1

Katan, D. (2008) “University Training, Competencies and the Death of the Translator: Problems in

Professionalizing translation and in the Translation Profession”. In Tradurre: Formazione e Professione,

(eds.) M.T. Musacchio e G. H. Sostero, Padova, CLEUP, pp. 113-140

Draft Copy

University Training, Competencies and the Death of the Translator:

Problems in Professionalizing translation and in the Translation Profession

The problem

„We‟, that is academic departments concerned with translation in Italy, are only just beginning to

make explicit what we retain important for our students. New ministry directives have appended

“the Dublin Descriptors” (D.M. 22/10/2007) with their extremely long Italian equivalents. The very

idea of detailing, subdividing and listing abilities and competencies for university graduates is an

import, and has as an ideological basis: the belief that not only can we list specific competencies,

but indeed must list them to survive and to grow. The listing entails standardization across the

board, clarity and transparency - and is procedure driven. A prevalent corso monografico, on the

other hand, is based more on the individual and particular expertise of the docente in question and

takes a more holistic approach to university and study. Ladmiral (cited in Koby and Baer 2003: viii)

has termed this approach the “performance magistrale”, whereby the professor imparts information

which the student is invited to process. Instead of breaking components down to bite-sized parts a

student is treated to a full education. Having said that, the performance magistrale, when not in the

form of a lecture but practical translation, does tend to be bite-sized in terms of the text.

Traditionally, students take it in turn to translate a text sentence by sentence. This “WTNS”,

“Who‟ll take the next sentence” approach (Kiraly 2005: 1100; see also Kelly 2005: 97) then serves

as the springboard for the lecturer‟s verdict magistrale, which then can turn into a complete

performance magistrale.

As Don Kiraly (2005: 1101) states, there is now a schism between “the mainstream [magistrale]

„information processing‟” approach and the “situated cognitive perspective” which sees the

acquisition of translation competence as “predictable, programmable and essentially a sum of its

parts. From this perspective, the learning mind accumulates increments of knowledge and skills in a

linear, sequential, predictable and pre-definable manner”. 1

What is of particular relevance to us

here is Geoffrey Koby and Brian James Baer‟s comment (2003: 212) “The performance magistrale

is increasingly inappropriate to the training of the contemporary language professional”. Certainly

many, if not most, translation scholars writing today see “translation competence as the sum of

several sub-competencies” (Alves and Gonçalves 2003: 4). We should, of course, remember that

this belief comes from the habitus of an American, and not Italian, translation world. Though the

Italian translation profession itself is bowing to global culture business practices, we cannot simply

take it for granted that the national university system in general, and academic staff in particular,

can or wish to adopt this approach. The performance magistrale is deeply rooted in the Italian

culture.

Yet, there are weighty economic reasons that have begun to enforce attempts to reform education at

the third level. A full education comes at a price, and in Italy that price is rendering the country‟s

workforce uncompetitive. The photograph for the year 2002 was as follows: “Italy is still in last

place among the industrialised countries as regards the number of young people, aged 25 to 34,

holding higher education qualifications: 12% compared with 39% in the United States, 37% in

1 This schism is also nicely shown in Alan Bennett‟s The History Boys, which demonstrates that the dominant Anglo-

American perspective is not without its heroic detractors.

2

France, 33% in the UK and 22% in Germany” (Almalaurea 2005). Those who actually entered

university either never graduated (47%), or did so late (after 6-7 years); and 20% of those who did

finally graduate were still looking for a job after 5 years. The proportion still unemployed dropped

to 8% at the age of 30 compared, though, to a UK 2%. Results of a pilot study for the SSLMIT,

Trieste (unpublished) showed the same late start in employment, but with negligible unemployment

after the first year. However, few of those in work could claim to be „translators‟ (and even fewer,

interpreters).

Basically, as many have noted (Fraser 2000: 51; Schäffner 2004 a and b, Mauriello in Kiraly 2005),

the market is not particularly interested in the university-trained translator. Kiraly (2005: 1101)

believes that the reasons for this lie squarely with the traditional performance magistrale in the

classroom which tends to “decontextualize and disembody the translating process”. The result is, he

claims, a vague “some sort of „translator competence‟” which fails to impress employers looking

for autonomous semi-professionals.

So, Italian university course planners are being obliged to literally “take stock”, and to begin to

consider two relatively new realities. The first, as embedded in the Bologna declaration, is that

university education cannot be viewed as an end in itself but as specifically job oriented: “il titolo

concesso dopo il primo ciclo deve essere, oltre ad una qualifica adatta, rilevante nell‟ambito del

mercato europeo” (Tauch 2006). And so, for example, at a 2004 meeting of university deans

(Conferenza dei Presidi, 2004, emphasis added) it was deemed necessary “di pensare nuove lauree

per formare nuove professionalità”. They duly noted, for example, that Turin has now implemented

a course entitled: “Mediazione linguistica per l’integrazione e i servizi sociali”. This course is now

one of many with the professional ambit in the title. „Integration‟ and „social services‟ implies

training students to work as cultural mediators, between the immigrant communities and the Italian

state (administration, legal and social services). However, the British experience of offering

undergraduate courses “with a vocational emphasis” (Fraser 2000: 51) since the 1990s has, as

already mentioned, failed to impress employers.

Secondly, and in particular for translation courses, there is increasing competition for students.

Until a few years ago, the number of university departments in Italy offering translation could be

counted on one hand (the Trieste and Forlì Schools for Interpreters and Translators plus a few

private universities). Today, as a result of the university reform in Italy, all universities are obliged

to offer courses according to ministerial tables which, in the case of languages at the triennio level

automatically includes translation. So, just about every one of the 80 odd universities in Italy,

including Trieste and Forlì, will be2 offering the same 3-year “classe 38: lingue moderne per la

comunicazione e la cooperazione ” course, and about 15 universities will offer a second level

“classe 94: traduzione specialistica e interpretariato” course. The traditional schools for interpreters

(on paper) now only really differ from other universities at the second level and only then because

they have activated specialist degrees in interpreting. So, students now have much more choice if

they are interested in languages and translation. Not only that, students today are much more career

conscious than previous generations. Making a course look attractive today means demonstrating

how it will boost a future graduate‟s opportunities in work tomorrow. And here comes the real rub.

A „translator”‟, and I use the term advisedly, today is treated badly, both in terms of the professional

respect and the pay.

Anthony Pym (2000) divides the market into 3 segments, pointing out that at the “most numerous

bottom end of the market (bottom because numerous), countless poorly paid translation jobs are

2 The new classification will probably come into force around 2009. At the end of 2007, the situation was: a 3 year

“classe 3: scienza della mediazione linguistica” course, and 16 universities which offered s second level “classe 104/S:

traduzione letteraria e tecnico-scientifica” course.

3

being carried out by students, recent graduates, friends-of-friends-of-clients, or variously

incompetent or indifferent part-timers, who may or may not have university training in the language

concerned, as translators or otherwise. Fatally, the remuneration for this broad underclass is usually

just enough to keep them studying.” University training, Pym continues, is aimed at providing

graduates at the second “reasonably comfortable” niche level of “contracted literary translators,

established freelancers, salaried language professionals in non-technical fields, part-time conference

interpreters, bilingual secretaries to middle-management and above, and tenured academic staff,

including the ones who teach translation”. This level, though, is now uncomfortably threatened with

extinction – at least as far as the university trained translator is concerned.

In fact, to use Ruqaiya Hasan‟s (1989) terminology, this second level is rapidly losing “professional

autonomy”. Autonomy refers to the ability to make decisions, regarding the process, the product,

and about (and over) other people. Hasan divides the working world into one comprising HAPS

(Higher Autonomous Professionals) and LAPS (Lower Autonomy Professionals). The bottom end

of the translation market has always been LAP. However, there seems to be little doubt that this

second, reasonably comfortable niche translator level is merging with the bottom level in terms of

autonomy and pay due to the burgeoning emergence of the third (or top level). In fact, Pym (2002b;

see also Pym 2006) notes that the localization projects (the core of the 3rd

level) are leaving the

translators “with the most boring work and the slimmer pay-cheques”. This, then, is the paradox in

the title of the paper, to which I will return. But for now, assuming that we want to train

“translators”, what, indeed, are the competences that are needed?

Translation competency

Translation competence has been a dominant theme since the beginning of the 1990s (for overviews

see Baer and Koby 2000; Pym 2002a; PACTE 2003; Schäffner and Adab 2000). The first area of

contention, befitting the linguistic community, is semantic. Dorothy Kelly (2005: 31) notes: “Some

of the controversy around the concept of translation/translator competence lies within the term itself

[…] some authors avoid it altogether, preferring „abilities‟, „components of expertise‟, or others.

The concept is also used for multiple purposes”. In their „Introduction‟ to Developing Translation

Competencies Schäffner and Adab (2000: x) suggest that the term should simply act “as a

superordinate, a cover term and summative concept for the overall performance ability which seems

so difficult to define”. Alves and Gonçalves (2003: 4), repeat an earlier definition by Alves, which

again contains a similar view of competence: “all the knowledge, abilities and strategies a

successful translator masters and which will lead to an adequate performance of translation tasks”.

The real problem, though, is that although “There is general agreement in the literature that

translation ability is not an innate human skill […] there is considerable disagreement about the

nature and distribution of translation ability” (Shreves in Alves, et al 2001: 47). Not only is there

disagreement, but Campbell (1998: 6) and PACTE (2003), for example, criticise the very basis and

lack of empiricism behind the many studies , their “eclectism” and the fact that they omit the

translation competencies required for translating into the second language.

Pym‟s paper (2002a) on redefining translation competence within the ambit of translator training

cites at least 30 publications devoted to the subject. His conclusion is that “there is no neat

definition of all the things that translators need to know and will be called upon to do”. He also cold

shoulders what he calls “the multi-component idea” so crucial to the situated cognitive perspective:

“a huge summation […] of components”, which he variously calls “a soup” and “labyrinths” all

“churning” “simple desiderata” from linguistic to psycho-physiological strategic competences,

possibly also including “the strategic benefits of wearing a good suit and tie” all of which “feed into

complex professional profiles”.

4

The reason for Pym‟s dislike of the soup was not because he is an avid supporter of the

performance magistrale, but principally because “any number of things can be included under the

label of „translation competence‟”. Beeby (2000: 185, emphasis in the original) observes the same

problem suggesting that the number of sub competencies “seem to include the world, the universe

and everything”. This is absolutely true, for two main reasons. First, professional translators have to

be “the polyhistors in an age of specialization. Their mindset is an assemblage of everything that is

worth communicating from one lingua-culture to another” (Neubert: 2000: 3; see also Scarpa 2001

197). Second, the academic study of translation, in attempting to find a habitus of its own, is taking

in as a sub-competence almost every other discipline there is. Maria Tymoczko is extremely clear:

translation is, as she says, “an open concept” (2005:1085): “This task of defining translation is not

finished and it will continue to be a central trajectory of translation research in the decades to come”

(2005: 1084). Yet Kelly (2005: 32) is categorical in stating that university training must start from a

multi-componential list: “courses can only work if they are clear on what their objectives are.

Whether on not that list of objectives or intended outcomes uses the term „competence‟ seems

secondary”. Fortunately, Pym‟s (2006) taste for soup changes. “It is”, he says with remarkable

aplomb “easy enough to recognise „translation competence‟ and break that down into aptitudes,

skills and knowledge that a translator should have in order to be a competent translator. An

institution can then use that model in order to set about training translators”.

Which, presumably, leaves individual institutions free to strain the soup (in more than one sense)

and extract those aspects relevant to individual particular situations (or, as Pym points out - tenured

posts), so that we have a clear idea of what our students will be able to do (or will have learnt to do)

at the end of three or five years. My own example multicomponential list for the specialised course

in translation in Lecce is organised as follows (see appendix for further details):

LINGUA-CULTURE SPECIFIC COMPETENCIES Textual competence Extralinguistic competence TRANSLATION COMPETENCIES General Transfer/Mediation competence Strategic Transfer/Mediation competence Instrumental/Professional competence

However, though it might seem useful to work through this list, the reader should note that first it is

a reworking of the many lists already published (as outlined by Pym 2002a, Schäffner 2004,

PACTE 2003) and second, it reflects my own „pick n‟mix‟ bias towards cross-cultural

communication. In fact, as Wolfram Wilss (2004: 13) purports that there may well never be one

“single approach to translation teaching which is, even theoretically, capable of organizing this vast

plurality of concerns and specializations”

So, in this paper, it would seem more productive to consider the relationship between university

training, the role and function of the professional translator, and market needs, There are a number

of questions to address. First, to what extent is university a vocational training centre, and to what

extent is or should the university be „market driven‟? If vocation and market is a factor, then what

can or should a graduate after a cost of 3 or 5 years expect to be able to benefit in terms of

professional autonomy and pay? Wilss (1996: 6) asks the same question: “What is the cash value of

academically based translator training?” This question then takes us back to the HAP/LAP status of

a translator and the market.

