Towards Authentic Experiential Learning in Translator Education 9783737004954, 9783847104957, 9783847004950

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Don Kiraly et al.

Towards Authentic Experiential Learning in Translator Education

With 17 figures

V& R unipress Mainz University Press

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Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-8471-0495-7 ISBN 978-3-8470-0495-0 (e-book) ISBN 978-3-7370-0495-4 (V& R eLibrary) You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our website: www.v-r.de Publications of Mainz University Press are published by V& R unipress GmbH. Ó 2016, V& R unipress GmbH, Robert-Bosch-Breite 6, 37079 Göttingen, Germany / www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Printed in Germany. Cover image: A Human Tower of Catalunya – The Epitome of Collaboration, Ó Virginia Morna Schweter Printed and bound by CPI buchbuecher.de GmbH, Zum Alten Berg 24, 96158 Birkach, Germany. Printed on aging-resistant paper.

Contents

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9

Raquel Pacheco Aguilar (University of Mainz/Germersheim) Chapter 1: The Question of Authenticity in Translator Education from the Perspective of Educational Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13

Susanne Hagemann (University of Mainz/Germersheim) Chapter 2: (Non-)Professional, Authentic Projects? Why Terminology Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Don Kiraly (University of Mainz/Germersheim) Chapter 3: Authentic Project Work and Pedagogical Epistemologies: A Question of Competing or Complementary Worldviews? . . . . . . . . .

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Don Kiraly and Sascha Hofmann (University of Mainz/Germersheim) Chapter 4: Towards a Postpositivist Curriculum Development Model for Translator Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Don Kiraly, Lisa Rüth, Marcus Wiedmann (University of Mainz/Germersheim) Chapter 5: Enhancing Translation Course Design and Didactic Interventions with E-Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Maren Dingfelder Stone (University of Mainz/Germersheim) Chapter 6: Authenticity, Autonomy, and Automation: Training Conference Interpreters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Andrea Cnyrim (Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences) Chapter 7: Developing Intercultural Competence through Authentic Projects in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Catherine Way (University of Granada) Chapter 8: Intra-University Projects as a Solution to the Simulated/Authentic Dilemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Carmen Canfora (University of Mainz/Germersheim) Chapter 9: Assessing Learning in Heterogeneous Learning Groups in Translator Training – A Role for Portfolios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Gary Massey and Barbara Brändli (Zurich University of Applied Sciences/Winterthur) Chapter 10: Collaborative feedback flows and how we can learn from them: investigating a synergetic learning experience in translator education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Contributors

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Acknowledgements

Publication of this book was quite literally made possible thanks to the unwavering and multi-faceted support of Prof. Dr. Silvia Hansen-Schirra, Head of the Division of English Linguistics and Translation Studies (DELTS) at the School of Translation, Linguistics and Cultural Studies (FTSK) of the University of Mainz. Without her constructive criticism, her invaluable insights into the subject at hand, her seemingly endless patience and her ability and untiring efforts to remove obstacles and hindrances from the path to publication with apparent ease, bringing this volume to print would have been a far more laborious and far less satisfying enterprise. The authors of the contributions to this volume are fighting what often appears to be an uphill battle to bring muchneeded innovation to the training of translators and interpreters. This is only the latest – and certainly not the last – enormous boost that Silvia will have provided to the cause of improving education for language mediators. We are eternally grateful for her support. I also owe many thanks to the participants in my two graduate seminars held in the winter semester of 2014–15 and the summer semester of 2015 in the DELTS. These students painstakingly reviewed, discussed and critiqued chapters of this book and contributed enormously to the coherence, quality and readability of each and every one. The seminar participants (in no particular order) were: Victoria Bender Dennis Hermann Katharina Sterzer Hilde Fazakas Anne Lebenstedt Natalia Schneider

Joeri Destreel Karen Leicht Katharina Tonendal Maj-Britt Kalusche Marina Nikic

Yvette Gossel Sara-Maria Römer Anna Droll Jolinda Kunz Boris Pflug

I am also very grateful to Ms. Wendy Fox, Ms. Michelle Lin and Ms. Sarah Signer. With their tremendous graphic design skills, Wendy and Michelle were instrumental in helping me turn my mental images into the emergent learning

