A Language Portal of Canada headline on university graduates lacking basic literacy skills – if that is true in Canada, we should be asking the same question of our own graduates.
University graduates lack basic literacy skills – Language Portal of Canada
This is an interesting video, and a useful one for trainers and teachers who are embarking, or willing to embark, on using technology and e-tools to support their own and their students' training needs.
Google Docs can serve as a platform to import, store, process, edit and post-edit translation documents. The most interesting part is that it can also host collaborative working environments, in or out of class, in virtual or online settings, which enhance learners' transferable and generic skill sets.
A clear introduction to what interpreting is, from the UK's National Network for Interpreting – a good first reading for new students.
A University World News piece on rethinking private higher education – relevant to the growing private HE sector in the Gulf and MENA.
Sir Ken Robinson on creativity, learning and the curriculum – a reminder that curriculum design is about people, not just outcomes.
A presentation of an MA in Translation Studies delivered by distance learning – a model worth studying as online translator education grows.
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, in 2013, on Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed – essential viewing for anyone who thinks about education as more than skills delivery.
An infographic tracing the history of learning – a quick visual primer for education discussions.
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)
A short video making the case for trained interpreters – why professional training matters when the stakes are high.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One striking concept is the "hidden curriculum". Kearns uses it to describe any translation or interpreting curriculum not grounded in:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Learn how to process your translation and revision work critically and constructively. To be delivered in class or online, using adapted pedagogies.
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.
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.
Novices, translation students, and experienced translators seeking personal development.
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
Sound knowledge of English and Arabic. Minimal experience in translation practice is required; translation students and soon-to-be translation students are welcome.
Comments on this course outline are very welcome: fouadelkarnichi@gmail.com
