Do Online Students Cheat More Often?

An infographic asking whether online students cheat more often than their face-to-face peers – a question every online or blended programme has to face.

Do Online Students Cheat More Often? (e-Learning Infographics)

Noam Chomsky on Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Noam Chomsky, in 2013, on Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed – essential viewing for anyone who thinks about education as more than skills delivery.

The History of Learning: An Infographic

An infographic tracing the history of learning – a quick visual primer for education discussions.

History of Learning Infographic (e-Learning Infographics)

Andragogy: The Adult Learning Theory in an Infographic

An infographic summarising andragogy, the theory of adult learning – a useful reminder that our translation students are adults and learn as adults.

The Adult Learning Theory – Andragogy – Infographic (e-Learning Infographics)

Trained Interpreters

A short video making the case for trained interpreters – why professional training matters when the stakes are high.

Working with Interpreters

A short guide to working with interpreters – useful for clients, and just as useful for students learning what to expect on the other side of the booth.

Teacher Training Centres: Why Universities Need Them Too

The Ministry of Education plans to launch a teacher training centre. Read the news item here:

Ministry of Education plans to launch teacher training centre (Edarabia)

A further thought

Recent trends in higher education emphasise the need to extend initiatives of this kind to the university context as well. Many Western universities have already done so; in Arab contexts, the work has yet to begin.

Research shows that significant learning and performance outcomes can be achieved when the human factor, teachers and trainers as much as students, is taken seriously. Such an effort should draw not only on translation studies but also on curriculum studies and mainstream pedagogy, in particular the professionalisation of teaching, and especially in professionally oriented translation programmes.

Saudi Arabia to Translate International Court of Justice Rulings into Arabic

A great move from Saudi Arabia: an agreement to translate the rulings and bylaws of the International Court of Justice into Arabic. It benefits practice, the profession and society alike.

Read the report (in Arabic)

Not Reforming Our Translation Curricula but Renewing and Remedying Them

Our recent review of the literature on teaching and curriculum design in Arab, and especially Gulf, university translation programmes, combined with my own experience as an educator in the field, has led us to a disturbing conclusion: course and programme planning in translation is often amateurish. Classroom teaching, too, needs to be reviewed and re-approached so that it matches the way other professionally oriented programmes, such as engineering, law and medicine, are delivered in higher education.

Where the Problem Lies

Traditional curriculum evaluation has always addressed content, and paid far less attention to process (translator agency and competencies) or to human capital: students, trainers and faculty (Kelly, 2005, 2008). Moreover, most programme evaluations have been carried out by organisations or external evaluators with little connection to the parent discipline of translation studies and its approaches, to the emerging sub-field of translator education and training, or to mainstream pedagogy and curriculum studies. In our opinion, these are the knowledge frameworks we should expect from any body that gives us feedback on our programmes.

Worse, in our experience as trainers and faculty, these programmes are designed by internal staff operating in different knowledge frameworks, linguistics or literature, who know little about the twenty-first-century translation industry, translator work patterns, employer requirements, or the competencies that lead students to employment. The programme consequently suffers at the design and development level or at the implementation level, including modes of assessment. Social and institutional criteria, such as local issues and institutional requirements, are rarely part of the design process either.

Renewing and Remedying, Not Reforming

That is the issue our title names. Reform is not the answer; 'renewing' (Kearns, 2006) and 'remedying' (Atari, 2012) may be. Rather than relying only on our experience and on what the literature says, we are undertaking ground research with stakeholders, immediate and non-immediate, to determine their needs and perceptions of translation practice, and to work out how we, as training providers, can develop a framework that lets university trainers and faculty take sound approaches based on informed decisions and data.

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.

Curriculum and Pedagogy in Arab Translator Education: Five Blind Spots

Apart from the Al-Alsun school in Egypt, university-level translator training in the Arab world emerged out of globalisation and the changes in higher education of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the Gulf, most programmes appeared on a mass scale after the millennium. Yet worrying educational and professional problems arise when the basic tenets of a professionally oriented translation programme in a university context are not understood. Here are the main ones.

1. Ignoring the local context

The specificities of the local context (country, profession, university, society, students and economy) must be taken into account when designing, developing, implementing and evaluating the programme.

2. Vague outcomes and unexplained choices

Clear course and programme outcomes (skills) need to be set and justified. Faculty must know exactly why they chose particular skills to develop (or, as is more usual, subjects and content to transfer), the material used, and the methods of assessing them. Preferably, the teacher explains the link between content, activities, objectives and assessment to the students, so they become partners in the educational experience.

