In the very short term, even if the quality of training is shaky, the development of translator training programmes seems to be in everybody's interest:
- academic institutions see an easy way of giving declining subject areas a 'professional' facelift;
- faculty members see 'innovative' courses as a way of hanging on to their jobs and/or recycling age-old material under a new guise;
- practising translators can in some cases earn relatively good money by offering their services and their experience as part-time tutors;
- employers and work providers find themselves with a greater choice of applicants for new jobs or contracts, and are therefore in a better position to resist demands for better wages or increased rates;
- local work providers think students on such courses will be more than happy to do their translations for them as work experience, (almost) for free;
- good professional translators find their own skills enhanced by the mediocre or disastrous performance of sometimes poorly trained graduates fresh out of the new courses;
- some of the less scrupulous translation brokers find a whole new generation of hapless victims just waiting to be 'fleeced', eager for work and knowing next to nothing about market conditions.
In the medium-term, the end-result will be exactly the reverse of what was originally intended, i.e. a rise in graduate unemployment, because the market will not be able to expand fast enough to absorb the glut of translators (which is why anyone thinking about applying for a particular translator-training course should first of all find out about graduates' employment prospects and earnings levels) or, because the glut will destabilise the market and throw it wide open to the amateurs and outlaws. Those who have a clear vision of current trends in graduate employment know that this has already happened and that many so called 'translator training courses' are leading students up a blind alley. And this is a reality in all countries because, whatever the languages, there actually is such a thing as an international market or, more accurately, an international offer of services. Situations are therefore always made worse by the fact that no one can have any real control over the number of translators coming up on the market. One may wonder what would happen if employment and income figures per training programme or school were made available for all translation graduates (and policymakers). Would the least efficient courses in terms of employment (including self-employment) be closed down?
Of course, it could be argued that not all the students who graduate from translator training institutes, schools and programmes necessarily become translators, and that their university education should be a passport to other careers. True. Then why keep labelling the courses as 'translation studies' courses: why not call them language engineering courses (special purpose language teaching, corporate language policy consultancy, language resource design and management, language auditing, information publishing and dissemination, multilingual documentation management) or courses in technical writing or any other professional competence, including language teaching? The choice is clearly between (1) diversifying the specialist skills and competences which can be added-on to the common-core job profiles of translators, or (2) opting for true multilingual- ism combined with professional profiles which we still need to define. Either way would be preferable to churning out thousands of 'translation' graduates, many of whom have neither the inclination nor the skills to become professional translators.
All this amounts to is that new translation courses should never be decided without careful thought and planning. All too often, courses are set up for the wrong reasons: because someone 'believes' there will be jobs in translation, or even worse, because there have been a couple of jobs advertised by the local employment bureau, because the teacher met one of her former students who is apparently 'translating books', because the institution wants to get on the bandwagon, because enrolment in 'this or that language course' is falling, or because someone wants to advance his or her academic career... and, inevitably, students who enrol for courses set up for those wrong reasons, sooner or later realise that they have been led up the garden path. But then, who cares?
8. Course validation
There is an ongoing debate in the profession over the quality of translator training, and consequently, over the way translation courses are recognised and qualifications are delivered.
The debate echoes the struggle undertaken by some who would like to protect the profession by requesting that anyone wanting to practise as a (full-time or part-time) professional translator should have to prove that they can meet certain minimum quality standards. It is also related to the long-lasting issue of translator accreditation or certification, which has long been accepted in some places (e.g. Quebec or Ontario) but seems to raise endless problems in other countries (France in particular). As a matter of fact, some would prefer to solve the problem by having course accreditation rather than translator accreditation.
The two possible answers to this question are in fact much more clearly contrasted than would appear at first sight. As a matter of fact, one can either consider that:
- if the course is 'good', then the students graduating from the course must be 'good', or
- if the graduates are 'good', then the course must 'good'.
