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.

Improvement Science and Higher Education Pedagogy

In 2021 I approached the Faculty of Education at Western University about enrolling for a second PhD. At first the idea seemed crazy and unreasonable. Yet I wanted to take on the challenge, against all odds, and what made me want to go further was the new area of inquiry my prospective supervisor suggested: improvement science in education.

The missing link

This emerging field aligned closely with the orientation of my first PhD, on curriculum and pedagogical practices in higher education. I felt I had found the missing link. Improvement, per se, of pedagogical and curriculum practices in higher education in Qatar, and subsequently in other contexts in the region, was exactly what my earlier doctoral work had been about.

A few months later, sadly, heavy family responsibilities and pressures forced me to put the adventure on hold. I am now considering either resuming that path or engaging in a self-directed study of the field, with a view to publishing on curriculum and pedagogy improvement.

Why improvement matters now

What troubles me about improvement in higher education is the persistence of traditional, standardised pedagogical and curricular patterns. With Covid, things seem to be moving in the right direction: new post-Covid modes of instruction, assessment and intervention are a case in point. Teaching and learning environments are changing, so this is the moment to improve curriculum and pedagogical practice and to lead inquiries into it. Teachers, faculty, administrators and trainers need a new mindset. We might even move beyond the boundaries of pedagogy and start applying the concept of andragogy: how adults learn in professional and self-directed contexts.

In my own case, advocating a competency-based approach to curriculum development and design is itself an appeal to rethink curriculum practice. I doubt mainstream public universities will buy into it for the moment, but the private college and university sector would surely be keen to explore it, as would universities that favour experiential and field-, profession- or market-related forms of training and learning.

Improvement should start in basic education and move up the ladder to higher education. It is not just a tool or a practice, but a philosophy and a vision to be adopted and believed in.

Curriculum Development Needs Evidence, Not Intuition

Authors with long experience of teaching translation and interpreting in the Arab world (Atari, 2012; Farghal, 2009; Taibi, 2016; Mehrash, 2003) have warned of a wide gap not only in curriculum design but in its development and implementation in translation and interpreting programmes.

In our review of literature and practice in the region, we found that curriculum work in many translation units and departments at Arab universities is carried out exclusively by committees whose core scholarship is rarely in translation studies, and who rarely possess the pedagogical know-how and know-what of their discipline-specific didactics. Arguing about moving, adding or deleting courses is an old pattern of curriculum development. In discussions with colleagues, you will notice how little reference is made to:

• what the scholarship of training, learning and teaching in a university context says;
• what the scholarship on translation and interpreting pedagogy says, including findings from recent studies on similar issues in other countries;
• what the profession or market needs (surveys, interviews, focus groups);
• student profiles and needs (surveys, focus groups, interviews);
• employer needs (surveys, focus groups, interviews);
• what translation pedagogy says about curriculum practice at every level of development, design and implementation across countries and cultures, and on what principles and criteria to base decisions about the how and the what in the classroom.

Our dear colleagues argue from inherited experience, intuition and ad hoc criteria. No frameworks, no evidence. Things need to change. Curriculum reviews must be taken seriously, and colleagues need proper training in the scholarship of teaching and learning, including curriculum theory and practice, so that their reasoning rests on evidence.

Curriculum practice in higher education can be divided into three models (see Calvo, 2011): the theoretical and academic model, which our universities have followed for more than 90 years; the professional model; and the eclectic model, which is what a university should adopt, with more weight on the professional side in postgraduate programmes.

Takeaway: when discussing curriculum, refer to the scholarly literature as well as to departmental and personal needs. Both matter.

كتب في علم الترجمة – Books on Translation Studies (Translators' Archive)

A curated archive of books on translation studies, in Arabic – a handy reading list for students and colleagues working in Arabic.

كتب في علم الترجمة – أرشيف المترجمين

The Missing Link: Translation-Specific Research Methods

Translation-specific research methods are the missing link in many translation departments in the Arab world and beyond. The reason is simple: research methods in translation studies are a recent arrival in academia, recent even in the best institutions hosting MA and doctoral degrees in translation.