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models that are to be found in the chapters I authored or co-authored, and Wendy also stepped in to take on a significant amount of unexpected formatting work with her usual precision and care when the book was nearing completion. Sarah proofread all of the chapters, ironing out stylistic infelicities and making innumerable improvements to the readability of the text. I am also endebted to my daughter, Jessica Kiraly, for her tremendous technical and administrative support throughout the Moodle project. Without the generous support I received from the Gutenberg Teaching Council at the University of Mainz, I would not have had the time off from my teaching duties or the financial support that were necessary to undertake the classroom research that led to my contributions to this volume. I am especially grateful to Prof. Dr. Dörte Andres, who led the Gutenberg Teaching Council at the time and to Prof. Dr. Mechthild Dreyer, Vice-President for Studies and Teaching at the University of Mainz, for their unequivocal support, without which this volume would not have come to fruition. Last, but certainly not least, I thank my wife and perpetual interlocutor, Christa Noll-Kiraly, for her immeasurable patience and myriad invaluable insights throughout this project. Don Kiraly

Preface

This volume brings together the voices of a number of translation scholars and educators (and one interpreter educator) representing several different cultures and language combinations to present their views on and experiences with authentic experiential learning in professional T& I educational programmes. The idea behind the book – and in fact most of its chapters – emerged from a panel on authentic translation project work in translator education that formed part of the 2nd Non-Professional Translation and Interpreting Conference, which was held at the School of Translation, Linguistics and Cultural Studies of the University of Mainz in Germersheim, Germany in May, 2014. From the outset, it is important to point out that the particular variety of ‘non-professional’ translation and interpreting that was dealt with in the panel presentations and that is the focus of attention throughout this volume could actually be called preprofessional as it refers to translation and interpreting activities carried out by students being educated and trained to enter the language mediation professions. This clearly puts them in a special relationship with ‘professional’ translation and interpreting that distinguishes them from other types of nonprofessional language mediators. Several contributions to this volume (in particular those by Massey & Brändli, Hagemann and Dingfelder Stone) discuss the utility of this term. This volume does not purport to offer a balanced view of the pros and cons of using authentic projects to educate translators and interpreters because, in the end, the set of contributions that came together, actually quite serendipitously, were all written by educators who have found authentic experiential work to be an effective platform for learning. Nevertheless, dissenting viewpoints are taken into consideration within various contributions. It is hoped that those readers of this volume who happen to be translator or interpreter educators that have not yet explored the possibility of incorporating authentic experiential learning into their teaching will be encouraged by this short collection of chapters to consider or reconsider this pedagogical option. In addition, given the virtual absence of significant teacher training for language mediation educators worldwide, it is

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also hoped that new and up-and-coming educators in this field will be inspired by the volume to reflect on their own understandings of what it means to know, to learn and to teach as they set out to educate translators and interpreters competently and wisely in this still new millennium. In Chapter 1, Raquel Pacheco Aguilar begins by exploring the meaning of the concepts of ‘authenticity’ and ‘translator education’ from the perspective of educational philosophy. She considers the functions of education in general and of translator education specifically and she touches on a range of topics that have long been discussed in the philosophy of education in other educational domains but that are rarely broached in the literature on translator education. In Chapter 2, Susanne Hagemann discusses a wide range of terms and concepts that have been referred to in translator education – often with a plethora of denotations. Her objective is to establish some common terminological ground so that researchers and teachers can better understand different pedagogical approaches and techniques that may have been misunderstood in the past. Her argument for terminological rigor should contribute to better defined contours of the concepts educational researchers use as they work towards establishing exemplary innovative tools for teaching and environments for learning. Chapter 3 picks up on one of the topics Raquel Pacheco Aguilar broaches in Chapter 1: the question of pedagogical epistemology and its relation to authentic project work. In this chapter, Don Kiraly1 outlines the origins of the still dominant positivist paradigm of pedagogical thought, which he claims is grounded in the empiricorationalist worldview that has dominated science (and education) since the Enlightenment. This paradigm has justified the continued use of the conventional “who-will-take-the-next-sentence” instructional technique that has been used to teach translation skills and knowledge since the dawn of contemporary translator education. Kiraly goes on to briefly review social-constructivist epistemology as a step beyond positivism, and he concludes with his most recent proposal of an ‘emergentist’ epistemology as a plausible foundation for translator education for the 21st century, that includes authentic project work. In Chapter 4, Kiraly and Hofmann take another step towards an emergent epistemology by proposing a postpositivist curriculum development model derived from their work on the European Graduate Placement Scheme (EGPS) – an EU project designed to create a platform for international placements for students of translation. Instead of seeing work placements as a an extra-curricular activity, Kiraly and Hofmann propose an approach that incorporates work placements directly into the curriculum in a sequenced and scaffolded 1 Faced with the quandary of reflecting my shifting roles in this volume, including editor, author and co-author, I found it expeditious to switch between first and third person narration in different parts of the book.