In the first instance, the quality of a course depends very much on the same factors as the outcome of any other 'process': the quality of the 'raw materials' (i.e. the students entering the course, who must then be selected on the basis of ability and potential), the quality of the 'operatives' (i.e. the professional qualities of academics involved in the course), the ability of the teaching staff to train students for the specific requirements of their future profession (by including a number of practising professionals as external tutors), the quality and relevance of the tools and methods used in replicating or simulating the professional environment, and the quality of the 'end-product' (as measured by the structure and components of the course but also by the learning outcomes acquired at the end of the course and, more obviously, by the employability of the trainees).
In the second instance, it is the employment market that ultimately validates or invalidates professionally oriented courses, according to two basic criteria:
- employment levels in the type of jobs and positions that course graduates should be aiming for, measured by:
- the number of months it takes for students to find a relevant salaried position or to become established as a freelance translator making a decent living - given that it usually takes some time indeed to establish oneself as a freelancer,
- the career prospects offered once students get their first job (a particularly important criterion in the world of translation, because, if the prospects are bright, it shows that the people in charge of the courses have been capable of endowing their trainees with the skills required to respond to changes in technological environments and market trends).
- earnings or income levels (for salaried translators and freelancers respectively).
The first option focuses on the learning process and learning environment, while the second focuses on the results of that process. The first option implies that there should be some kind of course validation body (there would be a number of contenders ready to play the part, in particular CIUTI with national or international associations of translators wanting to have their say, of course) while the second relies purely on the market. And those who argue that any course that meets the criteria required by the first option will necessarily meet those required by the second should think carefully about the following:
- Courses in the same country, in theory having the same entry criteria, the same percentage of practising professional tutors, the same equipment, the same course structures and the same trainer profiles, have widely differing graduate employment and earnings figures.
- If course validation criteria had been in place fifteen years ago, many of the courses that have risen up to the challenges of the translation (and localisation) industry, trained those who have taken part in the exponential growth of the translation markets and helped define (one would say 'create') many of the new job profiles which have appeared over that period would never have been 'accredited'. Course accreditation can easily lead to the 'cloning' of existing courses simply because they are considered as 'models' to be copied. And the fairest bet would be that the proponents of the most antiquated models would want to have the power to decide on accreditation on the grounds that respectable old ladies always know best and positively dislike bad-mannered upstarts.
Quality 'labels' and accreditation procedures can be perfectly legitimate as long as they give access to otherwise restricted markets and are not used, hypocritically, simply to exclude any newcomers from 'the club'. This would imply, for a start, that there is a professional status offering some kind of protection or at least identification through some kind of label. In fact, at the very end, the only really legitimate accreditation is one systematically awarded by employers and clients by way of employment and pay or rates. As already stated, it is no secret that there exists an unofficial rating of translator training institutions per language pairs and per job profiles. If in doubt, call any major translation agency or company.
When it comes to the crunch, the only effective way of vetting the quality and (long-term) relevance of translator training programmes is to set up joint boards and ask them to provide the training objectives and guidelines. Such joint boards would bring together representatives of the industry, representatives of the profession (including a number of former graduates), academics involved in the courses, and representatives of the funding authorities. Such joint boards are generally the most effective way of addressing the issue of adjusting courses to professional requirements by clearly spelling out the needs of the profession and industry. As a counterpart, the presence of major market players amounts to some kind of professional 'pre-accreditation'.[17]
9. Translator trainers
The question of who actually trains future translators is a crucial aspect of the whole debate. It is, in fact, threefold: (1) who is in charge of the course, (2) who is responsible for this or that component and (3) how are the trainers themselves trained for the job.
9.1 Tasks and responsibilities
The fundamental issue is that of how responsibilities and tasks are shared out between the academics and the professionals involved in the course.
Everyone should in theory be able to agree that training must be geared to genuinely professionally-oriented learning outcomes and learning processes since this is what will ultimately make the difference - unless work providers are just interested in the cost aspect of translation, in which case there is no point in bothering about professionalism. But the sharing of tasks and responsibility between academics on the one hand and practitioners on the other is still a moot point.
