EUROPEAN FORUM

https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/tef2017_booklet_en_web_4.pdf

المترجم المحترف مع د.عبدالله العازمي

Please post your comments.

Misconceptions about & misrepresentation of translation and translation studies

In my last nine years working within translation units and departments in the Arabic context, I found out many types of conceived training/teaching/learning practices of translator education in university-based programs. This includes how my colleagues, administrators and even students mirror and understand the discipline and its practice within academia and in the workplace. In the past, I could  not come up with solid and scientific arguments to defend and argue this statement. However, after finishing my doctoral work, and spending about 6 years of interdisciplinary scholarship in both applied translation studies and education science in Canada( department of curriculum and pedagogy, more specifically, department of curriculum and pedagogy in a higher education context), I managed to consolidate a list of arguments deducted from the theoretical ( declared) and practical ( grounded) scholarship on translator/translation education and training worldwide, and more specifically : the Arabic context

This is sad and alarming!. There is nothing dangerous than procuring a derailed knowledge and engage students in a worn-out/ un-updated , underdeveloped, uni-dimensional type of concepts, processes, and epistemic about the field of multilingual medication and services. These concerns do not only affect MA programs, but also BA level students, since it is the baseline of all concepts, practices and processes that feed the Masters level!

First things first, if we take a course in introduction to translation in any of the BA programs I worked in, we can find that they do predominantly share a common content and ways of delivery; the conventional way. Students run the risk of being introduced to a short sighted vision and view on translation; i.e, a translation of short texts ( usually de-contextualized or selected at random with no pedagogical rational governing such a choice). Usually, if the aim of the program is to deliver market oriented graduates in translation or interpreting, the first introductory course should be a key start. Students, instead of teaching them how to read and translate the mini-texts, they can be introduced to a different environment to acquire skills and abilities that will build up along the 4 years n their BA program to acquire a fair level of translator competence. There, instead of stressing the type of texts to teach and apply rigid and product based types of assessment, students need to be introduced to :

- How to search for information/ do documentation tasks to understand their material ( information mining in various resources)

- How to use basic tools/ translation assisted technologies to assist them in their work.

- How to build glossaries and term banks to build valuable databases that could be used everywhere to study and work as translators.

- How to do basic activities in post-editing machine outputs ( basic level)

- Basic knowledge on how translation memories work and operate.

- Introduction to very basic practices in the translation profession ( Business skills)

Fouad