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manner. In Chapter 5, Lisa Rüth, Marcus Wiedmann and Don Kiraly discuss a multiple educational case study involving e-learning in translator education. In the study, the authors utilized the emergent model of learning presented in Chapter 3 and the findings that were surfacing simultaneously from the EGPS project to investigate: 1) the potential for using e-learning at different stages of translator education, and 2) the possibility of scaffolding learning by progressing, for example, from less authentic to more authentic learning activities over the course of a programme of study. Chapter 6 stands out from the rest of the contributions to this volume in that it deals specifically with the education of conference interpreters rather than translators. In this chapter, Maren Dingfelder Stone discusses two teaching approaches that have been developed and applied at the FTSK in Germersheim: 1) the so-called ‘Friday conference’, which is a regular instructional offering where students can participate in authentic interpreting events, and 2) the Moodle Online Platform for Self-Study in Interpreting (MOPSI), which Dingfelder Stone developed with a University-funded grant in 2014–2015. While the author clearly sees the authentic Friday Conference as a suitable environment for promoting the emergence of professional interpreter competence, she also proposes the MOPSI e-learning programme as a complementary self-instructional technique. In her view, students would be expected to identify and reflect on weaknesses they perceive in their own authentic performances during the conferences, and then access the online Moodle course and choose appropriate remedial tasks to remedy those inadequacies in their performance. In Chapter 7, Andrea Cnyrim focuses on the development of intercultural competence through authentic projects in the translation practice classroom. After reviewing the nature of the intercultural competence component of translator competence, Cnyrim introduces a series of projects carried out in the German Department of the FTSK involving authentic translations. She demonstrates how, with a suitable theoretical focus on appropriate translation commissions, students can be encouraged to develop the kind of intercultural competence they will need upon graduation. In Chapter 8, Catherine Way discusses an approach to undertaking authentic project work used in the Translator Education programme at the University of Granada that was specifically designed to avoid some of the concerns voiced by professional translator associations related to having non-professionals (students) undertake the work of professional (graduate) translators. In the experimental setting she discusses, translation students worked together with students in the University’s school of law to provide the latter with translations that they needed for their coursework. Way shows how such authentic ‘intra-university’ projects can be used to provide

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students with authentic professional practice without encroaching on the market that professionals see as their own territory. In Chapter 9, Carmen Canfora explores the concept of the ‘portfolio’ as a tool for instruction and assessment in heterogeneous learning groups involved in Translator Education. In her experimental work, Canfora had students involved in highly autonomous simulated translation projects submit portfolios of their work to their instructor for assessment and feedback. This chapter clearly shows the potential value of the portfolio concept as a component in highly autonomous learning activities – including authentic project work. And finally, in Chapter 10, Gary Massey and Barbara Brändli present research they have undertaken on collaborative feedback flows in authentic translation project work at the Zürich University of Applied Sciences. Drawing on the emergent epistemology of learning proposed by Kiraly in Chapter 4, Massey and Brändli emphasize the dynamic and inter-subjective nature of learning and focus in on the feedback provided by teachers, clients and students within the context of authentic projects and how it can enhance (or hamper) performance and learning. Don Kiraly

Raquel Pacheco Aguilar (University of Mainz/Germersheim)

Chapter 1: The Question of Authenticity in Translator Education from the Perspective of Educational Philosophy