The academic institution should undoubtedly have full responsibility for cur- ricular design, for all the groundwork, and for doing the actual training (including the professional components of such training) before sending graduates out there into professional environments, simply because professional practice is not necessarily innovative and efficient in all such environments. The university is the place where future translators should learn to apply optimal techniques and best practice, even though some of these may have to go by the board when the going gets tough in real-life professional situations and, to put it bluntly, professionals sometimes have a twisted view of things and many are of opinion that much of what academics know must go into translator training is just a waste of time and should be disregarded... and that training should only take place 'on the job'. Also, any professional tends to think he/she is the epitome of the industry or the profession when in fact diversity prevails and training has to take such diversity into account to better arm graduates to face the varieties of job requirements.
The academic training institution should not, therefore, rely on the professionals to do all the groundwork. There is a real danger that academics, not wanting - or unable -to take responsibility for professionally-oriented course components, see their role purely as providing the methodological and theoretical elements (in the various forms and names of 'translatology', 'translation theory', 'methodology' and 'translation techniques') leaving it to the professionals to instil reality into the programme.
Academics should know what professional translation is about and professionals must get acquainted with the theories and methodologies and models. This is sometimes the case. If not, academics should at least do some kind of work placement in professional environments and professionals should be 'taught' whatever theory and teaching practices they should know. It is also the responsibility of universities to do research on professional practice, models, and protocols. But there is always the risk that:
- universities, not wanting to be accused of becoming too 'vocational', will shelter behind the cosy walls of'academia';
- the 'professionals' will take over translator training altogether, on the grounds that 'they know best', leaving the university holding an empty shell (and awarding increasingly worthless qualifications).
The respective attributions of both academics and practitioners must be clearly defined. The university must take full responsibility for every aspect of the training of future translators, including such as are 'subcontracted' to professionals according to specifications set by the university itself (under the guidance of a competent joint board as described above). The profession and industry take responsibility for allowing graduates to apply what they have learned - on the university precincts as well as through work placements - and gain work experience in the field.
Training future translators fully for their future jobs means introducing the professional dimension in the actual course design and contents. The successive ways and steps through which this can be achieved are:
1. detailed information on existing jobs and careers,
2. basic training, taking the utmost care to integrate professional objectives at all junctures,
3. simulation of different kinds of work situations - by applying the same techniques and procedures as in a professional context, except that the deadlines, productivity criteria and resource constraints are not enforced quite as strictly.
4. emulation of professional practise - by carrying out translation service provision tasks under exactly the same conditions as in a standard professional context.
5. immersion in real-life working environments - particularly through work placements.
The above university training should involve professionals and the use of their exclusive resources (corporate translation memories and proprietary translation software tools) and work placements should be provided so that future translators can be confronted with real-life professional environments.
Ideally, such work placements should be adapted to each stage in the course and allow students to discover different fields and specialisms (localisation, multimedia production, technical or specialised translation, terminology, technical writing, etc.) and different working environments, so that all of them can get a comprehensive and realistic picture of the industry. Where internships are not common practise, training institutions should offer help in organising effective work placements for their students.
A logical progression of internships over three years would be: (1) a relatively short 'passive' period spent simply learning what it is like to work in a professional context, (2) a period of three months learning basic professional skills, and (3) a five- to eight-month placement - if possible in various environments - where all the skills and competences acquired over the full period of training can be implemented. Ideally, work placements should enable students to experience what translating entails in an in-house service, on the one hand, and in a translation company or an agency, on the other hand. If this is not possible as a hands-on experience, there should at least be an opportunity to observe work organisation and practises in both environments.
There are four types of internships or work placements: the 'ideal' experience, the standard work placement, the sub-standard work placement and the pseudo work placement (neither of the last two types being at all desirable).
- The ideal work placement is beneficial to the trainee in every respect, both from the point of view of interpersonal relationships and professional experience. The ideal context for this kind of placement is either a major translation service, a well organised translation company, or a small network of freelancers, but individual freelance translators may also be able to provide the necessary environment. During this kind of work placement, the future translator is closely supervised and constantly given useful tips and advice, and all translations are revised and assessed by a placement tutor in the company. In other words, the student receives proper, comprehensive, practical training.
