Chapter 2: Translation Pedagogy and the Concept of Competence
2.6 Other Important Issues on Translation Training
Any planning for translation training can not be effective without consideration of its relation to its objectives and requirements. One of the realities of the translation training framework is the lack of a clear-cut position, i.e. recognition of the significance of the educational course for translators. We shall now turn to the practical application and evaluation of market-related translation and translator competences to show how society tries to accept and define translation pedagogy. In the second part, training teachers will be focused upon.as the main requirement of translation courses that has been mentioned before.
2.6.1 Translation Training and the Market
The effectiveness of translation training for vocational purposes has not been clearly proven.
Debates on translation training in academia have contributed to consolidating the assumption that translation skills are either fundamental or fruitless and irrelevant, and range from regarding it as a necessity, even to hostility. The tendency towards hostility was initially prevalent according to Kearns (2008, p. 185) who asserts that ‘[m]uch writing on translator training has started out by being hostile to the other idea of translators being trained in a specific kind of university environment’.
Market demands have normally been at odds with academic pursuits. Translation, in most academic contexts, does not, consequently, have a strong link to the market (see e.g. the concept of ‘language in the real world’ compared with that considered in the classroom, as stated by Kearns (2008, p. 199). Kearn continues that ‘university departments are focused on language in the abstract, language in linguistics, language in literature, and emphatically not language in the
‘real world’. Camindae and Pym (2001, p. 283) argue that ‘a series of reforms in the 1980s and early 1990s removed many barriers between vocational and academic education in virtually all fields’. While they discuss the impact of this unity in translation training followed by a booming increase in the number of translation institutions, they raise the other aspect of that conflict, not in the name of hostility but with the titles ‘concerns’ and ‘accusation’. They state that critics refer to graduates’ lack of competence in some educational factors such as teaching language
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rather than translation, and their emphasis on impractical theories (ibid.). On the other hand, all the newly established translation quality control institutions have been shown to be independent of universities. This could be good evidence that agrees with Camindae and Pym, that some complaints regarding a lack of professional standards may be true. Mostly there is a wall between translator teachers, translation researchers at universities and translation practitioners in the industry. The importance of coordination of academia with the market, nevertheless, is matter of great concern. Moreover, there is no clear answer to how we could harmonise a four-year BA or one to two year Master’s translation course with the actual demands of the market.
Relatively little research has been carried out into aspects of the usefulness of courses on vocational grounds. Kearns (2008, p. 185) suggests that the reason behind the lack of research into those aspects is linked to the fact that academics are at the service of societies rather than markets. Overall, it is more difficult to assess translation training’s effectiveness because the measures of competence by which it could be assessed are inevitably less clear-cut (being subject to variations of taste, time, culture and theoretical approach) than in other areas of non-academic vocation, like driving or calligraphy.
In his recent contribution to the role and capability of academia for translator training, Pym argues more optimistically, that the process of translation training could be as flexible and market-friendly as the process of manufacture of a car, with translators learning to cater to the clients’ special demands as a car manufacturer would, by providing the client ‘with the desired colour and series of extras’ (2011, pp. 481-482). This idealistic view of training is not the aim of this study. However, we could see the academic definition of translation pedagogy as defined based on specific requirements, followed by an expectation of the notion of competence. The approach of looking at competence, in view of the objective of this study, will inevitably shift to translation-training-related issues which, as mentioned, are translation strategies.
2.6.2 Training the Trainers
Another dilemma in the area of translation education is finding appropriate translator trainers corresponding to specific academic objectives. The recent flourishing of educational courses in translation and Translation Studies have made the issue of defining ‘higher competence’
involved in the process of translation, a vital task, which has influenced the selection and training
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of translation teachers. Here, some questions that come to the mind are: Should a translator teacher, trainer, educator or tutor be aware of all the related knowledge and skills required by students? Could we introduce or train different teachers with different expertise to be involved in various aspects of improving translation sub-competences? To what extent is training the trainers essential and significant?
Despite the existence of more than 300 academic centres for translation education around the globe (Davies and Kiraly 2006, p. 81; Pym 2011, p. 477), there has still not been a single report of any university-based degree programme for training translator trainers or educators (Davies and Kiraly 2006, p. 81). On the other hand, academic obligations and conventions hinder not only the recruitment of potential trainers, but also, to some degree, their collaboration with universities. Professional translators, even those with degrees up to Master’s level, do not qualify for teaching posts, which are generally given to PhD holders from other fields like philology, linguistics or language teaching methodology. Moreover, the PhD programmes in Translation Studies that have been developed globally, rarely match the functional requirements and pragmatic definition of a system of training that seeks to improve several translation sub-competences. PhD holders according to the current convention, have proved to be effective researchers and lectures, but less competent trainers.
In Spain, there were no Translation Studies graduates until 1995, although serious modern translation courses started in 1987 (González Davies 2004, p. 70). A combination of freelance part-time and permanent full-time staff (translators with university degrees and PhD holders in philology) were chosen to run courses, to address the pedagogic needs of the degrees. González Davies mentions that philology-based teachers ‘wish to see more linguistics and literature in the curriculum’ despite the needs and requests of their students (ibid.).
In section 2.5 we saw that almost all translation teachers in Iran have not taken any teacher translation courses. It seems that it has mainly been related to the lack of such courses in the country as the global tradition. Two of the teachers have also stated they have passed a module only in their higher education system in Iran one in MA and one in PhD course. (Table 2-6: rows 5 and 14).
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2.7 Concluding Remarks
In this Chapter the two main models of translation training were studied with a specific consideration of the notion of competence through the discussion of different related viewpoints.
It was argued that how strategy-based model as the best suggested method could be of higher benefit for improving translation competence. Among the four requirements of a translator to be considered as a competent one, we presumed that language competence is being followed by excessive emphasis. However, the main requirementand also the most translation-training-related necessity, i.e. teaching the skills, has always been overshadowed.
A practical study has been carried out by the researcher to realize the current academic trends in translation training through the analysis of the questionnaires filled by translation teachers, confirmed the above claim regarding the insufficient attention to the main requirement. The study also revealed that traditional methods of training are still popular in translation courses in Iran, while the necessity for a strategy-based method was not deemed essential by the teachers.
In order to achieve the translation training objectives, designing a theoretical perspective as well as defining a practical methodology could be the first steps to reach the major milestones in translation pedagogy while considering the courses for market demand. The next step could be planning and running the proper teacher training course, in which the notion of the translation competence will be reconceived. The methodological framework for the investigation of the significance of educational strategies which is also a key concept of this study will be explored in the next chapter.
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