Introduction Translator Education increasingly resorts to authentic translation work to create meaningful, occupation-related learning experiences (Amman and Vermeer 1990; Baer and Koby 2003; Gonz‚lez Davies 2004; Kelly 2005; Kiraly 2000, 2005a, 2005b, 2012a, 2012b 2013, 2014; Mitchell-Schuitevoerder 2013; Gal‚n-MaÇas 2013, Hagemann and Neu 2013). As the theme of this volume suggests, one way to implement authentic translation work in the classroom is to use a real-project based methodology with near-professional working conditions, a learningcentred approach to Translator Education and a conceptualisation of learning as emergent and embodied action (Kiraly 2014). This methodology offers a framework for Translator Education that is based on “learner empowerment” (Kiraly 2000: 17), which means that by doing authentic translation work, students can be expected to take control of and responsibility for their own learning process and can also have an influence on social and political forces in their educational environment. The objective behind undertaking authentic translation work within the educational setting is to strengthen the links between theoretical reflection and practical know-how in order to develop self-reflective professional translator expertise and generic skills like creativity, critical thought, autonomy, responsibility, cooperativeness and professionalism in a holistic way (Mitchell-Schuitevoerder 2013: 127–128). Adopting a holistic approach to translator education means educating each student “in an all-round manner […], as a ‘whole person’ […] and as a well-rounded translation specialist” (Tan 2008: 597). During their education, students grow as translators in their abilities and skills; rather than closing in on a predetermined ideal outcome, they are encouraged to evolve as unique, yet interconnected emergent selves. My goal in this chapter is to investigate the nature of authenticity in Translator Education from the perspective of educational philosophy. In order to begin this exploration, I will first need to make some distinctions regarding the very

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concept of ‘learning’. While there may be a variety of suppositions about what learning entails, authenticity in Translator Education implies particular epistemological assumptions about this term. This aspect will be explored in this first section. Next, I will outline some of the background behind the term ‘authenticity’ as it has been the focus of considerable philosophical debate. In discussing this term, I will attempt to engage with some of the scholars that have dealt most directly with matters of authenticity on the one hand and Translator Education on the other. Finally, I will focus on other educational questions like the purposes of education and the relationships between educational agents and their environment. With these final considerations I hope to illuminate some of the implications of authenticity for the field of study and enterprise of Translator Education.

Learning in Translator Education Exploring the notion of authenticity from an educational perspective leads us first to critical reflection on the epistemological foundations of ‘learning’. According to Biesta’s deconstructive interpretation (2006), learning is frequently understood as an “economic transaction”, in which: (1) the learner is the (potential) consumer, the one who has certain “needs”, in which (2) the teacher, the educator, or the educational institution is seen as the provider, that is, the one who is there to meet the needs of the learner, and where (3) education itself becomes a commodity – a “thing” – to be provided or delivered by the teacher or educational institution and to be consumed by the learner. (Biesta 2006: 19–20)

This economic conceptualisation of learning views both knowledge and skills as consumer goods that can be transmitted from educator to student, and as student needs to be met by educational institutions. This concept of learning suggests a framework in which education can be reduced to a matter of technical implementation of a programme that defines the learner’s needs before they even begin the educational process (Biesta 2006: 21). Furthermore, once these needs are identified, they can be met by transmitting units of objective knowledge to the would-be learners. As Hagemann illustrates using the example of the Germersheim School of Translation Studies, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies of Mainz University in Germany, this view of learning is reflected in common terms such as ‘learning outcomes’ or ‘needs assessment’ that have been introduced in many module handbooks and assessment regulations at numerous European universities through the implementation of the Bologna Process (Hagemann 2014: 157). Instead of promoting constructivist pedagogical practices as some translation

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researchers have suggested, these concepts are firmly embedded in a modernist or positivist view of learning (see Kiraly in Chapter 3 of this volume). As Hagemann affirms, the: […] elaborate specifications for teaching seem […] to be predicated on the assumption that all students will be able to learn the same things in similar ways – but this is actually one of the objections that have been raised to traditional talk-and-chalk styles. (Hagemann 2014: 158)

