Why Translator Educators Need a Community of Practice

One of the best ways to advance translator education, and translation studies in general, is for our community of practitioners (academics, professionals, and future academics and professionals) to engage in dialogue through social media and the internet, alongside meetings, conferences and online forums. This solidarity and exchange of ideas, experiences, initiatives and innovative approaches, in teaching, in the profession and in research, empowers everyone in it.

Here is an example: an exchange between me and a colleague who inherited a course I had taught the previous semester, Multimedia Translation II. I was a visiting lecturer at that university for one semester and the first to design and teach the course for the department. It was also the first time I had taught such a course.

His Question

"… your course content seems largely technical, which calls for having technological resources in place! It is evident that you did a challenging and hard job!

However, I would like to share this with you and have your valuable feedback: Don't you think the course content could be geared towards highlighting the strategies employed by translators in subtitling and interpreters? I feel it would be more straightforward and practical to focus, in this higher-level course, on what translators/interpreters do and what roles they assume in the media. This can include showcasing and discussing audiovisual and online samples. I have done some research work on Reuters translation, which may be relevant here, when compared with that of other media, say, Al Jazeera. Film subtitles can be another topic, whereby cultural norms condition and constrain translation, e.g. principles of politeness."

My Reply

I invested a good deal of time and effort in conceptualising the course this way. I took into account the student profiles and needs, and the local and regional professional practices I had already documented in my doctoral study. Class size was another factor that shaped the design, the activities, the teaching modes and the assessment tools: I favoured a workshop, coaching and training mode over lecturing. Two of the four enrolled students hoped to do a Master's in audiovisual translation (AVT) at TII the following year, and I kept that in view during the design phase.

The ICT element was integrated to fit this hands-on, coaching mode. I placed many open e-resources on Blackboard for students to use in solving terminology and documentation problems. I used videos to explain how subtitling works. I did not start with subtitling software; I used educational videos first to demonstrate manual subtitling, then introduced the software to train them to caption (or transcribe) and then subtitle. Students liked cartoons, so I used some of those (Arabic/English), along with news reports and documentaries, where speech rate is regulated. I focused on building students' instrumental and reflective competence, supported by the technical material above and by knowledge of audiovisual translation from the literature (Díaz Cintas, 2007).

A related phenomenon is audio and video (remote) interpreting. This is current practice in the profession, and I felt students needed an introduction to it. Multimedia translation is diverse; it is not only subtitling, as students tend to think. To support that, I drew on recent publications and on best practices published by professional associations and consortia.

Your plan sounds rational and clear, and you may well follow it. As I see it, it makes sense for an undergraduate minor: comparing media samples, case studies, and the strategies and techniques they reveal. You are a translation scholar and you know what you will offer the students. Your material would be another valid way to run the course, though different from mine.

Did you check with Prof. XXX whether she covered that in Media I? I recall she said she dealt with that declarative knowledge there, working mostly on written texts (newspapers, advertising). Please check with her first. What I did in Media II was extend the course by adding two practical, missing elements: the profession and technology. As a minor course, it only introduced students to these areas, without the depth that a major or a professionally oriented BA or MA would allow. You might also diagnose students' needs; it could help, if you choose to.

I may have said too much, but I hope you now have a clear picture of the mechanics and rationale (pedagogical reasoning and intended learning outcomes) behind the design. It is up to you to shape the course as you prefer. Your proposal is sound. But please check with Prof. XXX about Media I to avoid redundancy or misalignment.

Takeaway

This is what a community of practice looks like at its most basic: two colleagues comparing design decisions openly, and both courses ending up stronger for it.