How to Translate Website Images

A short tutorial on translating the images on a website – a small, easily forgotten part of localising a site properly.

Making a WordPress Site Multilingual with Weglot

A walkthrough of turning a WordPress website multilingual with Weglot – useful for translators who want to see how website localisation tools work in practice.

Building a Multilingual Elementor Site with Polylang

A tutorial on making an Elementor website multilingual with Polylang – another practical example of the localisation tooling translators are now expected to understand.

Toxic Academic Cultures and the Faculty They Suffocate

Certain variables poison an academic context and, if that context refuses to accommodate change, undermine its future. Among them:

• politics and politically oriented motives;
• negative competition and insecurity;
• indoctrination without formal, macro-level knowledge and know-how;
• centralising one's own thoughts, and being stuck in one place for years believing that the university culture one learnt is the only approach that exists in academia.

Academic contexts and practices change continually, and so do the needs around them: student profiles and needs, workplace needs, and other extra-academic demands. If none of this is accommodated, new faculty, the fresh blood in the system, will find it hard, even impossible, to breathe and unleash their potential.

A Failure of Leadership

That kind of work atmosphere reflects a lack of leadership. It stresses errors, punitive methods, unnecessary warnings and constant policing. It runs a factory model of shifts, as if everybody should imitate the administrators' nine-to-five, when faculty in academia do not need to abide by that pattern. Administrators are paid additional stipends or fees to do so; faculty are not.

Such work cultures do everything they can to "keep faculty busy", to the point of exploiting them. Where else on earth, in the GCC region or beyond, do faculty do more than two, or at most three, invigilation shifts? Usually administrative clerks handle invigilation, or faculty and others are paid to do it.

AI and Translation in National Security: An ICESCO Symposium in Rabat

We rarely hear about translation and interpreting in the context of national and international security. In July 2025 I presented a paper at a symposium on AI and translation in the field of national security, held at ICESCO headquarters in Rabat, Morocco. It was a genuinely significant event, one that added value to my profile and opened my eyes to new areas of translation and interpreting practice. With AI on the horizon, the attendees, myself included, exchanged some intriguing ideas.

Read the original LinkedIn post

#Translation #Security #ArtificialIntelligence #ICESCO #NaifUniversity #SoharUniversity

Teaching Outside Your Expertise Is Not Teaching

As educators, our primary objective is to provide impactful learning experiences that reflect our areas of expertise. Assigning faculty to teach subjects outside their specialisation undermines that objective and jeopardises the quality of education.

Teaching is more than delivery

Teaching transcends content delivery. It involves interpreting the subject matter and helping students navigate its intricate concepts. Assigning courses to people who lack in-depth knowledge of the subject is not only pedagogically unsound but unprofessional, and it harms students and faculty alike. Universities must prioritise aligning courses with faculty expertise if they want genuine learning environments.

The economics behind it

We understand the economics of education. But too often these practices are pushed through by stubborn administrators to save money, while the official narrative of student-centred learning, teacher well-being and rising motivation carries on regardless. How can we expect engagement and integration when we do not respect, or seriously consider, the faculty profile?

Once again, K-12 practices are being transferred blindly, perhaps purposefully, into higher education: a teacher of English can also teach history, geography, humanities, social sciences or mathematics, whether in Year 5, 7 or 11. That, unfortunately, is the mindset we are in.

Professional Acumen: The Missing Piece in the Instructor Profile

In a professionally oriented college or university programme, one element of the instructor's profile is decisive: professional knowing and doing, together with a sense of belonging to a disciplinary area, whether hybrid or single. The golden rule is that the teacher, trainer or instructor succeeds in transferring the knowing and doing of the profession to the students, including the corresponding professional identity, or what the education literature calls self-concept. Students cannot make sense of new knowledge and practice on their own; they have not yet been exposed to the professional environment, unless through an internship or occasional access.

The misalignment

Many programmes in academia now claim to produce future practitioners and professionals. That claim creates a misalignment between the human resources actually available and the outcomes the programme promises, because instructors with the right profile are lacking. The victims are the student and, in the long term, the institution's image and brand. Quality control and supervision of instructor profiles and competencies is therefore necessary to guarantee a decent level of education and to assure parents and society of the seriousness and relevance of the institution's mission. In public universities this remains a distant goal, at least in most institutions. In the private higher education sector it can be reached to a certain level, and parents want clear pedagogical and professional mechanisms in place so that their investment makes sense and is fairly rewarded.