In the Arab context, we need to integrate this knowledge now. Of course there will be the usual resistance from the gatekeepers of existing, non-discipline-specific methods borrowed from neighbouring fields: philology, linguistics, comparative literature, even applied linguistics. It is good practice for every translation studies department to take up this initiative and update its curriculum.

Correcting a Misconception

It is time to confront the misconceptions that many administrators and faculty hold about translation in general and translation studies in particular. I personally took a big risk by enrolling in a faculty of education in Canada to do my PhD in translator education and training. Why? Because only in the educational sciences could I get solid training in research methods and methodologies. I adapted what I learnt to translator education and translation studies, and I have never regretted it. I updated my knowledge, learnt new methods, and found a new way of approaching research in translation and interpreting studies, especially the applied branch of the discipline.

Interdisciplinarity in Translation Studies

A recorded lecture from the University of Geneva on interdisciplinarity – a theme that runs through everything we do in translation studies, which borrows from linguistics, education, cognitive science and beyond.

Corpus Research in Translation Studies, Continued

The second part of a University of Geneva lecture on corpus research – the continuation of the session shared in the previous post.

Watch on the University of Geneva media server

Corpus Research in Translation Studies

A University of Geneva lecture on corpus research and what corpora can do for translators and translation researchers.

Research Methodologies in Translation and Interpreting Studies

My recent training in research methodologies for translation and interpreting studies at the Université de Genève's Faculty of Translation and Interpreting was an outstanding experience. It let me cross-check and update my knowledge of the field, and it has set me planning a course on translation and interpreting research methodologies for undergraduates and graduates at my university. Next year, I hope.

It is time to regulate the wholesale transfer of research patterns from neighbouring disciplines such as linguistics, applied linguistics and literature. Faculty who teach research methods should update their approaches, no easy task in the humanities, and adopt a discipline-specific paradigm. Aligning with international standards is crucial, even, and especially, in emerging contexts for translation and interpreting studies.

Which Translation Theory Should We Teach? Let Students Choose

What should the theoretical side of translation teaching focus on: theories, models, approaches, perspectives, or all of them? Should we balance our instruction across theoretical schools so that students can choose the hub they wish to belong to, or stress one aspect and let students appropriate it?

A balanced survey, not a favourite school

According to González (2005), rather than privileging one theoretical school or approach in translation studies, the translator educator should survey the existing and emerging approaches in a balanced way and let each student choose the approach he or she wishes to adopt or appropriate. In this regard she criticised Hatim's heavy focus on text typology as the model for translation research.

I think this is a sound, student-focused approach rather than a teacher-focused one. What do you think?

Master's students and undergraduates

This matters most for Master's students about to undertake their research projects. For undergraduates, it is good to trace and discuss the historical development of translation theory and its core concepts, especially at the level of method (strategies, techniques). One option is to survey the concepts set out by Catford (1964), Nida (1960s), Newmark (1988) and Jakobson (1959), then, at the end of the semester, briefly cover developments in the newer field of translation studies.

This is a student-centred approach to sharing knowledge. We all have our preferences and biases, but let us keep them for our research. In the classroom, let us think about the student profile and the student's needs.

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.

How Do We Perceive Translation in the Arab World? A Research Questionnaire

How is translation understood in the Arab region, and how are translators perceived? A short questionnaire is gathering views for a research project, and your opinion counts.

Original post: How do we perceive translation and translators in the Arab world? (Research questionnaire)

Please take 15 minutes to complete the questionnaire at the link below. It is part of a research project on the notion of translation in the Arab region, and the results will feed into a chapter of the World Atlas of Translation (Benjamins). When you have finished, please press the 'Done' or 'Submit' button. Your opinion is highly valuable.

The link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tarjama

Many thanks for your cooperation. For any questions, please contact us:

• Fouad El Karnichi: fouadelkarnichi@gmail.com
• Salah Basalamah: salah.basalamah@uottawa.ca

Qualitative Analysis of Interview Data: A Step-by-Step Guide

A step-by-step guide to analysing qualitative interview data – I found it useful during my own PhD fieldwork, and I recommend it to research students.

Translating as Risk Management

A talk on translating as risk management – the idea that translators constantly weigh which risks to take and which to avoid, which is a productive way to teach decision-making.