University training

The Bologna Declaration aside, a university has never been a professional or vocational training

centre (see also Bernardini‟s distinction, 2004: 19-20). It has traditionally been both more and less.

5

A university education has always centred on education, reasoning and debate to form the mind. A

popularly quoted treatise on the subject by John Henry Cardinal Newman (1966), given originally

in 1852 on the occasion of the founding of the Catholic University of Dublin, begins: “The view

taken of a University in these Discourses is the following: that it is a place of teaching universal

knowledge. This implies that its object is, on the one hand, intellectual, not moral; and, on the other,

that it is the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the advancement." In short, a

university is not about teaching (moral) rules about good translation practice, but is about educating

students through active use of intellect about the universe of translation. A slight sleight of tense

here reveals this writer‟s conviction that what has been the case should remain a solid premise for

university education in the future, and not be up for negotiation when designing university courses

to attract students. Enticingly, González Davies (2004: 74) reports that “recent research seems to

point to the fact that students who follow a course on Translation Theories in their first year

perform better than those who do not do the course until later”. Clearly, if university-based

translation courses are to prosper then further solid statistical research will be necessary to prove the

benefit of their existence.

But, for now, taking the cardinal‟s words as cast in stone, the translation profession should be seen

as an integral part, but not the whole, of the translation universe. This does not mean as Mirko

Silvestrini (this conference) cogently put it that a translation course should centre on

intellectualising about the translation of Baudelaire to the exclusion of the „moral‟ guidelines for the

translation of technical specifications. Both form part of the universe, which has a past, a present

and a future and comprises both theories and practices. We should also remember, as Anderman

and Rogers (2000: 68) point out, that academic study of translation is also important for those who

do not wish to follow the profession, but who wish to remain in the academic field. So, in short, a

university course should not be market driven, but must be market aware.

However, market awareness does not easily fit into an undergraduate degree programme within the

umbrella of a faculty of languages. First, „we‟ as academics are not, full-time professional

translators, nor are we at the forefront of technological development. There is, it is true, a small

minority of teachers who can claim to be at the cutting-edge of web design, corpora or CAT tools,

though most of us dabble; and most of us work, at most, part time as freelance translators. Along

side this is the fact that change in technology is still moving at an exponential pace. Let us, for

example, go back to 1995 and imagine designing a new market-driven course for a full 5 year

course beginning in 1997. We know that the majority of our students will take an extra year or two

to graduate at the second level due to the sheer quantity of exams, and the semi obligatory six-

month Erasmus period. Oddly, this essential time spent abroad is never officially sandwiched within

the structure of Italian courses (see instead Schäffner‟s (2000: 146; 2004a: 123) description of the

sensible sandwich structure at Aston).

As I write, in 2006/7, all our graduates will be at work, using the skills they learned at university.

However, when we designed our course programme back in 1995, cyberculture or netculture was a

term, not reality, and Windows was only about to be launched along with the first version of

„Internet Explorer‟. The few modems buzzed slowly enough and infrequently enough to make

electronic text transmission slow, and floppies were still floppy. Google was a Phd thesis awaiting

its viva. Equally incredibly, it now seems, translators at the Canadian government Translation

Bureau only had desktop access to „Google‟ in 1999 (Mossop: 2006: 13); essential translation

forums such as „Proz.com‟ also had to wait until 1999. In terms of CAT tools, „Trados‟ and

„Multiterm‟ had only just been released for „Windows‟; and „Babelfish‟ did not go online until 1997

- the same year that „Lionbridge‟ and localisation took off. And, finally, corpora had yet to be

considered as a translation tool.

6

What will happen in 5 to 10 years‟ time? As Pym (2002a) states, “technology will always be one or

two steps ahead of any multicomponential list”, or as Bernardini (2004: 21) tells us, the technology

learnt in the classroom “quickly becom[es] obsolete”. This built-in obsolescence can only increase

for “the dabblers” due to the fact that technological shifts are still taking place at an exponential

pace. If we then go towards the end of the translator‟s career, to the year 2046, then we might be

forced to agree with Pier-Pascale Boulanger‟s (2005) slightly categorical opening statement during

the conference “Professional Education of 21st Century Translators and Interpreters: “For the first

time in the history of humanity, the majority of the skills acquired by a person at the beginning of

his or her professional career will be obsolete by the end”. The same, of course, applies for the

terminology and types of specialised languages that a translator learns at university.

Hence, it is clear that specific competences in evolving applications, languages and technologies

cannot easily be taught at university. Instead, they can be more efficiently acquired during on-going

in-service training programmes, or through short quick-injection ad-hoc courses dedicated to

particular themes delivered by current experts in that particular field. Anderman and Rogers (2000:

68), in fact, suggest that “short specialist training courses may be placed with potential employers

or with professional associations […] while academic institutions provide the introduction to more

broadly defined fields”. Schäffner‟s study of “The Contribution of Universities to the Needs of the

Profession” (2004b) suggests much the same.

In short, then, translator training is a life long activity, which begins but does not end with

university training. Teague (cited in Scarpa 2001: 197) calls this “retooling”, which does not mean

that „we‟ can go on as before and pass the new-training buck totally on to industry. Minako

O'Hagan and David Ashworth, in the Introduction to their book on Translation-Mediated

Communication in a Digital World, published way back in 2002 (xi) are clear: “translators need to

acquire a new set of skills and new knowledge”.

One thing is clear, links between the market and academia must be strengthened. In fact, according

to Ulrych (1995: 252) “Trends in translation pedagogy are increasingly in favour of interfacing

vocational and educational components, based on the premises that 'serious' training is never

divorced from long-term educational commitments." There are a number of possible ways in which

this can be done. First, following Kiraly‟s (2005: 1102) “empowerment approach to translator

education”, students should be working where possible on (or at least role-playing) real projects for

organisations actually in need of a translation (see also Ulrych 1995: 252). Second, industry

representatives should become regular visitors, giving talks and workshops (see Schäffner 2004b

for further industry options). „Trados‟, for example, willingly give practical seminars on how to use

their software in return for advertising space The „Scuola Interpreti‟ in Trieste refused to accept the

price of a „Trados‟ link on their website, and I certainly understand the problems for a future

“Trados course of Translation”, a “Mediaset course in dubbing”, and a “Sky TV” sponsorship of

British Culture Studies; or worse, the “McDonalds Quarter Pounder Faculty of Languages”.