The human factor

The Achilles' heel lies in the human factor (faculty, instructor, student, parents), not in the object (content, courses, assessments). Investing in the people who intervene in educational contexts, and setting criteria for them to practise the profession, even in the private sector, is a fundamental requirement for quality in education. You cannot provide "transitional solutions" that ruin the face value of the institution, even temporarily. It is risky, and it diminishes the institution's standing. Bringing in an academic, or "someone on the team", to do a task they are not qualified for can affect students negatively, reduce their motivation to learn, and change their perception of the entire department or institution.

These reflections apply directly to translation and interpreting programmes, especially those oriented towards professional and market competencies, without sidelining the academic component that underpins practical, transferable skills and abilities.

Research, Training and Practice: The Russian Dolls Allegory

St-Arnaud (1976) offered a striking allegory for the relationship between research, training and practice: the Russian dolls. The largest doll is the researcher, the middle one the teacher, and the smallest the frontline practitioner. His wish, back in the 1960s and 1970s, was for a higher education profile that integrates all three: research, teaching and professional acumen.

Ideally, the small doll grows into the large one, a researcher who has practised, taught that practice and finally conducted research on it. For St-Arnaud, the positivist approach holds little value in an educational context, especially when researching professionally oriented disciplines, if the researcher lacks both professional and pedagogical acumen.

The ideal profile

I believe the combination of all three dimensions is the ideal profile in modern higher education. Think of a medical doctor who practised for years, then taught medicine at university alongside daily engagement in research. The same goes for faculty in engineering or sports science. A researcher without practical experience and a tailored pedagogical approach for teaching their discipline looks ineffective in today's higher education.

The analogy applies directly to translation and interpreting faculty. A hybrid profile combining frontline expertise in the language industry, proven expertise in innovative training methods and pedagogy, and the acumen to do applied, evidence-based research would make the ideal faculty member in a translation department. Rare, but not impossible. I discussed this at length in my doctoral thesis (2017), and updated articles are in the pipeline.

One more point deserves exploring: how we report that we include research or professional scenarios in our teaching. In some higher education institutions this needs rethinking, because the point of integrating all three in one ecosystem, especially in open-ended professional disciplines, is neither made clear nor properly applied.

Internship, Practicum or Fieldwork? Lessons for Translator Education

Some programmes in the social and human sciences include a practicum or field training before the BA, the MA or, in some cases, a diploma. It gives the learner, the trainee or the novice teacher a chance to gain work-related competencies, although the time allowed is usually not enough, for institutional, planning or strategic reasons.

What I Saw in Qatar

In my doctoral research on two university-based programmes in Qatar, I explored the internship and fieldwork dimension. At the time, the team was developing a guide and protocol to ensure that future translators and interpreters received adequate training through the internship before graduation.

Yet the support provided to those students needed further work. It is not easy for a multilingual professional under heavy pressure to deliver projects on time while also monitoring students who have never worked in a hectic professional environment. The competencies needed in that real-life context are usually psychological, non-linguistic, attitudinal and aptitudinal, and they combine, as in teacher education, with facing a class for the first time and making sure the pedagogical dimension is properly handled.

The Dual-Education Model

In Canada, pre-service teachers, future multilingual providers and learners on other professional programmes engage in dual education: an internship in which they alternate between work (training) and study. Students are at once future professionals and ongoing learners. Their learning becomes authentic, contextual and experiential, and it leads to pertinent outcomes.

Competency, Not Content

Under a competency-based rather than content-based curriculum, the planning of teaching and training should prioritise the list of competencies (knowledge, skills and behaviour) that matter most in the students' learning and performance curve. New and innovative content should be stressed, because traditional content in the social and human sciences usually does not sit well with the competency model. And when we say content, we must add pedagogy and the provision of a thriving, relevant and significant learning environment.

It is not about a textbook. It is about a learning environment that empowers the learner. Textbooks are only one part of that complex yet coherent and connected environment.

Tools and Resources for Translation and Terminology

A short, practical list: how to build a term base in Memsource, plus a handful of dictionaries and resources I point students to for translation, terminology and interpreting.

Building Terminology with Memsource

1. How to download the Memsource app to your mobile device: https://help.memsource.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004017132
2. How to create a term base and add or import terminology files (video inside the article): https://help.memsource.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001725111-Lesson-3-How-to-Create-and-Use-Term-Bases

Resources for Translation, Terminology and Interpreting

• Lexicool: Arabic dictionaries and translation resources
• Glosbe multilingual dictionary
• Microsoft Language Portal terminology search

Tips for Freelance Translators

• Thoughts on Translation

Acronyms

• Acronym Finder

Employability and Workplace Practice in Translation Programmes

Employability is crucial for any educational system that wants to deliver significant outcomes for society. Institutions that take it seriously strive to align their programmes with the world of work, reviewing them internally and externally to improve content, pedagogy and other educational practices. The quest for improvement is ongoing, and so it should be in these complex and unstable times.