Hence, a view of learning as assessment and accomplishment of needs presupposes the following situations. First, the educational institution defines “what a learner knows, understands and is able to do on completion of a learning process” (‘learning outcome’, European Commission 2008: 3). The identification of learning outcomes can be based on theoretical constructs and research findings or on negotiations between stakeholders (researchers, policymakers, practitioner communities and employers), or it can be adapted from pre-existing sets of learning outcomes (Bulgarelli et al. 2009: 50). The relationship between learners and those responsible for describing the learning outcomes is, in many cases, opaque. Bulgarelli emphasizes this muddy relationship in terms of vocational education and training: “It is often difficult to ascertain the source from which learning outcomes have been derived, how the development work has been undertaken and with which experts, partners and/ or stakeholders” (2009: 39). Second, the teacher develops tools to facilitate the learning process and to measure the extent to which the students have achieved the specified learning outcomes. However, even when some authors underline the use of formative assessment instead of summative assessment in the translation classroom1, Firmino Torres and Leite show that in higher education and under the influence of the Bologna Process, “the use of more emancipatory methods of assessment does not become apparent” (Firmino Toores and Leite 2014: 26). In general, it is still student performance that is being measured, especially when the number of students in a group is excessive with respect to a particular set of norms, a programme of study or a set of learning outcomes. Finally, once the learners’ deficiencies are identified in relation to the specified learning outcomes (‘learning gap’), the students can carry out the appro1 Formative assessments, also known as self-assessments or assessments for learning, are procedures that allow students to assume responsibility for their own learning. This emancipatory method consists of assisting in the learning process by providing information. On the other hand, summative assessments consist of items to determine the students learning progress at the end of a limited period. Summative assessments include measuring the level achieved by the students using tests and exams after completing the programme of study or a specific academic period (Firmino Torres and Leite 2014).

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priate action to close the gap. In addition, this conceptualization considers learning to be a cumulative and linear process: the ‘incomplete’ student collects the bits and pieces of skills and knowledge necessary to become an accomplished professional. This understanding of learning suggests that there is a linear evolution from incomplete novice to polished professional and it implies a predictable causal relationship between what teachers do and what happens to the students when they engage in the educational process (Davis 2004: 22–24). Nevertheless, what essentially devolves from this perspective on characterizing the learning process is that it is assumed that the translation profession, like the ‘real world’, is a stable and tangible entity, an existing ontological presence that precedes the educational act. In fact, it is assumed that this pre-determined entity can be transmitted to the students by representing it faithfully in the classroom (Ulmer 1985). However, this implies a binary understanding of knowledge that comprises, on the one hand, the real outside world, and on the other hand, the representation of the real world within the learning process. The latter is held to be an accurate representation of the former. For the purposes of education, the former can be fully acknowledged. This representational assumption – that there is a world out there that is present in itself and of which we can have accurate knowledge – poses major problems as Biesta indicates: The assumption that the world can simply be present and can simply be presented, the assumption that we would be able to go back to the world “as it is” in and for itself, in its own original presence, is a problematic assumption. This is not only because the world never speaks for itself but always requires our descriptions. It is also because there is no original consciousness, no pre-linguistic and pre-social centre of perception and experience to which the world is simply present. (2009: 108)

On the basis of these conclusions, it can be noted that, whilst the introduction of ‘learning outcomes’ may be useful in order to review the pedagogical content and objectives of Translator Education, it may also prove to be based on the idea of closing gaps, fulfilling needs, transmitting pieces of information, consuming commodities, representing a static world, and thus on transmissionist epistemological assumptions. Accordingly, we could pose the question as to whether Translator Education should be understood in these terms or not. If we think that education has little in common with an economic transaction and that learning is not a matter of gathering pieces of information, or of meeting needs, but that we learn when we interact with our world as unique and singular beings, when we enter into dialogue with others and when we reflect on these experiences, then education has to be understood in other terms. Education has an essentially communicative nature and always involves experience of some sort (Dewey 2008). Surely, we learn when we communicate with others and when we interact with our environment. Hence, I wish to emphasize

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here that in communication, the ‘receivers’ not only take in information from the ‘senders’, but they interpret this information on the basis of their own historical, psychological, ethical and political background in order to make sense of it. Likewise, learning does not depend only on the activities of the ‘sender’, but also on the ‘receiver’s interpretations (Biesta 2009: 105). Rather than being merely passive recipients of knowledge, students are active participants in the learning process. Learning becomes a transformative process. Acquiring knowledge means transforming our relationship with the world around us and challenging our sense of self. As Russon puts it: Learning is transformation, a reconfiguring of the very way in which we are engaged with our world. Learning requires that I can address possibilities that are not yet disclosed in my situation and, equally, that I can hold out the possibility to become someone different. (Russon 2008: 104)