However some changes are clearly necessary if the university wishes to be the favoured provider of

HAPs.

Thirdly, all student work-experience or study placements should be geared to include mandatory

work in a translation agency, or at least in an organisation which is professionally organised to

manage translations. This would also, at least partially, resolve one constant complaint of past

translation graduates: low preparation for the profession. This preparation includes, apart from the

application of the new technology of the day, project management (the subdivision of a commission

into many components requiring coordinated, and often distant, team work) and such practical areas

such as tariffs and billing. Even more importantly it should open the students‟ eyes to the fact that

“translation” is probably the least used word in the language service provider profession.

7

Training for change

Things have indeed changed. For centuries, the translation universe was stable both in terms of

process (either free or faithful) and in terms of product (paper to paper via paper resources, such as

a dictionary). Now the translation universe has grown to offer ever increasing process options as it

becomes increasingly transdisciplinary and now takes advantage of (or is subservient to) the digital

age (c.f. Boulanger 2005; Tymoczko 2005).

So, we now have, as Mossop (2006: 10) notes, after centuries of stasis, “the integration of the

translation into industry”. He goes on to cite Gouadec‟s 16 indicators of the industrialisation of

translation. They can be grouped into:

use of new technologies and globalisation

quantity of material and of language service providers

standardization

company organization: division of labour.

In fact, Mackenzie (2004) suggests that translation competencies should be subdivided according to

the professional process as follows:

Competence in:

assessing client needs; analysis of the (translation) situation;

research to find solutions;

response/solution, production (of client text)

evaluation, client management (revision, feedback)

As Michael Agar (2005: 23) explains, talking about “complex systems”: “Stability is no longer the

norm, with change as the exceptional event. Now change is the norm, with stability as exceptional”,

due to “the increased connections, interactions and feedback loops that our accelerating processes of

globalization have brought, and are still bringing about. Any organization, any node, in the global

network can now expect frequent perturbations from God knows where, God knows when”.

Change and its attendant uncertainty affect the entire universe of translation. For a start, a

permanent job is not the norm (c.f. EU Job Opportunities 2006). The freelance and temporary

position trend can only increase due to the increasing acceptance of “market ideology” (Mossop

2006: 5) in translation, with both supply and demand exploiting the global nature of commission

tendering. Brian Mossop (2006: 4-5) shows, for example, how the Canadian Bureau of Translation

has steadily begun to outsource from the heyday of in-house translators at the beginning of the

1980s to today:

Year Millions of

words translated

% of work

outsourced

1979 254 12.5%

1984 300 25%

1993 315 50%

Clearly, change and uncertainty are part and parcel of the commission itself. In particular for

novice translators, the job may cover any aspect of language that requires translation within a

constantly expanding number of mediums. Hours of work are also dependent on client needs, to be

completed in real time, rather than during office hours.

As to the work itself, translators need to be pro-active with a life-long interest in, as mentioned

above, “retooling” new language and technologies. They must be ready to critically review and

operate new software and programming tools as they come on the market in ever more sophisticated

8

mediums, such as the use of “hyper realities” where “multisensory information” (O‟Hagan and

Ashworth 2002: 146-150) has to be translated. Similarly, Bernardini (2004; 21), highlights

“resourcefulness”, and the ability “to cope with new and unexpected challenges, and the need to

acquire new resources autonomously”.

All of this requires a translator‟s innate tolerance of uncertainty (Hofstede 1991: 109-137; Katan

2004: 242), or “disposition” (Campbell 1998); “reflective attitude” (Schäffner (2004a); “attitudinal

competence” (Kiraly (2000), and “creativity” (Koller, cited in Pym 2002a). These are all signs of a

translator‟s willingness to take risks in the translation itself, to create a new text, rather than the

technically safe (re)copying view of translation (see Katan 2004: 167-170). Baer and Koby (2003:

vii-viii) also note the need to train “translators who are capable of the flexibility, teamwork and

problem-solving that are essential for success in the contemporary language industry, not to

mention the creativity and independent thinking that have always been the hallmark of the finest

translators”. For students translating into their second language, as Campbell (1998: 124-5) notes,

risk-taking is not so much a sign of willingness but of the ability to move away from the mot juste

or sense for sense towards a feel for cohesion and rhetorical organisation at the level of text, which

he terms (after Bachman) textual competence (1998: 60-61).

If a translator is not encouraged to experiment, to provide creative alternatives at university (and

then assess them) then she will never have the opportunity to do so. By the time a translator enters

the profession, she will only have time to produce one version. This idea of creating alternatives

takes us to Pym‟s (2002a) minimalist behavioural definition of translator competence: “the ability

to generate a series of more than one viable target texts [and] the ability to select only one viable TT

from this series quickly and with justifiable confidence”, which he believes (or believed) is the only

competence that is truly a translation competence. Training for change also includes, apart from

openness to life-long learning, disposition to the uncertainty in the professional market and risk

taking in translating texts, and openness to “the other” language(s) and culture(s) (see Katan 2004).

As regards how or what actually to teach in the classroom to ensure that these competencies are

reached is beyond the scope of this paper. However, there are a number of points that need at least

to be mentioned. First, many in the teaching profession believe that while language, specialised

language competence and translation competencies are “developmental” (e.g. Campbell 1998: 70;

Chesterman 2000: 77) - disposition/attitudinal competence is not, and is quite possibly not

teachable (see Katan 2001; Kelly 2005: 64). Equally, many in the business training profession are

convinced that all aspects of attitudinal competence can be trained, including “change

management”. Of course, as mentioned at the beginning of this paper, these beliefs are very much

culture-bound, with most of the change-management trainers being, or adopting, an Anglo-

American orientation to learning.