Uwe Muegge: Cloud-Based Translation Memory Tools Are Changing the Way Translators Work

Uwe Muegge on how cloud-based translation memory tools are reshaping translators' workflows – and, by implication, what we should be teaching.

'Cloud-based translation memory tools are changing the way translators work' by Uwe Muegge

Carlos Teixeira: Doctoral Defence

The recorded doctoral defence of Carlos Teixeira – worth watching for research students who want to see what a translation studies viva looks like.

Reflections from the Ottawa Graduate Conference in Translation Studies

Last week I attended the graduate student conference in translation studies at the University of Ottawa. The theme was networking in the context of literary translation, and the proposals were intriguing. Here I sum up the presentations that spoke to me most: the practical or semi-practical ones, and those touching on social, technological or pedagogical issues, the last being my own PhD focus. Many other topics were good in their own right.

I travelled from Quebec on Friday morning and reached campus around 1 pm, so I missed a few discussions. A pity. I cover only the sessions I attended.

ATIO and the academy

First, an excellent presentation by Mme Charbonneau of ATIO, who raised many sound points about translation and interpreting practice in Canada. She gave me a clear answer to something I had been asking about: the relationship between academia (translation programmes) and the association. To what extent does ATIO take part in curriculum design and development, or in vetting translation and interpreting degrees and certificates in Ontario? To my surprise, she replied that the association is hardly involved, or at least not enough. That told me a good deal about current curricular practice at decision-making level.

Social networking and connectivism

Sandra Najar from Kent State University went straight to the heart of the conference theme, networking in relation to literature. She presented a genuinely innovative initiative grounded in social networking theory. The area is new; it sits well in the human and social sciences despite its close ties to information technology. She also flagged a gap she wants to work on: how to apply the social networking framework to teaching literary translation.

I suggested she look at Siemens (2005), of Athabasca University in Canada, who proposed connectivism as a new learning theory and showed how it could apply to a learner's development, for instance that of translation and interpreting trainees. For Siemens, the brain is not the only source of knowledge; knowledge also resides in nodes and other resources, online, in the cloud, and in communities of practice or of learners. This could be a sound move, but careful instructional design and relevant pedagogy still need to be mobilised to make the learning experience succeed. Wenger's work on communities of learners, and how to develop them in a teaching context, is another useful source, particularly for collaborative work, crowdsourcing, cloud-sourcing and fan-subbing in translator training.

Crowdsourcing: outside the curriculum

Gulnara presented a strong paper on crowdsourcing, a topic Prof. Elizabeth Marshman also showed interest in. It is a new practice that challenges traditional definitions of professional translation, and we cannot dismiss it as amateurish, since many experienced practitioners volunteer for it too. My interest, again, was pedagogical: can we bring this new content into a university translation classroom, whether face-to-face, blended or virtual?

My view is that crowdsourcing, because of its voluntary (and sometimes reactive) nature, will remain a recognised practice outside academia. If our programmes are professionally oriented and aimed at competences that lead to jobs, crowdsourcing is something students can learn on their own, just as they learn to navigate other social media.

Freelancing: bring it in

What I would like to see integrated in the curriculum is freelancing, where students act both as receivers of translation assignments and as outsourcers, and later as project managers. It has a professional and an educational dimension, with a gradual progression of competencies. Surprisingly, some Canadian universities offer this content only as an elective (under the name réalités professionnelles). Well, universities have their traditions. Perhaps in five or ten years it will be a core, compulsory three-credit course. In Spain, Cravo (2011) introduced it into a Master's programme at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona as a core activity for future professional translators. A great move.

In 2012 I delivered an online course on virtual professional translation practice on the ProZ.com platform, in Arabic and English, to about 20 students from the US, Australia, Europe and the Middle East. I used case studies and screen demonstrations to show how to manage portfolios and bid for assignments online. In 2013, as part of the fieldwork preparation for my PhD, I worked as a lecturer in translation and community interpreting (Arabic-English) in Oman. The Omani students were intrigued by the idea of freelancing and working from home. It is a practice in demand.

Those are the three presentations I feel able to discuss; all the others were good too. We all lean towards our own areas of knowledge and practice. Feel free to react here on the blog or on the mailing list.

