The notion of competence in education/training: not abstract as it seems. Let us innovate/look forward instead.

Accreditation bodies always accredit a program according to some very specific guidelines and criteria. The field-specific reviewers scan and examine the program at the content level and  end up deleting, adding or recommending courses. The old fashioned curriculum evaluation was basically based on course content change and modification as if curriculum is all about playing chess with courses and recommending textbooks. May it is about be scanning objectives/outcomes for the most.

 Not so. There are other major factors, not only administrative but in relation with the ' alignment philosophy' as well as relevance of either contents or intended outcomes or any other type competencies ( intended skills, knowledge and abilities to develop in students ) to build. Yet, designing programs and learning outcomes based on the competence model is still a challenge to overcome in many higher education contexts. It is a question of funds/policy and change of mindset.

The challenge becomes more and more thorny in fields of human and socials sciences, since the competence model of program design & evaluation is most implemented in scientific programs whereby hands on skills and abilities can be clearly documented from the profession and then re-designed and modelled afterwards in  a curriculum that aims to develop primarily competencies and then get informed of relevant  content that could feed into developing these competencies( lets say in the field of agriculture, medicine, engineering). There is an entire mindset to work on , which is different from the usual curriculum building /designing/evaluation methods we are used to in Higher Education.

In relation n to translator education?

In this case, my first and foremost suggestion is not to stress only on the traditional trend : focus on the product/ Text side only. Let us also bring in translator competences. After all, who is the agent, producer and deliverer of the outcomes ( translated text/video/audio) ? certainly the human factor/being ( The translator, the subtitle, the interpreter). In fact translation competence is now becoming an outdated topic in applied translation studies. Let us move on ! PACTE group had been talking about this for many years and done a longitudinal research inquiry since two decades ago. Kiraly, Gopfeidig and Chesterman have added new competencies that were not included in the predominately cognitive model of PACTE. Also, we should be discussing translator competence, instructor or faculty competence in translation, competence in translation curricula...etc.