- In the standard kind of work placement, the budding translator receives help and advice, and translations are proofread and checked but not extensively commented on. Fully revising and analysing the student's translations would mean being distracted from urgent work and therefore, losing money. All the same, guidance is available whenever needed and requested.
- In a sub-standard placement, the 'intern' is given actual translations to do without adequate supervision and without them being carefully proof-read or revised and therefore without any useful feedback.
- Pseudo work placements can mean two different types of experience:
In the first instance, the student intern is asked to do humdrum repetitive tasks which have no direct relevance to professional experience in the translation industry (e.g. making photocopies, duplicating CDs, making tea or coffee, carrying out a telephone survey, typing or posting mail, sending faxes, copying screens and all sorts of boring tasks).
One the contrary, in the second instance, the trainee is asked to do things which are well beyond any intern's capabilities, such as revising, dispatching, or allotting translations. Far too many agencies or brokers see interns as a permanent source of free labour, with the equivalent of at least one 'virtual' translator position being filled by successive waves of 'interns' who are often egged on by the (obviously unfulfilled) promise of a job at the end of their internship.
In both instances, the intern is - dare we say it - being exploited, and this kind of practice is by no means confined to 'outlaw' outfits: it is also found among established and respectable companies. Translators, who are always quick to ask for 'an end to irregular practice' would do well to start with drawing up an 'intern's charter'. If widely adopted, this kind of charter would provide the less fortunate interns with some kind ofrecourse in case things do not turn out as expected.
To be fair, it must be said that no more than 2 to 3% of all work placements actually go wrong, but those that do can have a devastating effect on the students involved. And one should also remember that the incompetent, badly behaved, loud-mouthed and vindictive intern is also an unfortunate fact of life
General organisation
The following chronology shows how responsibilities can be shared out optimally between academic institutions and the translation industry:
Academic institutions Industry/the profession
Provide information on training profiles Define the basic course Define professional aims and objectives
Define the professionally oriented course components
Provide the basic training (with the help of external tutors from the profession)
Provide information on the various job profiles and careers
Provide opportunities for 'passive' work placements
Simulate 'real-life' professional situations (with the help of external tutors) Emulate professional practice (with the help of external tutors)
Offer 'active' work placements
Offer employment and opportunities for
self-employment
9.2 Trainer profiles
In any course, there must first of all be someone, or a closely-knit group (team) of people, who know exactly where they are heading, what objectives they want to reach, and how they think they can achieve them. This person or these persons must be those who define the contents and learning outcomes for each course component and check the overall consistency and coherence of the curriculum.
What is needed is a harmonious combination of trainers who are primarily translators and trainers who are primarily academics. This has a number of far- reaching implications.
First of all, if it is commonly accepted that translation jobs now involve a multiplicity of tasks including file processing and management, scanning, various kinds of quality controls, analysis, comprehension, documentation, terminography, phraseography, proof-reading, revision, disassembly/reassembly, conversions into and out of a variety of formats, layout, dissemination on a number of different media, then it follows that training must be carried out:
- by a 'conductor', who has a perfect overview and mastery of all the relevant operations, tasks, procedures and tools required for optimum translation service provision;
or
- by a closely coordinated team working to a carefully thought out schedule based on finely staggered learning phases, because a critical path analysis of translation service provision and of translator training confirms that each and
every skill and piece of knowledge must be made available at a very precise and definite moment along the training flow.
Secondly, tutors brought in from the translation industry generally have to be trained in classroom techniques and group dynamics, in grading and assessment procedures, and need to learn about the specific conditions and constraints found in higher education institutions. It is up to the academic staff in the team to provide any such training and information which may be required.
Conversely, academics generally need to learn about current professional practice in the translation industry, about the professional translator's strategies and techniques, and about the various tools available on the translator's work station. This can be done through reading reports and articles (the debate over vocational training has been going on for years), through attending symposia and conferences devoted to these issues, by doing a proper work placement in a translation company or by academics themselves practising part-time professional translation for at least a year, providing this is not forbidden by applicable rules and regulations.