This is a problem for faculty who themselves lack subject-specific knowledge: knowledge of translation studies as a field of study and research, and of recent approaches within it. A shortage of real-world professional experience, in-house or freelance, can also undermine the experience.

3. Lecturing as the default pedagogy

Translation teaching needs its own kind of pedagogy. A lectures-only mode is not sufficient to achieve significant learning and performance outcomes. Translation is a profession with standards, and there is a defined set of competencies that must be built into the curriculum and facilitated. The most suitable method, in my view, is a mix of training, teaching and education that responds to the complex nature of translation and translator competence.

Students in these programmes (usually housed in English departments) should graduate not merely as L2-proficient, but as multifaceted communicators and agents of cross-cultural communication. They will be exposed directly to society: interpreting in courts and hospitals, translating official and unofficial documents to 'make things happen' between nations and people. Increasingly in the 21st century, they may become entrepreneurial language service providers running their own translation bureaus. The stakes are therefore higher than finding equivalents between source and target texts or transferring meaning. The agent, the translator, has a role to play in all of this. That role is barely acknowledged in the Arab context, least of all in universities, where disciplinary ideologies in every department have prioritised textual matters instead. A balanced approach to teaching the translation phenomenon is needed, one that reflects the multifaceted, multidisciplinary nature of a young discipline.

4. Theory taught without practice

When teaching translation theory (or any theoretical component of translation studies), practice must be brought into the equation. This is a real challenge for the teacher, but students get more from a quasi-theoretical course, and stay engaged, when the link between theory and practice is made in the classroom. Here again the teacher's professional background matters enormously. That is why reviewing faculty's knowledge framework (professional, disciplinary and pedagogical) is central to the success of any programme. It is a tough criterion to meet: translation is a recently established academic discipline, and there is a shortage of properly trained human resources to serve it in a university context. The problem is becoming alarming as translation programmes multiply.

5. The 'read and translate' method in practical courses

Research in translation pedagogy has long criticised the traditional way of teaching translation in the higher education classroom. Kiraly (1995, 2000, 2003) argued against what Ladmiral calls the performance magistrale, the lecture, and against the 'read and translate' method in which the final 'correct' solution rests with the teacher as the unique source of knowledge. Kiraly (2000) proposed project-based methods instead, reflecting real-world translation practice: students work in project teams and take on roles such as translator, reviser and terminologist.

Educationally and professionally this is a sound approach. What I am less sure of is how often it is used in Arab translation programmes, and whether it can be adapted smoothly to our context.

Arabic Online Content: Saudi Arabia Leads the Way

Arab News reports on a Saudi initiative to enrich Arabic digital content on the web: Arabic online content: Kingdom leads the way.

This is a revolutionary move, and the approach is spot on. It is time to change paradigms. The twenty-first century has imposed new patterns of knowledge. Sources of knowledge are no longer only in books, whether literature, human sciences or anything else; they also live in databases and computers.

I salute this endeavour by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. If all Arab countries, and especially translation programmes and private and public bodies, follow suit and gradually implement the same strategy, we could achieve remarkable cultural, political and educational gains. We live in a knowledge-based society. Not content, but something bigger: knowledge.

New Workshop: Processing Translation and Revision Work Critically

Learn how to process your translation and revision work critically and constructively. To be delivered in class or online, using adapted pedagogies.

Summary

Have you ever wondered why you translate terms, phrases or texts intuitively, without knowing how you arrive at those decisions? Have you struggled to comment in an elaborate way on your revision tasks, or on terminology and translation choices, in front of colleagues or peers? Clients, and in-house employers when you work for them, may ask you to justify your choices on grounds other than intuition. Objectivising the subjective, the hidden and the intuitive is the purpose of this course.

Description

Experienced translators translate more intuitively and more quickly than novices or student translators. Yet translators rarely find the right jargon to justify their choices or to write conscious, justified comments in their revised or translated assignments, even though a professional translator or reviser may be asked to do exactly that by clients or colleagues. Critical thinking therefore deserves a place in translator competence. It also enhances professional status and earns respect: you become a thinker, a negotiator and a test engineer. This course takes you to that stage and guides you to think critically as you process your translation, post-editing or revision work.