When we communicate, we always run the risk of misinterpretation and misunderstanding; so when we learn, we can actually become someone we could not have imagined before. Yet, just as misunderstanding, equivocation, and ambiguity are not accidental, exceptional or negative instances of communication, they constitute the very possibility of understanding (Dizdar 2006, 2012), so the incalculable risk (and thus the possibility) of becoming someone unexpectedly different is posed in the very action of learning. This argumentation becomes clear when we imagine a situation in which learning does not entail any risk. In such a situation, transformations would be determined, calculable and mechanical, but in addition, actions, consequences and reactions would be predictable. Under such conditions, would-be translators would not be open to a changing world, but enclosed in an exclusionary system. This self-defeating system would exclude all that is different. It would be an “economy of the same”2 and hence truly unjust. As Biesta suggests, following Derrida, “we are obliged – in the very name of justice – to keep the unforeseen possibility of the in-coming of the other, the surprise of the ‘invention’ of the other, open” (2009: 104). Finally, because experience involves the person as a whole – intellect, feelings, senses, body, self perception – learning, far from being the consumption of commodities, involves the risk of the incalculable, the violence of challenging students’ identities and the responsibility for the unique and singular subjectivity of the student (Biesta 2006: 24–32). How does this concept of learning apply to Translator Education? I suggest that moving away from an economic way of looking at education, acknowledging the responsibility for the transformative process that arises through learning, 2 This term is used in gender and deconstructivist studies to criticize the reduction of all that is different from the norm. Otherness, alterity and singularity are excluded. This exclusion causes that which is outside of the standard to remain unarticulated.

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and being open to the unforeseen possibilities in the translation classroom means understanding learning – and hence the development of translator competence – from a complexivist perspective, as an enacted and emergent phenomenon that occurs by acting authentically (Kiraly 2013, Kiraly Chapter 3 in this volume). In addition, by considering learning as an enacted activity, we are also suggesting that the translation classroom could be seen as a place for holistic experiential performance, where learning does not only occur inside of craniums, but embodied in the participants and between their dynamic interactions3. In conclusion, associating learning with enactment raises the question of the nature of authentic action.

Authentic Translator Education What does it mean to be authentic? Authenticity is a multifaceted concept and enjoys wide and varying connotations, most of which have a common reference to some person, thing or idea being somehow true and faithful to some other original person, thing or idea (see e. g. Oxford Dictionary). Before focussing on the implications of ‘authenticity’ in Translator Education, it is necessary to reflect on the ordinary use of this evolving and ambiguous concept. It is important to understand the development and ambiguities of the concept before using it in a context related to Translator Education. Etymologically, the term authenticity derives from the Greek authentikos > authentes (auto originally means ‘self ’ and hentes ‘doer, being’, ‘one acting on one’s own authority’). In this sense, the term can be seen in opposition to simulated, false or artificial. Looking at a painting, for example, we could say : “This self-portrait is an authentic Rembrandt.” To say that an object is authentic is to say that it had been made by the author’s own hand. In this case, the term authentic is used in the sense of being of undisputed authorship or origin. Questions about authentic paintings and texts are a matter of preservation and authority. Indeed, an authentic painting has more value than a copy ; it is original, genuine, trustworthy, better. We commonly suppose that authenticity has a positive value. Undoubtedly, the authentic = good / inauthentic = bad dichotomy is very powerful. Therefore, saying that something is authentic involves a value judgement. The meaning of authenticity appears to be even more complex if the term is considered within the context of Translator Education. Here is an example: in the 3 Some practical examples of this view of learning as enactment can be observed in Bahadir (2009, 2010a), Kiraly (2012b, 2013), Dizdar (2014) and some of the contributions to this volume.