It is absolutely preposterous that academics can set-up training programmes and pretend to train future translators without any first-hand personal experience of the profession - under the same working conditions as will prevail for their students - and without the slightest knowledge of market trends.
While translation professionals quite rightly rail against the fact that anyone can set up shop as a translator, translator trainers (who should not be equated with teachers of translation) find it equally galling that any academic can turn into a teacher of 'specialised translation' overnight on the grounds that she/he has (1) 'done a PhD in modern languages' or (2) 'has translated short stories' or (3) 'is already taking classes in translation' - which usually means the students translate newsmagazine articles or selected pages in classic fiction. Worse still are the cases where teachers are foisted upon a translator training course by the head of department because (1) it is the only way they can get their full contingent of statutory hours, and/or (2) 'anyone who has taught modern languages can train translators'.
What is most urgently needed is staff whose teaching and practice is based both on their ability to reflect on their subject and on their own professional competence in the field.
The only way to achieve the right mix of theory and practice is through the integration of all the course components into a model of translation service provision. This requires the trainers themselves to undergo a cultural revolution. Translator training is no longer simply about teaching students to 'purely' translate (simply because it is unlikely that future translators will be able to earn a decent living through their translation skills alone). Therefore, the trainers themselves have to be able to:
- consider translation in all the different environments in which it is now found, taking into account the impact of the environment on the translation process itself and on the perception people have of translation;
- acquire all the necessary skills and competences, if they do not already have them.
This means that existing translator trainers have to become proficient in a whole new range of skills and/or that new positions must be filled by people who have all the necessary academic accomplishments as well as a perfect knowledge of the conditions, processes, constraints and tools prevalent in the translation industry. Each trainer must therefore be perfectly at home on both sides of the fence.
Failing that, the fence will remain a barrier between the 'academic world' and the 'profession and industry' and actual translator training will inevitably take place outside the universities. Having been introduced in the universities, tutors from the translation profession and industry are easily led to believe that they can teach their own professional skills and competences. The number of special crash courses aimed at translators by professionals is already quite significant in that respect and is growing fast - a good example being that of magistrad.com. And any professional deciding to create a professional course (preferably as distance teaching) will not have any major enrolment problem.
So, if academic translator trainers are not capable of meeting the challenge, translator training as such is very soon likely to be outsourced to private companies. Things are already under way and might shortly lead to an ironical situation where universities will continue to teach translation theory with a bit of practice and deliver the degrees, while companies will deliver the actual professional marketable qualifications. The secret dream of some companies is in fact that any budding translator would be required to do a 12-month (unpaid) probationary work placement in a duly recognised 'training' company. Who will actually designate the company as a 'training' company is left to anyone's imagination. Along the same line of reasoning, universities would keep up their age-old business of having people write PhDs about the theoreticalities of translation and getting academic positions to teach such theoreticalities happily away.
9.3 Emerging economies: A special case
The points made above do not of course apply to countries with emerging economies, where there is a dearth of qualified translator trainers, where there is no effective professional organisation and where the translation markets are (or seem to be) almost exclusively in the hands of language teachers. The introduction of real translator training courses in these countries will help a real translation market to take shape. But for that to happen, existing translators and tutors must be convinced that the emergence of real translation professionals always encourages demand by bringing translation into the economic mainstream and increases everyone's markets tenfold. This being so, the transition from a poorly organised and fragmented market to one where professional translation is well recognised and supply and demand are well structured always takes its toll on the first generation(s) of translators. The questions is how to prepare students to become translators while at the same time surviving if translation markets do not materialise fast enough. The answer probably lies initially in widely defined courses offering graduates a chance to practise in other fields until they can earn a living as full-time translators. The difficulty this creates is being able to manage student flows in relation to demand, while trying to ensure that the market expands. The transition period is also useful in allowing translator trainers to gain experience and to devise original learning models which are adapted to local market conditions and in allowing all those in economic circles to realise that translation can enhance business opportunities and generate added value for the work provider.
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