Teacher Training Centres: Why Universities Need Them Too

The Ministry of Education plans to launch a teacher training centre. Read the news item here:

Ministry of Education plans to launch teacher training centre (Edarabia)

A further thought

Recent trends in higher education emphasise the need to extend initiatives of this kind to the university context as well. Many Western universities have already done so; in Arab contexts, the work has yet to begin.

Research shows that significant learning and performance outcomes can be achieved when the human factor, teachers and trainers as much as students, is taken seriously. Such an effort should draw not only on translation studies but also on curriculum studies and mainstream pedagogy, in particular the professionalisation of teaching, and especially in professionally oriented translation programmes.

Saudi Arabia to Translate International Court of Justice Rulings into Arabic

A great move from Saudi Arabia: an agreement to translate the rulings and bylaws of the International Court of Justice into Arabic. It benefits practice, the profession and society alike.

Read the report (in Arabic)

Not Reforming Our Translation Curricula but Renewing and Remedying Them

Our recent review of the literature on teaching and curriculum design in Arab, and especially Gulf, university translation programmes, combined with my own experience as an educator in the field, has led us to a disturbing conclusion: course and programme planning in translation is often amateurish. Classroom teaching, too, needs to be reviewed and re-approached so that it matches the way other professionally oriented programmes, such as engineering, law and medicine, are delivered in higher education.

Where the Problem Lies

Traditional curriculum evaluation has always addressed content, and paid far less attention to process (translator agency and competencies) or to human capital: students, trainers and faculty (Kelly, 2005, 2008). Moreover, most programme evaluations have been carried out by organisations or external evaluators with little connection to the parent discipline of translation studies and its approaches, to the emerging sub-field of translator education and training, or to mainstream pedagogy and curriculum studies. In our opinion, these are the knowledge frameworks we should expect from any body that gives us feedback on our programmes.

Worse, in our experience as trainers and faculty, these programmes are designed by internal staff operating in different knowledge frameworks, linguistics or literature, who know little about the twenty-first-century translation industry, translator work patterns, employer requirements, or the competencies that lead students to employment. The programme consequently suffers at the design and development level or at the implementation level, including modes of assessment. Social and institutional criteria, such as local issues and institutional requirements, are rarely part of the design process either.

Renewing and Remedying, Not Reforming

That is the issue our title names. Reform is not the answer; 'renewing' (Kearns, 2006) and 'remedying' (Atari, 2012) may be. Rather than relying only on our experience and on what the literature says, we are undertaking ground research with stakeholders, immediate and non-immediate, to determine their needs and perceptions of translation practice, and to work out how we, as training providers, can develop a framework that lets university trainers and faculty take sound approaches based on informed decisions and data.