Search iatis.org for

Translation and the Construction of Identity

Special Panel: Teaching Translation - Global Challenges for the Twenty-First Century

Chaired by John Kearns, Dublin City University

Concomitant with the increasing professionalization of language mediation activities, recent years have seen a growing awareness of the fact that training for translators is as desirable and necessary as it is for professionals from any other field. Discussions of the particular competencies and sub-competencies translators should possess have led to attention being focused on identifying the most appropriate aims and objectives for training in language mediation, and this in turn has been matched by an examination of the goals of translation studies courses and research training programmes.

Don Kiraly has drawn attention to the important distinction to be made between ‘translation competence’ – competence in mediating texts effectively between languages – and ‘translator competence’, which involves the translator joining various new communities which have developed as a result of the professionalization of the field. Such communities may include “educated users of several languages, those conversant in specialized technical fields, and proficient users of traditional tools and new technologies for professional interlingual communication purposes” (Kiraly 2000:13). The contemporary translator is thus expected to have a familiarity with a range of tools and resources and to be skilled in working practices and research techniques which were of far less importance to translators even as recently as ten or fifteen years ago. This in turn provides new challenges for translation trainers, but approaches developed from traditional language pedagogies seem ever more ill-prepared to meet such challenges. Furthermore, trainers must also keep abreast of developments in the tools and technologies of instruction, so that recent developments such as e-learning may successfully achieve the democratizing effect they currently promise.

The panel will thus seek to address a broad range of issues relating to the pedagogy of translation and translation studies in general, and more particularly to the training of translators, interpreters, and all involved in language mediation activities.

Specific issues which may generate particular interest include the following: