IATIS Committee for Translator and Interpreter Training

Remit

The main tasks of the Training Committee are:

• promoting discussion on matters relating to education in language mediation, both at third level and in the broader tertiary educational sector (thus including vocational training courses, in-house staff training, continuing education, etc.);

• examining all curricular aspects of translation and interpreting pedagogy, including methodological issues and syllabus design matters;

• discussing the viability and subsequent implementation of various projects relating to translator and interpreter training;

• creating an on-line thematic bibliographical database of translation pedagogy publications, accessible for IATIS members via the IATIS website;

• creating an e-zine bulletin devoted to translator and interpreter training to be published regularly; the e-zine will be archived on the IATIS website and accessible for IATIS members;

• organising workshops on translator and interpreter training in different parts of the world, with particular emphasis on translation pedagogy in the global context.

The Committee reports to the IATIS Treasurer and to the Executive Council.

Composition

JOHN KEARNS, Chair of Training Committee

Kazimierz Wielki University, Bydgoszcz
Ireland
[]

John Kearns is Associate Professor at the Kazimierz Wielki University, Bydgoszcz, Poland. His main area of research is translator education, the subject on which he completed his doctoral studies at Dublin City University. He has edited the collections New Vistas in Translator and Interpreter Training (ITIA, 2006) and Translator and Interpreter Training: Issues, Methods and Debates (Continuum, 2008), is general editor of the journal Translation Ireland and reviews editor for The Interpreter and Translator Trainer. He is currently working on relations between translation and autism/Asperger’s Syndrome. He has worked extensively as a translator from Polish to English and divides his time between Ireland and Poland.

DIEUDONNÉ PROSPER AROGA BESSONG, Training Committee Member

Alliance biblique,
Centre de traduction
Yaoundé, Cameroon

[]

Born in 1953 in Cameroon, Dieudonné P. Aroga Bessong is in his fifth year as Translation Consultant with the United Bible Societies in charge of Bible translation projects in Cameroon. He teaches Socioloinguistics and Bible translation at the Faculty of Theology of the Christian Missionary Alliance in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Prior to this, he spent some twenty years as Senior Translator, then Reviser and Liaison Bureau Head with the Presidency of the Republic of Cameroon. He also served on occasion with organizations such as the WHO Africa Office and the Economic Council for Africa. He is President of the Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters of Cameroon. He has published a number of articles in local and foreign journals. He holds an MA in Translation and a PhD in Sociolinguistics from the University of Montreal. His main interests are Sociolinguistics and Bible translation.

:::Back to Top:::

JORGE DÍAZ CINTAS, Training Committee Member

University of Surrey Roehampton
United Kingdom

[]

Jorge Díaz-Cintas is presently working at the University of Surrey, London, where he is programme convenor of the BA/BSc Translation and lectures on Subtitling, Translation and Interpreting. Before starting employment at Roehampton, he worked as a translation and terminology assistant at the European Parliament in Luxembourg and was a visiting lecturer in several universities in London.
His main area of research is audiovisual translation. Jorge is the author of La traducción audiovisual: el subtitulado (Salamanca: Almar, 2001) and Teoría y práctica de la subtitulación (Barcelona: Ariel, 2003) a multimedia project with a DVD incorporating clips from several films and a subtitling programme. He also works as a freelance translator and interpreter and has been invited to talk on translation at institutions and universities in Belgium, Brazil, Ecuador, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Jorge us the president of the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST) and a member of the Advisory Board of the journals Linguistica Antverpiensia and The Journal of Specialised Translation.

:::Back to Top:::

DOROTHY KELLY, Training Committee Member

Universidad de Granada
Spain

[]

Dorothy Kelly is senior lecturer in Translation at the University of Granada, where she coordinates a programme of doctoral studies in Translating and Interpreting entitled “Traducción, Sociedad y Comunicación”. She obtained her first degree in Translating and Interpreting at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh (Scotland), and her doctoral degree from the University of Granada. Her main research interests are translator training and directionality in translation. She has edited La traducción y la interpretación en España hoy: perspectivas profesionales (2000) and La direccionalidad en Traducción e Interpretación (2003). She is currently series editor of Translation Practices Explained at St Jerome Publishing.

:::Back to Top:::

DON KIRALY, Training Committee Member

University of Mainz
Germany

Don Kiraly acquired experience as a language teacher in France and Spain and then completed his graduate work in foreign language teaching in the US. He has been teaching courses in translation, applied linguistics and pedagogy at the University of Mainz (Germany) since 1984, and he has been a freelance translator for almost 20 years. He has published on cognitive translation processes, foreign language teaching and translator education, and is the author of Pathways to Translation: Pedagogy and Progress(1995) and A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education(2000). Don has taught on a number of international training courses for translator trainers over the past 10 years, including the summer certificate courses held in Monterey (2001, 2002), Tarragona (2001, 2004), Vicenza (2002), and Vic (2004).

:::Back to Top:::

DEFENG LI, Training Committee Member

Chinese University
of Hong Kong
China

[]

Defeng Li is an Associate Professor at the Department of Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has taught, researched and published in such areas as translation theory, translator training, specialized translation (e.g. business translation, journalistic translation), and translation process. Currently, he takes a special interest in translation research methodology and data-based qualitative translation research. Apart from translation studies, he also researches in second language education, particularly second language writing, CLT application in Asian countries, second language teacher education, and computer-assisted language learning. He is now serving as vice-president of the Pacific Computer-Assisted Language Learning Association. His articles have appeared in Target, Meta, Babel, Perspectives, Journal of Translation Studies, TESOL Quarterly, Teaching and Teacher Education.

:::Back to Top:::

BRIAN MOSSOP, Training Committee Member

Canadian Government Translation Bureau,
York University
Toronto, Canada

[]

Born in London, England in 1946, Brian Mossop has a Master’s degree in linguistics from the University of Toronto, where his specialty was Canadian Aboriginal languages.
A Certified Translator, he has been a French-to-English translator, reviser and trainer at the Canadian Government’s Translation Bureau since 1974. Since 1979, he also been a part-time instructor at the York University School of Translation, where he has taught revision, scientific translation, translation theory and translation into the second language.
He is the author of Revising and Editing for Translators (St Jerome 2001) and his interests include translators’ workplace procedures, the peculiarities of translational language production, and the pedagogy of professional development.
He was a founding member of the Canadian Association for Translation Studies, and chaired the Program Committee for its annual meeting from 1991 to 1995.

:::Back to Top:::

HELGE NISKA, Training Committee Member

University of Stockholm
Sweden

[]

Helge Niska is a lecturer at the Tolk-och översättarinstitutet, the Institute for Interpretation and Translation Studies at Stockholm University. His background is in community interpreting and he has organised interpreter training and accreditation at local and central government levels. He currently teaches theory of interpreting, terminology, and computer-aided translation. He is also involved in national and EU projects concerning interpreting and translation and is currently researching interpreting from a discourse analytical point of view.

:::Back to Top:::

PATRICIA WILLSON, Training Committee Member

Universidad de Buenos Aires,
Instituto de Enseñanza Superior en Lenguas Vivas
Buenos Aires, Argentina

[]

Patricia Willson was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1958. From 1999 until 2003 she was a Research Fellow of Fundación Antorchas. Her main research field is literary translation in Argentina (XXth century) and her doctoral research has focused on translation during the publishing boom in Argentina in the 1940s and the 1950s. She is currently a Professor of Literary Translation (French-Spanish) and Theory of Translation at the Instituto de Enseñanza Superior en Lenguas Vivas "Juan Ramón Fernández", Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is also a Lecturer in XXth Century Argentine Literature at Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires. Patricia Willson has translated into Spanish, among other authors, Ferdinand de Saussure, Paul Ricoeur, Luce Irigaray, Slavoj Zizek, and is currently translating Roland Barthes.

:::Back to Top:::