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.

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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.

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Research on using dialogic competence in debates (classroom environments)

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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

Responsible AI Use: Translation Students Apply GenAI with Critical Oversight

Teach students to use generative AI with human oversight, and they will do exactly that, even when you are not looking. A set of meeting minutes recently proved the point.

A forum across two universities

I recently organised an online forum bringing together my former students from the MA in Translation Technologies at the Saudi Electronic University and my current Level 3 BA translation students at Sohar University. The objective was to build a community of learners, establish a network and encourage the exchange of practices across universities and countries.

After the meeting, I asked the moderator of the Omani group to prepare minutes documenting the experience. The format of the document, evidently processed with a GenAI tool, struck me. In my classes I have been gradually integrating the careful use of generative AI and AI tools with my Level 3 students, always stressing the need for human oversight of any output.

How the students did it

The students I am teaching in Audiovisual Translation this semester applied that principle to the minutes, which I found gratifying. When I asked how they had produced the four-page document, one student explained:

To prepare this document, I began with the video recordings, which totalled over an hour and a half. I transcribed them into text using Evernote. I then divided the text into smaller sections and used ChatGPT to extract the main ideas from each segment. After compiling all the key points into a Word document, I meticulously reviewed everything to ensure accuracy, and I found that most of what ChatGPT provided aligned with the actual discussions from the meetings.

Translanguaging Pedagogy: The Way Ahead for English Instruction in MENA

Enough is enough. Across the MENA region, a large share of students still struggle to reach proficiency in foreign languages, above all in writing, speaking and listening. The difficulty extends to tasks such as translation and post-editing, and it has become more visible with the recent surge in large language models.

The video below explains the essential role of translanguaging in both monolingual and multilingual education, and shows its relevance, inclusivity and capacity to empower and motivate learners. It is time to move beyond post-colonial prescriptions about effective foreign language learning, whatever accent is favoured. This applies not only to the GCC and North Africa, but potentially to every region that has lived under French or English colonial rule.

Watch: translanguaging in monolingual and multilingual education

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.

Curriculum Is Conversation: The Hidden Curriculum of Course Allocation

It has been a while since my last post; my reflective faculties were temporarily suspended, as happens for many reasons. Today I want to raise an issue that keeps coming up among colleagues in pedagogical and educational networks, particularly in the MENA region: the way 'hidden curriculum practices' are managed within departments.

'Operational Practices' with Unearned Legitimacy

This concern is far less prevalent in countries where the identities and well-being of faculty and administrators alike are acknowledged and respected. In the forums I follow, there is palpable dissatisfaction. Administrators tend to call these practices 'operational and local', which grants them a legitimacy they have not earned, especially when we recall Applebee's (1996) argument that curriculum is conversation, above all in higher education.

Assigning a Course Is Not an Administrative Act

It is not enough to hand a course to a faculty member without a meaningful dialogue, and without a proper look at their CV and professional profile. At college and university level, administrators frequently apply curriculum practices left over from K-12 schooling, which is inappropriate. It may serve the administration's interests by fostering a hierarchy that undermines faculty autonomy, usually justified as 'unit, faculty or departmental needs'. Administrators must invest more in the selection and allocation process: understand instructors' profiles, talk to them, and stop relying on exclusively quantitative and meaningless variables. Assigning a course without essential quality assurance criteria is fundamentally anti-pedagogical.

Faculty communities across the region confirm this, if not extensively. I can attest to it myself, having visited and worked in universities where such practices are widespread, with only a few exceptions. Those exceptions probably reflect the cultural beliefs and philosophy of each institution.

Rethinking Assessment in the Age of AI

Rethinking assessment in the age of AI is now essential for anyone in higher education or K-12. Assignments and homework, in particular, need re-evaluating.

From Product to Authentic Assessment

Product-based assessment should be reshaped through more authentic methods: case studies, peer-to-peer discussion in class, mind mapping, oral presentations, recorded videos and podcasts. We should also set critical thinking assignments in which the thinking is presented visibly and publicly, for instance in peer-to-peer interaction.

In courses centred on writing, essays, translation or commentary, assessment should be combined with other authentic activities, typically by pairing oral or visual artefacts with traditional techniques. Another innovative approach is to assess the process a student goes through to produce the work. A record of the prompts they used, for example, lets educators see the intellectual investment and reasoning behind the final submission.