The 'ghost' concepts

In classical higher education contexts, particularly at university level, concepts such as 'employability', 'workplace practices', 'technology', 'market', 'experiential learning and training' and 'professional practice' are less welcome, and are usually viewed with suspicion, above all in the humanities and social sciences.

Yet these 'ghost' concepts can be integrated into our programmes smoothly, given the intention and the leadership to innovate and to engage in professional development. For instance, one should:

• Study case studies that use professional training modes of instruction, and see whether one or more of these practices can be transferred into the discipline. Business and management sciences are a good source.
• Read the didactics of your own discipline. You cannot be good at pedagogy without training and constant reflection on your classroom practice, online or face-to-face. Active, action-based methods from the teaching and learning sciences can inspire practices that enhance learning and engage students.
• Take a course on teaching in a university context, or on andragogy, to understand the dynamics of teaching adults and how they learn. Andragogy is not pedagogy, and professionally oriented disciplines are not the same as traditional humanities or social science disciplines. In other words, engage with the scholarship of teaching and learning.

The ivory tower has changed

Colleagues in the humanities and other disciplines (educational sciences apart) tend to look down on any pedagogical element in their practice. Yet in today's higher education this element has become a necessity. Things have changed in the world of the ivory towers: the professional, the pedagogical and the technological will prevail, and even more so after Covid. Content no longer holds the monopoly and prestige it enjoyed for the two hundred years or so since the modern university model emerged.

Translation and interpreting is a case in point, and the same applies to any other field. Kiraly (1995, 2000, 2006, 2016) revolutionised applied translation studies by making sense of the teaching and learning of translation. Before him, there was no systematic way of organising the translation classroom.

Translating a Dialect Video Script: Raja Meziane's 'Allo le Système'

This English-subtitled freestyle by Raja Meziane is a good test case for the challenges of translating dialect in a video script or caption – rhythm, register and slang all have to survive the move.

Translating Europe Forum 2017: Booklet

The booklet from the European Commission's Translating Europe Forum 2017 – a useful snapshot of what the profession and the training institutions in Europe were discussing that year.

Download the booklet (PDF)

المترجم المحترف مع د. عبدالله العازمي – The Professional Translator with Dr Abdullah Al-Azmi

An Arabic-language conversation with Dr Abdullah Al-Azmi on what it takes to be a professional translator.

The Myth of Teaching 'Any Course' in a University

Teaching, learning and performing in a university have become complex, yet many academics ignore how much training and development they need to close that gap. Every field, discipline and profession requires its educators to acquaint themselves with the scholarship of teaching and learning specific to that field, whether history, medicine, the sciences, translation or business studies.

The 'comfort zone' tactic

The administration's favourite tactic, shuffling faculty across courses to get them out of their so-called comfort zone, works against learning and against students. The learner ends up with second-hand teaching and a disoriented, superficial grasp of the discipline. Worse, instead of designing and managing quality learning environments, faculty fall back on a decontextualised textbook that students treat as a sacred resource, and which is then called the recommended 'syllabus' or 'declarative content'. This is exactly the practice of the secondary school.

Teaching in HE is a discipline of its own

With the growing interest in the quality of university teaching and learning (alongside research), a wide and innovative literature has emerged in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Some universities, in Canada for example, now run credit-based postdoctoral training programmes to prepare PhD graduates and future faculty to teach in their discipline with a quality-assured approach. Instinctive, impressionistic and fragmented approaches to university teaching yield weak learning and performance outcomes. The stakes are higher still in professionally oriented disciplines such as medicine, engineering, and translation and interpreting.

The textbook trap

Teaching exclusively from textbooks is a prime example of weak pedagogy. It produces flat learning and assessment of declarative knowledge alone, with no attention to skills or to the sustainable, lifelong abilities that subjects like translation and interpreting demand. Heavy reliance on textbooks also breeds a pharaonic attitude in which the instructor believes he can teach any course the administration allocates, as long as there is a textbook. Wrong. This is ill-planned on the administration's side, and on the faculty side it de-professionalises teaching and diminishes the instructor's status. Nobody can teach any content once the bible of a textbook is taken away.

To keep the status of university instructors alive and kicking, they need to reflect on their practice, engage in classroom research, and manage their learning and teaching environment according to the guidelines and frameworks of teacher education: andragogy for adult students, and university-specific pedagogies.

