaply, and with quality, such as the francophone countries of North Africa.
This has forced internship services across Canadian universities to look to the private sector, where they hit another problem: placements are hard to find, especially paid ones. In Canada, students are paid for their internships, and for a small translation agency that is an overhead. Things are no longer as easy as they were with the federal Bureau.
What This Means for Programmes
Translation programmes need to be conscious of this shift and develop new content, teaching and training methodologies and pedagogies in response, gradually, but not too slowly. I am aware that as long as translation is taught in a university, it will always lag behind the industry. That is understood.
Matching our pedagogies and course content to new working patterns in the translation market will remain a concern for faculty, especially given the technological impact on the language industry (translation, interpreting, revision). It is crucial to invest in human resources and competencies through teacher development schemes, so that we can keep pace with current practice at our own rhythm as academics and professionals. But those practices must be not only market-bound but educationally sound. We are, before anything else, educational institutions that empower and build human capacity to serve a social purpose.
2 comments:
Thank you dear Sir for your constant information, I liked the idea of students who get paid for their internships as they pursue their studies. this will enable them to give more and achieve the best in the Translation industry.
I am glad you like it Mohammed.That is what happen when you are in a country where tarnslators or language service providers are valued. You get paid while studying and it counts in your CV as (Work Experience)!
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