Clearly „we‟ also need to move away from the performance magistrale model if we are to produce

the autonomous semi-professionals, already accustomed to uncertainty and risk. Yet, Penelope

Sewell (2004: 157) suggests that translation courses are popular because they provide a haven of

security, and (particularly in comparison with communicative language teaching) “certainty”. Baer

and Koby (2003: vii-viii, emphasis in the original) in their introduction to Beyond the Ivory Tower

are categorical: “the real loser in this debate […] about curricular content continues to be the whole

question of how to teach translation […] It may be, in fact that the how is as important, if not more

so than the what”. In Italy, though, ideas such as those suggested by Kiraly whereby the teacher

learns with the students are close to heresy. Following Hofstede‟s (1991: 37; 2000: 100-102)

description of high Power Distance countries, where “the teacher is guru”, to admit the need to learn

is tantamount to admitting that you are not fit to be a teacher – and face is lost.

9

Knowledge competencies

The PACTE group‟s research on the acquisition of translation competence underlines the

importance of “expert knowledge”. This comes from the distinction between „declarative‟ and

„procedural‟ knowledge for translators, or rather facts (knowing what) and strategies (knowing how).

Margherita Ulrych (2002: 201) clearly states “translators need … to possess the all-round

knowledge and competence of a declarative or factual nature over and above procedural knowledge

…” The PACTE group (2003: 47), on the other hand, sustain “translation competence […] is

primarily procedural knowledge, where strategies play a very important role”. And Maria González

Davies, (2004: 78) believes that undergraduate programmes should first concentrate on the

procedural knowledge, and leave the declarative to postgraduate programmes. Returning to Ulrych

(ibid), she does accept that “Together, declarative and procedural knowledge enable translators to

tackle the multifarious fields of discourse that come their way without necessarily having specific

content-based knowledge”. So, perhaps the divergence is more semantic than other. Basically, our

potential translators need to acquire procedural frames into which on-the-job specific texts can be

inserted, so that what has been learnt at university provides the translator with the orientation

necessary to tackle any commission. Elsewhere, Karl Weick (1995: 6) calls this competence

“sensemaking”, which “is about such things as placement of items into frameworks,

comprehending, redressing surprise, constructing meaning, interacting in pursuits of mutual

understanding, and patterning”.

A perfect example of this at the level of text is awareness of genre frameworks and patterns.

Awareness is built up through the collection and analysis of comparative texts, glossaries, corpora

and other terminological information. The PACTE group has stressed that this “documentation

competence” (later termed „information literacy‟) is an essential part of translational competence,

which they define as “the handling of information, defining needs, programming search, employing

strategies to locate and obtain information, sifting and evaluating information with a view to

decision-making” (Pinto, cited in Salvador 2006). The importance of sifting also means, as Pym

(2002a, emphasis in original) notes, that “students must […] be taught to mistrust websites”.

A clear example of the way in which the two types of knowledge differ was brought home very

sharply. At the SSLMIT in Trieste I asked a group of translation students during a lingua inglese

lesson to „translate‟ the invented English Jabberwocky poem by Lewis Carroll into current English.

This involved, as I had intended, the use of classic „text attack skills‟ (Nuttall 1986) to infer

meaning from the morphology, syntax and co-text. A few months later, I asked a similar group of

specialised translation students at the University of Lecce to do the very same thing. The students,

this time, unbidden took immediate advantage of Google,3 and within minutes had given me not

only definitions of all the invented words but the translation into Italian. None had even considered

analysing the original text. The students had arrived at a product but had not activated any strategies

for inferring meaning in a text - and were little the wiser as a result. Declarative knowledge had

increased a little while procedural knowledge had not. Equally, clearly, had the lesson had a

different aim, such as “first approaches to using Google”, then I would have been happy with the

result: verification of having learnt a procedure. In fact, it is thanks to my corpus linguistics oriented

predecessors that the students automatically turned to technology, demonstrating that they had

overcome the technophobia that my Triestine translation students had.

This incident, though, is indicative of the dark side of new technologies in general. As Pym (2002a),

for example, notes “the use of translation memories facilitates the unthinking repetition of previous

3 For the record, the Lecce students (15) had immediate (though unauthorised) access to computers in the room. The

Trieste students were given the task for homework, and not one (of the 10) used the internet. It should also be added

that many of the 2004-2005 intake of second level students at Trieste, as a result of the reform, came principally from

other universities, and were not first level translation students.

10

TTs [target texts], such that what is lacking […] is the active production of hypotheses, which is

clearly the side that our pedagogy should then emphasise”. This is echoed in Baer and Koby

(2003:x): “when introducing new technological skills, trainers may be tempted to impart only

„declarative knowledge‟, showing students which buttons to press, rather than the „procedural

knowledge‟ that will help them deal with the inevitable modifications and developments in that

technology”. In fact, Bianchi and Manca (forthcoming), note, in a controlled experiment, how their

(Lecce) translation students “took great advantage of the Clusters and Collocates feature offered by

Wordsmith Tools” but equally that student application of the software finished there: “if this

reliance on ready-made computational options helped them, it also sometimes refrained them from

looking at concordances and consequently from selecting lines, distinguishing between semantic

contexts, and noticing more „distant‟ collocates”. This being said, Bernardini (2004) argues

convincingly for a “corpus-aided language pedagogy”, using corpora as a means and not an end.

However, the necessarily surgical nature of corpora searches means that students may become

highly aware of which “nouns were followed by the preposition for” (2004: 104) but precious little

else, not exactly “high surrender value”.4

Yet, of course, as Pym (2006) also notes “We ignore technology at our peril. We must be there”.

The way out of this dilemma, as Koby and Baer (2003: 214; see also Schäffner 2004b) state is quite

simple “our fundamental pedagogical goal must be the acquisition of conceptual knowledge. Given

that the operating principles of the tool will change (often in months), students need to learn the

conceptual principles underlying each tool, so that they are able to look beyond differences in the

interface to find the basic similarities”. Exactly the same point is made by Scarpa (2001:196,

emphasis in the original, translation my own) regarding specialised languages: translation courses

must teach the student how to specialise rather than the specialization itself.

