In my experience of teaching translation at many departments of translation in the Arab context (Oman, Qatar, Morocco and Saudia), I always end up meeting colleagues coming from neighboring disciplines of translation studies ( Literature, linguistics, TEFL..etc) volunteering or willingly choose to teach a course in translation ( or even in translation studies ). In other parts of the world( Canada for instance), this practice is non-existent. It will never happen if the instructor does not have solid evidence of his translation background. Practicing translation is not enough. There must be an epistemological commitment as well. An updated one, rather .Translation Studies is an inter-discipline that is constantly gaining pace and weight. Sticking to the early years approaches, philosophies, concepts and conceptions of translation will not help the learning curve of the student in the translation classroom. This is an issue in the Arabic context, whereby a great number of faculty are still impacted by their baseline disciplinary orientations ( literary, linguistics, applied linguistics, TEFL). Some of them have embraced their new new discipline; others, operate within translation and translation studies from the lenses of comparative linguistics or literature or even EFL.That might lead to mis-informing the translation students population who are themselves transmitting these insights to society ( other work context, classrooms, ...etc), leading to negative impacts on the emerging discipline in theory or practice. Society's perception matters.
OK. In early stages of translation teaching (50's in Europe and Canada) and 80' or 90's in many countries of the Arab word, we can accept that the ' I can teach any course in translation' syndrome holds due to -simply- the nature of the texts books used and the fact that instructors coming from neighboring disciplines could easily understand and teach them in a lecture based type of courses if it is a theory course. In case of a practical course, the traditional model of apprenticeship ( usually teacher based and oriented) applies. Instructors resort to ad hoc or the 'read and translate' methods. Hence, at the time when translation teaching and translation contents were closely related to linguistics and literary studies, we can say that ' the I can teach any course in translation' applies, but not since a couple of decades ago or so'. Translation programs in the Arab world need to revise their practices and approaches to the interdisciplinary type of translation. Also, instead of teaching from a text book, we need to make extra efforts ( provided the workload is reasonable) to diversify our pedagogies and teaching methods through finding innovative resources and techniques to enhance students'' motivation and increase learning. These statements are not intuitive. i dedicated the last 10 years to study this phenomenon. it ended with a PhD and three peer reviewed articles; two published one is in process.
Translation Studies has started to take new shapes and thence yielded different concepts not common in other neighboring disciplines. It started from the linguistic turn in early 50' and 60', then the communicative, cultural, textual, sociological, pedagogical and now technological turn ( Autermuul, 2004, 2010; Ohagan, 2019). First, translation is a professional practice as well as an academic discipline. It should be treated like other professions in academia. Only specialists can teach it: be it a course in theory or practice ( things may different for a foreign language department where translation is taught to only improve students foreign language competence). Evidence of this expertise should be demonstrated: publication, working as in-house and freelance in translation, participating and attending translation conferences, professional membership..etc. Second, some instructors/ administrators need to re-configure their view and conception of the multilingual domain through professional developments and taking of further training about the knowledge framework adopted by recent approaches and schools in translation. The profession changes, academia changes , so why sticking to the old models in teaching translation that are currently taking places in many undergraduate/postgraduate programs in translation in the Arabic context as per the result of our very recent doctoral thesis ( EL-Karnichi, 2017). Third, informing teaching/learning practices in translation classrooms from mainstream education studies ( adapted to adults and higher education) is also crucial.
To end up this short commentary I would like to stress that such syndrome underestimates and downgrades the translation profession and discipline, and that teaching is not a simple text-book delivery operation, it is an entire pedagogical design operation that requires the integration of various elements ( cognitive abstracts, situational contexts, realities, codes of ethics, reference frameworks...etc). It seems that there is a need of faculty/teacher development activities to work on in translation programs. I presume this is the case in many higher education contexts.