Target Audience

Novices, translation students, and experienced translators seeking personal development.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• identify and critically judge text typologies in English and Arabic, and the problems that may arise in translation from the conventions of those texts and other contextual factors in both languages;
• write in the proper genre and style of the target text;
• justify their translation choices, for themselves and for others when asked. Every choice remains relative, since nothing is absolute in the real world: there are always many answers to the same problem;
• revise consciously and constructively the translations or assignments they are given, drawing on insights from both theory and practice.

Prerequisites

Sound knowledge of English and Arabic. Minimal experience in translation practice is required; translation students and soon-to-be translation students are welcome.

Programme

• Introduction to the field of translation practice and theory
• The importance of critical text analysis for translators and revisers alike
• Becoming an empowered translator through critical judgement of translations and revisions
• Owning the metalanguage to discuss translation problems with colleagues at work or peers in forums
• Operating beyond intuition and amateurism when facing clients, peers, or your teacher if you are still at university

Comments on this course outline are very welcome: fouadelkarnichi@gmail.com

Research on Translator Training, Part 2

Part two of a talk on research in translator training – the continuation of the previous post.

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.

Building Translator Identity in a Translation Programme

Translator identity and agency have been an ongoing debate in the literature on translator training in higher education. Yet a glance at the history of practice shows that society's image of translators has barely moved: an underrated group who merely "transfer" other people's creative work and get paid for it. No significant social status has been granted. Publishers still leave the translator's or reviser's name off the cover; the book appears under the publishing house's name with no trace of who translated it.

Whose Fault Is It?

The institutions? No. Society? No. It is the community of translators themselves who are responsible for their declining value. With globalisation and the internet, things are getting worse. Everybody is translating. Anyone bilingual, or anyone claiming competence in two languages, takes up translation, and that is where it starts.

In my opinion, the lack of proper training at institutional level, universities mainly, has contributed to this identity crisis, and it lets pirates and industry hyenas seize the opportunity to downplay translators and pay peanuts for their work. If translators were educated in the ethics and value of this honourable and ancient profession, we would be regarded like lawyers, engineers and doctors.

What Kind of Learning Builds Identity?

Review and update both the curriculum and the pedagogy of teaching translation. For instance, embed a sound pedagogy (such as narrative pedagogy and multimedia) to teach the history of translation dynamically, through true stories and biographies of our forebears, Arab, Muslim or European, so that students can identify with them and build a self-concept as future translators. At the very least they will have something to be proud of, and it gives "face validity" not only to the profession but to the course or programme they are in. A programme with face validity is one where students know that what they are studying leads to a clear objective.

Recent graduates and working professionals should also be invited into class, in person or virtually, to update students on the realities of the workplace and the market. Their experiences and stories help trainees develop new identities, or seek one. Bringing in language service providers and employers adds value to the programme and gives students the desire to keep training and build a "can do" attitude.

History and Theory

A historical background matters greatly to the future professional translator: it raises their status and makes them conscious of the heritage of the discipline they have chosen. Teaching the history of translation to trainees and practising translators alike is a crucial step in building professional aptitude, since "they develop a self-concept as translators working in a specific historical situation", as their colleagues did over the ages (Mossop, 2003: 49). Alongside history, alignment with the current market and its requirements is a key factor in any university training or education programme. There should be a continuous narrative from past to present to strengthen that self-concept.

Theory is another factor. Ulrich (1996: 257) puts it this way:

"Members of all professions have a historical and theoretical component to their expertise. It is only against a theoretical background of translation that effective decision making and production can take place (…) the problem arises, therefore, of how to integrate a course on translation theory within the curriculum."

Despite the industry's negative attitude towards theory, we at the university should embed it and teach it intelligently, so that our students are ethically responsible and aware of who they are. They must be agents of their own learning and decisions, and see the moral dimension of their professional activity once they are in the marketplace. The industry will try to impose its industrial model, in place since the eighteenth century, but in a university context we need only court the industry and choose what is best for students and their psychological, social and personal development. Critical thinking is a virtue the industry does not prize: it wants students with skills but has no interest in their lifelong abilities and competencies. Providing this kind of education could perhaps cure the long-standing identity crisis of translators.

Pedagogy and People

Mentoring, project work, and case-based and problem-based methods should be embedded in the teaching philosophy. Apprenticeship-based methods should be applied from the first year of an undergraduate translation programme, not after it. Dynamic methods instil confidence, self-esteem and self-concept.

Still, where do teachers' abilities and competencies stand in this equation? We are left reviewing not only products (content) and processes (teaching and learning) but also human resources: teachers, faculty and students alike, their knowledge frameworks and beliefs, their learning and teaching styles, and their characteristics.