What It Will Take

Implementing these changes demands significant pedagogical and philosophical shifts across the education sector, in K-12 and higher education alike. That may mean teaching assistants or tutors to maintain a workable student-to-teacher ratio, or reduced teaching loads so that faculty have the time to create authentic, high-quality learning environments.

The need for political will inside institutions is evident when we consider the realities of higher education today, especially in regions such as the GCC. Faculty development opportunities must be established, and class sizes and faculty workloads reconsidered to fit the new assessment methods, including training in innovative teaching strategies and smaller classes to strengthen engagement and learning outcomes. Adopting a new educational philosophy is imperative if these goals are to be met.

L'approche-programme – The Programme Approach to Curriculum Design

A video introduction to the approche-programme, a way of thinking about a degree as one coherent programme rather than a stack of separate courses – a useful lens for anyone redesigning a translation curriculum.

Watch: a new approach to curriculum

Translator Education : Pedagogy, Practice and Research: Today I had a very interesting peer-to-peer intera...

Translator Education : Pedagogy, Practice and Research: Today I had a very interesting peer-to-peer intera...: Today I had a very interesting peer-to-peer interaction with my colleagues in the department. I was pleased with their interest and reaction...

A Peer Conversation on Competency-Based Teaching

Today I had a very interesting peer-to-peer session with my colleagues in the department, and I was pleased with their interest and reactions. We discussed the relevance of Gibbs's pedagogical approach to university teaching: teaching to enable students' competencies rather than delivering educational experiences that force them to memorise. In other words, teaching so that students understand and perform at the same time.

The core question was whether our educational context allows us to facilitate competency-based pedagogies, which are designed to enrich students' experience and prepare them not only for work but for a sustainable lifelong venture.

The teacher's engineering ability, designing and developing thriving learning environments, seems to be the most demanding criterion in this enterprise. Integrating the experiential model into instruction is another hurdle to clear. Continuous professional development can help instructors lead a competency-based approach to teaching and learning.

All in all, leadership and management support is essential to activate this approach. Without reducing the useless administrative burden and twisted bureaucracy that so often inhibit educational success, at student, faculty and institutional level alike, it will be difficult to implement this important part of the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Understanding by Design in Arab Higher Education: How Far Are We?

Understanding by Design is a fine example of the scholarship of teaching and learning. Does it work in the Arab higher education context? My honest answer: we are a very long way from believing in, accepting and implementing that approach in our region.

What Holds Faculty Back

The main obstacle is the intention, deliberate or not, to strip faculty of their identity as professionals, reflective practitioners and action-research leaders. That is what prevents higher education educators in our region from innovating and engaging in transformative educational exchange. We still live under policing, inspection and negative monitoring practices that demolish our potential to make sense of what we can do, and to launch it in research, teaching and community engagement.

A better approach is to attract competent faculty with professional, grounded experience in the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education, and to discard the curriculum practices inherited from the early 1960s, which were designed for schools, to control large numbers of children and monitor teachers excessively. Changing the vision and approach is key. Faculty hold PhDs, not BAs, and many have pedagogical training or long experience in academia topped up with professional development in teaching adults. Institutions need to limit the irrelevant interventions camouflaged under the umbrella of quality assurance. Quality assurance is not an administrative matter alone.

Quality Assurance Should Address the Source

Quality assurance needs to tackle the source of the problem: pedagogy, faculty profile and commitment, and support for those who believe in innovative ways of addressing complex problems in higher education. Industrial models can contain production and industrial operations, where machines and technology can be used and controlled. That is not the case with humans. Paperwork, policy and administrative tasks are time-consuming and should be handled differently, not piled onto faculty.

What to Do

Give educators ongoing, relevant and customised training in current higher education practice, not practices inherited from industrial models of primary and secondary schooling. Pedagogical practice is not something handed down from your former teacher, nor is it ad hoc; there is a whole body of scholarship behind teaching and learning in higher education. Read the literature. If we engage with it, the excessive and tiresome negative monitoring will not hold.

So recruiting the right profiles is step one. They may be costly. That leaves a choice: protect our standing as a university and climb to higher ranks, or stay as we are, implementing practices that will produce no positive outcomes locally or globally.

The video below is an example of the kind of endeavour and philosophy that needs to be adopted if we are to intervene differently in higher education.