Apart from declarative what and procedural (conceptual) how knowledge, there is at least one other

type of knowledge in a neurological or Logical Levels system (Katan 2004: 52-57; O‟Connor 2001:

28-29): knowing why a particular decision should be taken when and where. This type of knowledge

is known variously as „heuristic‟ (Whatis.com), „informal‟ (Hall 1966) or „conditional‟ (Pierce

2003). Schäffner‟s (2004b) „operative‟ level is similar, apart from the fact that she includes the

„how‟ in with the „why‟. Bloom‟s taxonomy (Wikipedia) of education goals is an equally useful

way to discuss levels of translator competencies. The taxonomy begins with straight and simple

„knowledge‟ (recognition of information) and „comprehension‟ (ability to explain what is

recognised). This „declarative knowledge‟ can then be applied to a problem: the „application‟ level,

which more or less coincides with procedural knowledge. It is the last three levels, though, that are

of most interest here: „analysis‟, „synthesis‟ and „evaluation‟. At these levels a student is able to

frame the various procedures (analysis and synthesis), question them and evaluate which are more

useful according to the particular condition. „Conditional knowledge‟ is necessarily linked to a

potentially real professional translation scenario. This level of competence closely shadows

Bernardini‟s (2004) triad of metacognitive competencies: awareness, reflectiveness and

resourcefulness, and the previously mentioned “Dublin Descriptors”:

Logical

Level

Knowledge level Bloom’s Educational

Goals

Dublin

Descriptors

Why Conditional Evaluation

Synthesis

Making

judgements

Analysis Learning skills

How Operative Communication

4 “high surrender value”: meaning that the students would be able to immediately use what they had learned to perform

their language/translation taskd more effectively.

11

skills

Procedural Application Applying

knowledge and

understanding

What Declarative Comprehension

Knowledge

Knowledge and

understanding

As just mentioned, conditional knowledge refers to knowing why translation procedural knowledge

should be adopted and under what conditions: the skopos. It is this knowledge or competence that

graduates can barter in return for a HAP type career in languages, (c.f. Ulrych 2002: 206).

Disassociation – the third perceptual position

Yet, we should not let our students graduate simply following the skopos. We need to make sure

that we are not letting the universe of translation theory and practice fall into total anarchy or

relativist viewpoints, whereby the translator simply follows client or market requirements. Federica

Scarpa‟s (2001: 191) three-level division of translator competences is useful here: cultural

competence (declarative); procedural knowledge, and “a metacognitive component” which includes

a “critical consciousness” of the translator. The student, in fact, will need a sound and conscious

knowledge base of her or his own core framework of beliefs and values, and ethics to function as

“an imperfect cultural mediator” (Cortese, cited in Scarpa, ibid). Hence, part of the function of a

university training must lie in teaching subjects such as “the history of translation” (c.f. Mossop

2000) and “professional ethics”, within which the beliefs and values can be contextualised. Ethics

should go beyond confidentiality and conflicts of interest to cover wider issues, such as

investigating and evaluating translator norms - e.g. Chesterman‟s four norms (1997; 2000: 86-87);

Robinson‟s Norms v Freedoms double binds (Robinson), The Scandals of Translation (Venuti,

1998) and so forth. These will rarely be discussed once a translator is at work.

An integral aspect of the metacognative component is, as mentioned earlier, the ability to question

and to evaluate – not just the task in hand but also the presuppositions behind them. As Schaffner

(2004b) states, the task is to produce: “Graduates with basic competence who know how to

approach the task (i.e. who know which questions to ask: What? How? Why?)”.

This questioning is a form of disassociation (Katan 2001; Katan 2004: 325), of thinking outside the

box. Catherine Way (2000: 139, see also forthcoming), for example, trains students “to recognise

not only those elements outlined in our course objectives, but also possible pitfalls and problems, so

they can solve them basing their decisions on rational criteria which they can defend”. Tymoczko

(2005: 1092) is convinced that teaching translation will move to “greater flexibility in teaching

students how to move between different perceptions of similarity”. The more students can “move

between”, the more they develop a meta-position necessary for the creativity discussed by Baer and

Koby and for the creation of virtual target texts (Katan 2004: 168-170). With clear core values and

beliefs about the universe of translation in place along with an ever increasing textual competence,

the translator to-be needs to learn to take the third perceptual position (Katan 2002), that of

evaluating the alternatives with, to use Pym‟s (2002a) words, “the ability to select only one viable

TT from this series quickly and with justifiable confidence”.

The highest, and usually hidden, level of the neurological levels system frames (or is meta to)

identity, and comprises awareness of the raison d’être or professional mission. Awareness of this

meta-level is paramount in the light of the earlier HAP/LAP discussion. Tomorrow‟s graduates will

need to carve out a new space (in much the same way as translation studies has) and to know how to

react to the market and its pressure, which, as we have seen, is rapidly pushing the 2nd

level of HAP

translators into the burgeoning bottom level of unhappy LAPs. In a sense this ties in Chesterman‟s

(2000: 87-89) “emancipatory translation”, Kiraly‟s (2005:1102) “empowerment” and the

12

translators‟ “self-concept” (1995: 110-2), Bernardini‟s (2004: 20) “awareness … the first step

towards a professional and ethical attitude towards their job” and Risku‟s (2002: 26) comment that

“more importantly you have to position yourself in this communication system and define your own

situational role, goal and tasks”.

Training translators?

However, I mentioned at the beginning that I have been using the term „translator‟ advisedly, and

began with a HAP/LAP distinction - raising the question about university costs and long-term

career benefits. It is now time to look at the HAP/LAP status of a translator and the market.

On the supply side, translation organisations often advertise the importance of translation quality,

and this has certainly been the basis of university training to date. Translation academics,

themselves, spend much time analysing and criticising „bad translations‟. But, the demand for

translation rarely includes the demand for „quality‟, as long as some, or enough, sense can be made.

