Translation Education needs to start earlier ...at the undergraduate level!!
Teaching translation and educating translators at an undergraduate level is important if the vision and orientation given to the program is to not only supply economy/society with skilful language service providers and competent technical scribers, but also critical agents and savvy human resources that can engage with the corresponding practice ( multilingual services) as professionals and diligent reflective practitioners.
Being involved in multinational communication and relations needs intercultural experts as well as acquainted individuals with the historical, cultural, social, political, ethical and experiential (practice-based) fundamentals and traditions of the practice itself ( translation or interpreting). It is a universe of knowledge and practice that has its own specifics and there is a wide corpus of scholarship about it ( see scholarship about translation theory, translation studies and its developments since mid 20th century). So, why sideline it?
Therefore, there is a need to approach the translatorial activity from an extended and fundamental dimension and not consider it as a supplementary element embedded in other neighbouring disciplines such as literary and language studies. The fact that there is a list of many universities worldwide offering doctoral degrees in translations ( PhDs) is a sign to revise our program structures and design when it comes to translation as an activity or discipline as per see ( especially the case of universities that do not have a tradition of integrating BA programs in their list of programs).
Last and not least, translation is a set of skills, knowledge and abilities that need time to be constructed and appropriated. This takes time. An MA program with its logistic and adminsirative restrictions, will certainly not be enough to provide human resources with such competencies. It all comes down to how we perceive the activity and the discipline: a set of interlingual, intercultural, behavioural and instrumental competencies that need to be upgraded or a as a set of competences that comprise a combination of skills, knowledge and abilities.
