Knowledge Frameworks and the Hidden Curriculum in Translation Programmes

Kearns (2006, 2008, 2012) has written extensively about the persistent syndrome of the hidden curriculum in translation programmes worldwide. His questions remain pressing:

• Do the conception, development and evaluation of a translation course follow educationally sound and professional guidelines suited to the local context of students and institution? Who does this work?
• What frameworks do teachers base their programme planning and classroom interventions on?
• Do they draw on recent advances in translation studies and translation pedagogy?
• Do they consciously plan, design and develop their courses, or do they work intuitively, with no clear objectives?
• Is there a follow-up system to check whether intended outcomes were actually achieved?
• How does assessment fit in? Do they assess the product (the translated text) or the process (learning and performance)?

These questions sum up my concern here: the knowledge conveyed in a translation classroom by faculty (and students), and the issues of curriculum and course design, development and assessment.

The gap in the Arab world

My preliminary review of the literature in the Arab world shows that, apart from publications bemoaning the deficiencies of language students (usually EFL students) in translation, none has discussed the human factor in translator training programmes (faculty, teachers, students) at any depth or with qualitative rigour. The same has been reported elsewhere (Kelly, 2009). On teachers' pedagogical competencies and knowledge of the real world of translation (in-house or freelance), the very few committed Arab researchers in translation teaching (Atari, Farghal, Buhmaid) have repeatedly confirmed the problem.

Faculty in translation programmes deserve guidance and support to design their courses with reference to knowledge frameworks specific to the field: translation studies, the profession and its pedagogy. Relying predominantly on other, inherited types of knowledge (linguistics, literature) in a translation education context contradicts the originality and face value of a respectable translation programme.

No more hit and miss

The epistemological, indeed ideological, element is crucial in a professionally oriented programme within a university context. There should be no hit and miss policy when setting up translation programmes. Translation is a respectable discipline that has confirmed its presence worldwide, even if it is mostly shelved under language departments; conferences, symposia, organisations, journals and books abound. Everyone directly or indirectly involved, from administrators and faculty to industry and other stakeholders, needs to take the building of translation programmes and the selection of adequate human resources seriously. The pay-off is quality performance outcomes: students trained to find work in translation, teachers who improve each semester through action-based pedagogy and student feedback, and local employers content with their new recruits.

Takeaway: two questions need answering. What type of knowledge should be privileged in a translation programme and classroom? And how do we end the dominance of the hidden curriculum, in which people who mostly lack translation-specific curricular, pedagogical and real-world knowledge design and teach courses whose face validity students cannot see? Why do I study theory? Why contrastive studies? Why these texts and not those? How will what I am studying now serve my translation career in the twenty-first-century job market?