Foreign tourists tend not to complain about incompetent translations, but rather tend to write them

on a blog and label them as “Amusing misuses of English!” (www) or “howlers”, such as at

http://also.cc/blog/bad-translation-classics/. The translations are seen as “collectables” rather than as

a disservice. Many audience response experiments (unpublished dissertations, SSLMIT, Trieste)

show that the target audiences tend to gloss over the academic errors. Most of us, also, gloss over

the incorrect language every time we use a computer. Muzii (forthcoming) notes that the highly un-

Italian “la password è incorretta”, a pure calque, “[c]uriously […] does not seem to have any

negative effects on users, as „incorretta is perceived as a minor inaccuracy and is skipped over,

possibly with a smirk in consideration of the money spent on a product that was supposed to be of

superior quality”. Even in the source language we accept “1 file/s remaining” and the classic

requirement to press “Start” when we wish to turn the computer off. And finally, the following

English home page for Studio Gambit is a shining example of the present situation. The translator

responsible does not have the competency to pass a final year translation exam, yet, will have been

commissioned (according to their web page) by “a leading localisation company in Poland”:

“Quality of translation depends on structure of the whole localisation process. In Studio Gambit we

believe it cannot be left as a solely translator‟s responsibility. Therefore we present in this place all

basic elements of our typical localisation procedure. We have based it on the LISA Quality

Assurance Model adapted to meet experiences and the specific needs of our company”

The obvious point is that competent translators are not required by the market. Clearly there are

important exceptions (the EU being one), but the point is that there is no regulation or market-

accepted standard of competence. The client (particularly when requiring a translation into L2) will

either have little idea about the language or time to read the translation. Importantly, there is usually

little direct or objective market feedback as to the quality of the translation and hence of the

competence of the translator. As there is no national or international quality accreditation to guide

the client, this leaves only one obvious criterion: price, or rather the cheapest offer. Market price, as

Muzii (2006) points out can only lead to a progressive downward spiral in terms of quality.

Also, the cheapest offer itself is getting even cheaper through the growing importance and use of

electronic tools to autonomize and speed up the process, along with the formation of larger

Language Service Provider (LSP) organisations able to outsource projects on a global scale. As

Studio Gambit, disarmingly in their very own inimitable grammatical style put it: “All this at

competitive prices and without any quality risk”. Texts are automatically offered to translators in

terms of numbers (words or characters); so, as Mossop (2006: 23) notes, the translator‟s habitus

today is in a “divisionalised organisation […] inevitably emphasizing quantity […] whereas the

professional approach focuses on quality”. The reason why quality not a sine qua non of the

13

translator‟s habitus is eloquently explained by Werner Patels (2006), a professional translator who

prominently displays his academic qualifications (M.A., C.Tran., C.Conf.Int) on his website, and

from which comes the following extract:

“What is a professional? Well, if you look at other professions, such as lawyers, doctors,

accountants, etc., they all have one thing in common: they can engage in whatever professional

activity it is only after passing some form of „peer review‟ (specific courses of study, accreditation,

bar exam, etc.). In this respect, our profession is anything but professional”.

Given the fact that in the business of training students the calibre of HAP lawyers, doctors,

accountants, etc., we should either insist on some form of institutionally binding peer review for

translators or question the term „translator‟. Accreditation for translators would clearly be a good

thing, yet at the moment, at best, national programmes, where they exist, are purely voluntary

(except for public or sworn translators in a limited number of countries). If any of these

programmes were institutionally binding, then the visible quality assurance label would become a

precious commodity; supply would be noticeably reduced, thus putting up prices and subsequently

raising the translator profile along with the quality kite mark. Also, institutional acceptance at

national, or better, international levels would also necessitate agreed and watertight (at least for the

time-being) translation theory/ies to explain the practice. As a consequence, as Ulrych (2002: 206)

notes, the shared theory informing the practice would “raise their profession from the status of

practitioners to that of qualified specialists on a par with physicians, lawyers, architects”

However, binding accreditation is clearly not under university control, and is also not something

that will happen in the near future. That being said, a European-wide initiative to harmonise

translator training at University level, called POSI, has been set up. The German acronym stands for

a practice-oriented curriculum for the training of translators and interpreters. It is geared to meeting

“the discrepancy that appeared to exist between the priorities of university training programmes and

the rapidly changing demands placed on translators in the market place” (Anderman and Rogers

2003: 65). It remains to be seen whether this initiative will promote accreditation through a

harmonised European-wide university qualification. As discussed earlier, it is unlikely that market

forces themselves will encourage the use of accredited translators.

One might have hoped that an institution such as the EU which enshrines language diversity would

have adopted a selection policy based on university trained translators. But, as shown elsewhere

(Katan 2002: 185; 2004: 91) the capabilities being looked for are in terms of language skills and

“copying” abilities. This, as Bernardini (2004: 22) also notes “hides a low conception of translation

and the translating profession”. Hence, the real stumbling block will continue to be the lack of

legislation to safeguard translation quality. With low market requirement, and low autonomy for

competent graduates in translation we should perhaps accept the inevitable, and salute the death of

the university-trained „translator‟.

So, let us now abolish courses in „translation‟. The translator‟s habitus can then be formally taken

by LAP keyboard pressing technicians, whose job it is to oversee semi-automated mass-volume

translations, helped immensely by translation memories and so forth. These people may have a first

level degree in languages or even indeed translation, though qualifications in information

technology will be more important. As far as these technicians are concerned, there is an acceptance

of translation as a product, and texts will be seen in terms of number of characters, or at best

machine translatable phrases.

Having left the translator completely to Pym‟s bottom level, let‟s start to consider what abilities and

competencies would be required for the Higher Autonomous Professional involved in translating.

14

At the second level, translation is viewed as a process, and, though, word crunching is important,

texts are translated in terms of text typology and skopos. It is at this second level that we have the

emerging HAPs. These are the „language‟ or „translation‟ engineers, who have “thorough

familiarity with the principles and problems of translation, and knowledge of IT in order to support

a continuously changing medium of multilingual communication” (O‟Hagan and Ashworth: 2002:

49). These will ideally be the young graduates, fresh from their 2nd

level university degree in

Translation Management or Language Service Provision.

These graduates, however, having invested five years in further education will be aspiring to the

third tier as their natural habitus. Just like any Business Management graduate, the young graduates

in “translation management” will pass through the junior stages of lower autonomy on their way to

their chosen aspiration. The job title will vary between „translation manager‟, „language service

provider‟, „project manager‟ or even „cultural interpreter‟. There may even be other labels, but what

they all have in common is a degree of autonomy and decision making regarding the commission,

the workload and the final version of the translation. They will also have personal contact with the

client and autonomy over „the translator‟. What is more, these graduates will have social capital and

respect for their own profession in the workplace (see Davico 2005: 63-81 for further discussion).

However, Pym is wary of training, for example, Language Service Providers partly due to the fact

that the term is so closely linked to commercial localisation, and partly due to the university

system‟s difficulty in adapting.5 However, according to Gianni Davico (2005: 66), there are already

university courses (outside Italy) specifically designed at this level.