Call for Papers: HETL 2014 Conference in Anchorage

Sharing a call for papers from the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL) for its 2014 conference. The theme, the impact of social and mobile media on higher education, is directly relevant to anyone teaching translation with technology.

Call for papers and presentation proposals on teaching and administration topics in higher education

The International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL) invites you to submit a proposal for a presentation at its 2014 International HETL Conference, to be held in Anchorage in partnership with the University of Alaska Anchorage, 8–10 June 2014. Proposals are solicited on all topics related to higher education, including new technologies and globalisation-related issues. Both scholarly and practice reports are invited. Proposals on the conference theme, Impacts of Social and Mobile Media on Higher Education, are especially welcome.

As at our January 2013 conference at the University of Central Florida, participants will come from the full range of academic disciplines across the arts, sciences and professions, as well as from administrative and staff functions that deliver and support new technologies and approaches to learning. As with every HETL conference, we welcome participation from around the world. Please submit your proposal before the deadline of 26 July 2013, or simply join us as an attendee by registering. No proposal is required if you are attending but not presenting.

To submit a proposal, go to the submission form. See the conference page for more details.

It's more affordable than you may think. The Anchorage area has many attractions, including glaciers, majestic mountains and a wide diversity of wildlife. The average June temperature is 16°C (62°F) with sunny days. Airfare to Anchorage is more reasonable than we anticipated: a check on Kayak.com suggests a round trip from New York around the time of the conference might cost about $350, from London $1,000, and from Tokyo $1,100. We anticipate that hundreds of rooms at the University of Alaska will be available for well under $100, along with rooms at partner hotels in Anchorage.

We look forward to seeing you in Anchorage!

Patrick Blessinger and Charles Wankel, St. John's University, New York
Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association
patrickblessinger@gmail.com

Knowledge Frameworks and the Hidden Curriculum in Translation Programmes

Kearns (2006, 2008, 2012) has written extensively about the persistent syndrome of the hidden curriculum in translation programmes worldwide. His questions remain pressing:

• Do the conception, development and evaluation of a translation course follow educationally sound and professional guidelines suited to the local context of students and institution? Who does this work?
• What frameworks do teachers base their programme planning and classroom interventions on?
• Do they draw on recent advances in translation studies and translation pedagogy?
• Do they consciously plan, design and develop their courses, or do they work intuitively, with no clear objectives?
• Is there a follow-up system to check whether intended outcomes were actually achieved?
• How does assessment fit in? Do they assess the product (the translated text) or the process (learning and performance)?

These questions sum up my concern here: the knowledge conveyed in a translation classroom by faculty (and students), and the issues of curriculum and course design, development and assessment.

The gap in the Arab world

My preliminary review of the literature in the Arab world shows that, apart from publications bemoaning the deficiencies of language students (usually EFL students) in translation, none has discussed the human factor in translator training programmes (faculty, teachers, students) at any depth or with qualitative rigour. The same has been reported elsewhere (Kelly, 2009). On teachers' pedagogical competencies and knowledge of the real world of translation (in-house or freelance), the very few committed Arab researchers in translation teaching (Atari, Farghal, Buhmaid) have repeatedly confirmed the problem.

Faculty in translation programmes deserve guidance and support to design their courses with reference to knowledge frameworks specific to the field: translation studies, the profession and its pedagogy. Relying predominantly on other, inherited types of knowledge (linguistics, literature) in a translation education context contradicts the originality and face value of a respectable translation programme.

No more hit and miss

The epistemological, indeed ideological, element is crucial in a professionally oriented programme within a university context. There should be no hit and miss policy when setting up translation programmes. Translation is a respectable discipline that has confirmed its presence worldwide, even if it is mostly shelved under language departments; conferences, symposia, organisations, journals and books abound. Everyone directly or indirectly involved, from administrators and faculty to industry and other stakeholders, needs to take the building of translation programmes and the selection of adequate human resources seriously. The pay-off is quality performance outcomes: students trained to find work in translation, teachers who improve each semester through action-based pedagogy and student feedback, and local employers content with their new recruits.

Takeaway: two questions need answering. What type of knowledge should be privileged in a translation programme and classroom? And how do we end the dominance of the hidden curriculum, in which people who mostly lack translation-specific curricular, pedagogical and real-world knowledge design and teach courses whose face validity students cannot see? Why do I study theory? Why contrastive studies? Why these texts and not those? How will what I am studying now serve my translation career in the twenty-first-century job market?