Teaching is a profession

The instructor is a professional whose job is to design a customised learning environment that maximises students' learning and performance opportunities, aligned with contextual curriculum and course-level guidelines. That means careful, strategic choices by the course designer and manager (the faculty member) to create and mobilise thriving learning environments for specific learning outcomes. Responsible, dynamic adult students, not passive empty containers, will flourish in a rich, diverse and stimulating environment built on active pedagogies: problem-based techniques, project-based learning scenarios, collaborative learning and the like.

Takeaway: fewer textbooks, more thriving, stimulating learning and performance environments.

The Big Picture View on the Translation Industry

A big-picture overview of the translation industry – useful context for students who need to see the market they are training for.

Setting Up as a Freelance Translator

A practical talk on setting up as a freelance translator – the kind of career guidance our graduates rarely get inside the curriculum.

ثورة الترجمة العربية تنطلق من الخليج – The Arabic Translation Revolution Starts in the Gulf

An Asharq Al-Awsat piece arguing that the new wave of Arabic translation is being driven from the Gulf – a claim worth weighing against what we see in the region's universities.

ثورة الترجمة العربية تنطلق من الخليج

Video Remote Interpreting Goes Round-the-Clock

A Common Sense Advisory note on a new video remote interpreting solution offering 24-hour language services – one more sign of where interpreting work is heading.

New Video Remote Interpreting Solution Delivers Round-the-Clock Language Services

The Complex Profile of the Translation Instructor

Being a doctoral student in a faculty of education has taught me a great deal about my own practice, both as a translator educator and as a member of the translation profession. Many concepts used across the education field, from primary and secondary to tertiary, professional, online and continuing education, can be transferred to translation and interpreting studies, and above all to translator education, training, teaching and programmes.

Some of these concepts are already in use in research or teaching. Others remain unexplored, especially at the regional level, in the Arab world and particularly in Gulf universities. Because academically based translation programmes are new in many of these countries, the research field is still largely virgin territory.

Why the Instructor's Profile Matters

One such unexplored element is the identity of the teacher, faculty member or instructor, and the competencies required to teach in a university translation or interpreting programme. To many this seems a trivial matter; even research in applied translation studies has neglected it (Kelly, 2008). But things have changed in recent years. Translation programmes are booming worldwide, and there is growing interest in professionally oriented programmes, driven by globalisation and by developing countries' need to join the knowledge-based society. The profile of the faculty working in such programmes must therefore be taken seriously (Gambier, 2012), since a programme's success depends heavily on the professional, disciplinary and pedagogical competencies of its instructors.

Four Typical Profiles

Because translation and interpreting are occupational fields, the true professional identity of the instructor raises concerns. These are the profiles most often found in translation programmes:

• PhD holders in translation studies with little or no up-to-date professional know-how. This profile is fine, but such educators are most likely to be assigned theoretical or semi-theoretical courses. Translation is an academic discipline, but reflection on practice counts, and students make sense of concepts more readily when the educator offers authentic examples and scenarios drawn from the profession, whether in-house work in the private and public sectors or freelancing online and offline. In a professionally oriented programme this is crucial: students, whether traditional adult learners or returning professionals, want a trainer who can bring everyday professional knowledge into the classroom and theorise it. Professional students are allergic to detached theory, so the choice of content matters. Recruiting only PhD holders in TS without considerable, multidimensional professional experience is a point administrators and recruiters should review.
• PhD holders in language studies or comparative literature. Here we may face a serious problem. The educator's baseline education in linguistics or literature will inevitably shape how they design, develop and assess courses and learning. They carry an identity gained in a discipline that once housed translation, but translation studies has since developed its own frameworks and concepts, along with a socio-professional dimension that must inform teaching and course design.
• MA holders in translation with professional experience, hired to run practical courses. Their disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical abilities need questioning. This profile usually delivers the skills the market needs, but years of non-academic identity in the profession, combined with a lack of sound pedagogical competencies for facilitating practical courses, may compromise the quality of outcomes.
• The dual professional. Teaching and translation are both recognised professions in many countries. An instructor with exposure to both may face a double identity. Juggling the two can produce a hybrid, balanced framework (a double agent, if you like), or it can lead to clinging to a single identity, teaching or translating, simply to make a living. The first is desirable; the second needs to be questioned, because it creates problems for quality assurance and performance at programme and outcome level, in other words for how graduates contribute to society after graduation.

NB: The author addresses this problem in his ongoing doctoral research.