Clearly the change in emphasis required by a degree in, say “Translation Management”, which

includes project management, good IT skills and (following Scarpa 2001: 191) a variety of other

specialist fields, will also require more inter-faculty cooperation. Below are two typical vacancies

that „we‟ should be actively considering training our students for:

LOCALIZATION PROJECT MANAGER Position Details: Responsible for ensuring a steady workflow of current translation projects according to Wizards of the Coast standards across all brands. Assist the Localization Manager in implementing future projects to streamline and improve the localization process You will need expert level of using SDLX, 2+ years working with FileMaker Pro or similar. 3+ years translation or localization project management. Able to learn new software and technologies. Fluency in English + one other European language essential

(Wizards of the Coast) German Operations Supervisor/ Project Manager Profile: English to mother tongue standard and oral and written fluency to degree level in a least one major European language. Ideally German plus French advantageous. GCSEs or the equivalent in English and Mathematics. Minimum of 2 years experience in the translation industry within a project management environment. Competence in database management. Competence in the Windows operating environment, MS Word and MS Excel, and E-mail. General office skills. General Commercial awareness. Good communication skills and a competent telephone manner. A team player able to multi-task under tight deadline conditions. Energetic. A willingness to learn and grow. A desire to see others learn and grow. Knowledge of CAT tools an advantage

5 However, at the round table on “the Business Interpreter” during the 1984 International conference on Interpretation in

Turku I suggested that the Conference Interpreter was an endangered species, and what was needed was a cultural

mediator able to intervene and oil the wheels of professional negotiations, intervene and mediate where necessary

(1997:161-163). 12 years later at the SSLMIT in Trieste autonomously set up a one year interpretazione di trattativa

introductory course to interpreting. The term trattativa implied mediating business negotiating, and the first few years

of this course were devoted exclusively to that field. Today, the field has widened, and the course is no longer an

„introduction‟, but a full two year course incorporated nationwide into the first level degree course in scienza della

mediazione linguistica.

15

(Language Matters)

So, rather than focus on what competencies we retain important, we should really be urgently

considering the upper levels of the Neurological Levels Model: Mission, Identity, Values/Beliefs

and Strategies. In other words we need to have a clear idea about who we are teaching, for what

type of professional role, along with who „we‟ are (what is the role of a university in the life of the

individuals we follow for 5 years); why we are doing this (what is our mission) and how we should

be going about this (how do we teach/train).

My tentative proposal is the following:

Mission: to provide autonomous semi-professionals, at a HAP level, specialised in cross linguistic

and cross cultural mediation

Who (1) (Identity) University students studying languages and cross-cultural communication with

the aim of becoming Language Service Providers, Translation Managers, …;

Who (2) (Identity) University institution supporting and fostering student interest in all aspects of

the universe of translation, balancing academic study with market and professional realities;

Why (Values/Beliefs) Education and the universe of translation, intellectual debate, diffusion and

extension of knowledge (declarative, procedural, conditional), third perceptual position;

accreditation at autonomous semi-professional level

How (Strategies) Teaching “tools not rules”, “situated cognitive perspective”, cognitive and

metacognitive strategies; supplying resources; training tolerance of uncertainty; teaching texts in

contexts

What (Resources) Language specific competencies (textual and extralinguistic); Translation

competencies (Transfer/Mediational; Instrumental/professional)

And finally, it is clear that if we wish to clarify what competencies we feel our students should

graduate with we must first clarify our own habitus and, almost definitely not only change what we

teach, but how. All of which suggests, though I never would, that we should look also to our own

competencies.

16

Appendix

LINGUA-CULTURE SPECIFIC COMPETENCIES Textual competence a Comprehension (in the source language)

Identifying main text function/s, gene

Identifying specialized language associated with the text

Author intention/message (illocutionary intent)

Identify likely reader and gauge perlocutionary effect of ST

differentiating between main and secondary ideas,

establishing conceptual relationships b Production in the target language.

Write competently in a variety of everyday genres

Use specialized language associated with the text (at the level required)

Write according to direct/indirect norms to create intention/message (illocutionary intent)

Create a new ‘model’ reader and gauge likely perlocutionary effect

foreground main and secondary ideas according to new context of situation and culture

establish conceptual relationships/coherence in accordance with TL norms Extralinguistic competence. a Bicultural knowledge (contrastive understanding of both home and foreign culture)

Knowledge of institutions,

Encyclopaedic and thematic knowledge (myths and traditions; literature; history; geography; popular culture; current affairs…)

Practices (verbal and textual)

Orientations, values, beliefs b Knowledge of Specialised topic/s

eg History of the Salento, Baroque architecture; Film genres TRANSLATION COMPETENCIES General Transfer/Mediation competence.

Knowledge of the theories of translation,

The ability to decide on a translation strategy

Ability to associate and disassociate (associate with ST and virtual TT; disassociate to mediate)

Detection of translation issues (skopos, readership, commissioner, text,…)

Ability to sight translate, summarise,…

Ability to produce and defend a working and final text within a limited timeframe Strategic Transfer/Mediation competence a Micro-language (related to specialist topic/s)

specialised terms/phraseology (e.g. Baroque architecture, church layout; language of documentary films/sit coms)

contrastive genre organisation; writing styles (e.g. of tourist information brochures; email correspondence; archaeological conference paper)

b linguistic/literary devices

Compensation strategies (componential analysis, chunking, reformulation, gloss, deletion, explication, …)

Culture-bound term strategies (borrowing, substitution, couplets/triplets)

Rhetorical strategies (translation of metaphor, phonological/syntactic/semantic/ equivalence) Instrumental/professional competence

(Knowledge and skills relating to professional translation practice)

Critical knowledge of documentation/retrieval sources: thesaurus, spellcheck, dictionaries, encyclopaedia, web (search engines, library catalogues, …)

New technologies: email, chat groups/forums, translation memory (CAT, MT tools), terminology management systems; desktop publishing, OCR,…

Labour market, practices, professional conduct, … Attitudinal competence.

Flexibility: o open to difference (across language, ways, styles, belief and value systems o open to change (in using technology, time frames, working conditions)

Curiosity towards o ‘other’ (language/culture) o the world (the development of encyclopaedic knowledge)

Creativity in producing alternative versions

Field dependent abilities: o for perseverance, rigour, critical acumen; o for proof reading, error correction, domain specific terms)

Field independent abilities: o lateral thinking, o for the big picture, for coherence, genre, fit (text within context of situation and context of culture)

17

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