The Hidden Curriculum in Translator Training

This week I have been reviewing Kearns' (2006) PhD thesis on curriculum issues in translator training in Europe, and particularly in his own teaching setting, Poland. Comparing his insights with the situation in the Arab world, I found many similarities in course content, teaching methods, and the ideologies of institutions, departments and faculty within translation programmes.

What Kearns Means by "Hidden Curriculum"

One striking concept is the "hidden curriculum". Kearns uses it to describe any translation or interpreting curriculum not grounded in:

• curriculum studies and theories in higher education;
• the disciplinary issues specific to translation, with translation studies, theoretical and applied, as the frame of reference;
• the professional dimension of translation;
• a pedagogical approach suited to professionally oriented disciplines such as translation.

Kearns deplored the continued use of unplanned, impressionistic and reductionist curriculum design and development strategies in translation programmes. Any faculty member in a department, whether or not competent in the knowledge domains and practices above, can come forward and presume to design curricula for that department.

A Quality Assurance Problem

This violates the quality assurance criteria prescribed both in higher education standards, which set out the knowledge frameworks and competencies required for teaching scholarship, and in the professional standards of the translation profession, such as the recent European standard EN 15038. Many curriculum designers have used that standard to develop quality-based, professionally oriented translation and interpreting programmes within an academic context.

Takeaway

We need to redesign, develop and continually monitor the pedagogies and curricula of translation programmes. Their epistemologies, ideologies and teaching approaches must rest on consciously planned criteria drawn from mainstream pedagogy and curriculum studies, translation studies and professional guidelines. Only that can secure the outcomes today's translation market demands. At the same time, we must stay watchful not to be carried away by the industry's unstable requirements: we hold to our principles as academics, with a fair measure of flexibility towards what employers are looking for.

Translator Training at Arab Universities: A Research Note

The following is a passage from my ongoing PhD reflections on translator training and curriculum development for translation programmes at Arab universities, particularly in the Gulf. It draws together what the literature says about the state of the field.

The teaching and learning environment in traditional face-to-face translator training programmes in the Arab world has been portrayed as lacking pedagogical approaches congruent with the real demands of the translation industry and market (Al Qinai, 2010; Farghal, 2009; Atari, 2012). Translator training programmes do not integrate valuable vocational and professional components, a key requirement for the face validity of such programmes, and they remain confined to linguistically oriented models. This decontextualises translation assignments, which become unclear and serve purely philological or pedagogical purposes (Atari, ibid.; Buhmaid, ibid.; Emery, 2000). Course objectives, or 'intended learning outcomes', are also not clear from the lists of objectives drawn up by course designers or faculty (Buhmaid, ibid.).

Kelly (2005) highlighted that the assessments in any course outline should be aligned with the listed objectives. In more depth, Biggs (2007) referred to the principle of constructive alignment, whereby intended outcomes, activities and assessment tools should all be aligned. On the situation in Arabic-speaking universities, Atari (2012, p. 110), citing Buhmaid (1995) and Emery (2000), stresses that 'there is a lack of well defined and well-formulated learning outcomes, if existent in the first place'. This is a damning verdict on programmes whose responsibility, among others, is to educate and train responsible citizens who will one day make decisive textual and discursive choices within society.

Further, translation courses are embedded in English departments and tend to be taught mostly by faculty holding degrees in linguistics or English literature. Some have experience of translating but little knowledge of twenty-first-century industry working patterns; others have practised translation moderately, as amateurs or part-timers; and a large share of those teaching translation in the classroom have never been professional translators (Atari, 2012). It is also argued that there are insufficient competent translator trainers at Arab universities, which is a hurdle to advancing and improving translator programmes (Farghal, 2009). Given the impact of technology on teaching and learning, staff with an IT background, knowledge of translation as a subject in its own right and real-world professional experience would be a real competitive advantage for any department. Al Qinai (2010) had already noted the need for educators who can be on the ground themselves and carry out classroom research, to obtain the authentic feedback, insight and results that translator training communities, in Arab universities or elsewhere, would want to embrace.

Extracted from PhD work in progress.

Research on Translator Training, Part 1

Part one of a talk on research in translator training – a good overview of where the field's research questions come from.