Participatory Action Research: A Method for Translator Trainers

What kind of research methodology does applied translation studies, and translator training in particular, actually need? My answer, after a semester of doctoral seminars on qualitative research in education, is participatory action research led by the teachers themselves.

The Gap Between Scholars and Practitioners

Mainstream translation studies has focused heavily on the sociological, literary, linguistic and cognitive aspects of translation, borrowing its research designs from the social sciences: mostly positivist, "scientific" methods in which knowledge is produced by "the knowers" on practitioners, whether teachers or working translators. The result has been a widening gap between theory (detached scholars) and practice (teachers and practising translators).

The research models in translation studies can be listed as follows: linguistic models (Catford, Nida, Vinay, Newmark, Holmes); communicative models (Neubert); cultural models (Steiner, Venuti, Pym, Snell-Hornby); hermeneutic models (Ricoeur); functionalist models (Reiss, Vermeer, Nord, Chesterman); psycholinguistic models (Krings, Bell); and textual models (Neubert, Shreve, House) (Cravo, 2007, p. 5).

Put the Teacher at the Centre

In translation pedagogy, I would rather centre our focus on the actors on the ground: the teacher, the faculty member. There is no need for a linguist, sociologist or cognitive psychologist to tell the teacher, or even the practitioner, the artisan, how to run a class or how to translate. I believe in the capacity of teachers to understand their students' learning needs, interpret their ways of learning and act accordingly, in collaboration with the students themselves, who must be treated as partners in the learning curve rather than passive absorbers of knowledge.

Hence I find it crucial to introduce the notion of the scholarship of teaching and learning (Shulman, 1986; Hutchings, 1999) as a way of building a culture of classroom participatory research, and so cure a long-standing plague of the translation classroom. Teachers improve their practice by researching their own classroom practice and reflecting on it (Schön, 1983). This critical approach leads teachers to:

• reflect critically on the type of knowledge they disseminate in a translation classroom;
• re-examine the type of teaching approach they use.

What Faculty Need

For this to happen, faculty need further pedagogical and disciplinary training. Not training in the sense of a course or a workshop, but video-recording their classroom interventions and exchanging the footage with trained peers for feedback. Sitting in on a colleague's class as an observer is also desirable (participant observation as a research technique).

The big divide in many translation courses, where faculty hold different ideologies about how to design and manage a course (theoretical or practical), could be resolved if faculty engaged in a collaborative, participatory scholarship of teaching and learning, acting as both professional teachers and researchers.

Those who teach translation come from various backgrounds, yet how many were ever trained to teach translation content, skills and competencies? (Cravo, 2007). As I see it, translation is a profession, and its teaching methods should be aligned with the way professionals are trained: active pedagogies, coaching, and less didactic lecturing.

Action Research in Translation Studies

This is what the literature calls participatory action research. Stephen Corey (1953) introduced the term in education, and Stenhouse (1975) embedded it in teacher training. In translation studies only a few authors have referred to it.

In the Arabic–English literature, Basil Hatim (2001) stipulated that research should not be done on practitioners (teachers and translators) but by them. Others have similarly argued that action research (AR) is key to establishing translator education as a core field of research and enquiry. Cravo (2007, p. 11) puts it plainly:

A good start would be to have translation teachers with knowledge of AR working together and getting involved in classroom research.

My Own Direction

In my research I am working to extend this method into a technology-based environment: online learning and teaching. Such environments may yield promising outcomes for teacher-led AR in higher education. The online environment is student-centred and aims at significant learning outcomes through learning communities, which demands a very active and collaborative kind of intervention from faculty: more facilitating and monitoring than teaching.