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20th century, music lovers became interested in hearing what the Baroque music by composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach would originally have sounded like in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Since the instruments used during that period were made differently and sounded different from those made today, instrument makers started to make instruments the old way in order to bring the authentic Baroque sound back to life. These instruments are often called ‘authentic period instruments’. When we say that a harpsichord or a violin is authentic, we do not mean that the instruments were built during a particular period of history, but we are talking about a relation of similarity. Hence, similarity is a matter of degree and implies a comparison between an original archetype and an object that is ‘the same as’ the original (Splitter 2008: 138). What does this conception of authenticity imply when we think about Translator Education? Authentic translation work in the classroom involves active learning with guidance from an expert teacher through “real translation assignments embedded in authentic situations with the same sorts of complexity and problemsolving constraints” that professional work involves (Kiraly 2005a). This conceptualisation can also be found in the constructivist, student-centred approach to authentic pedagogy proposed by Newmann et al. (1996). They wrote that educational activities have to be connected to the ‘real world’ in order to meet the standard of authenticity. In highlighting the relationship between the world within and beyond the classroom, Newmann et al. imagine a pedagogy that could be compared with a period musical instrument: what students do in the classroom is the same as what goes on in the ‘real world’. This understanding of authentic learning implies a criterion of comparison between the classroom and the ‘real world’ and, as Splitter writes, “the presumption that what happens in ‘the world beyond the classroom’ offers a standard for what we mean, or might mean, by authenticity” (2008: 139). Since authenticity standards are set by what professionals do (Newmann et al. 1996), being authentic means performing in the same way experts do – indeed not merely in the same way that they actually act, but in the way they ought to act. Accordingly, “an authentic problem in science or law, or an authentic task in the fine arts, for example, must correspond not merely to what scientists, lawyers and artists do, but to what they ought to do, i. e. to some kind of idealized sense or normative ideal of what science, law and art really are” (Splitter 2008: 143). Consequently, the conception of authenticity proposed here implies a normative ideal. This takes us back to where we started: authenticity is a matter of judgement. An understanding of authenticity, not as a matter of judgement, but as an ontological quality, can be explored by considering that the object of authenticity is not the learning process itself and the learning situation in which that process is embedded, but the individuals who are involved in this process,

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that is, students and educators. Let us take this insight back to the issue of acting authentically, as being true to oneself exposed in the etymological definition of the term. How can I, or any person, strive to become authentic? What does it mean to be one’s self ? What is the nature of the ‘authentic self ’? Many conceptions of the authentic self can be found throughout the history of Western philosophy. As Taylor points out, in pre-modern societies, people found their identity through their position within a social system: What we would now call a person’s identity was largely fixed by his or her social position. That is, the background that made sense of what the person recognized as important was to a great extent determined by his or her place in society and whatever role or activities attached to this. (Taylor 1991: 47)

With the rise of the modern worldview, a number of social changes led to a shift in terms of acknowledging the ideal of the human being. One’s identity was no longer specified by the circumstances of birth or social position. Aspects such as autonomy, independence, “being a self-directed, affective actor in the world” (Guignon 2004: 77) became increasingly important. Nevertheless, as Guignon continues, “being self-directed requires (1) knowing what you believe and feel and (2) honestly expressing those beliefs and feelings in what you do” (2004: 77). With this modern conception of the self, the individual became, on the one hand, self-transparent and self-governing, which means that human beings are able to capture their own essence introspectively and to have effective control over their actions. A space of interiority appears and becomes a guiding authority of human agency. We must attain a substance in order to be true to ourselves. On the other hand, this imposes a rupture between one’s inner and outer self, between the individual and the social. This dichotomy has important consequences for the conception of learning. Note that there are similarities between this modern conception of the self and the modern understanding of knowledge and learning explained at the beginning of this article (in Chapter 3 of this volume, Kiraly also elucidates the consequences of a modernist epistemology for Translator Education). However, thinkers such as Nietzsche and Freud questioned the conception of human nature as a unified and underlying self. The Freudian inclusion of the unconscious as a part of the mind that is inaccessible to the conscious and that influences our thoughts, feelings and actions – “ego is not the master in its own house, but must content itself with scanty information of what is going on unconsciously in its mind” (Freud 1917: 284–285) – reframed the modern notion of the self. As Davis writes: “The suggestion that our conscious mind is more a passenger than a pilot was revolutionary […]. Freud helped foreground the roles of social habitus and non-conscious processes in the shaping of individual and collective characters” (Davis 2004: 107). Postmodern thinkers rejected the idea

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of a self-transparent ego and argued instead that “human identities are transitory, fragmented, and interlocked” (ibid.). This postmodern perspective emphasizes the necessity to reconsider the notion of acting authentically as a matter of acting on one’s own authority – as being true to one’s self. This is so particularly because ‘doing one’s own thing’ may entail the risk of succumbing to impulses from our dark, unconscious self. In this context, being authentic might not be at all admirable and could even be ethico-politically undesirable. From this perspective, seeking ‘authenticity’ could lead to a translation class in which everything goes, as long as the students and the teachers are expressing themselves, even if the interpretations, the translations and the classroom actions are motivated by antisocial, violenceinciting values. Second, authenticity as ‘self-fulfilment’ suggests that we are capable of having a profound awareness of our own potential and that we can transform this potential into action. For translation students, this means that they could foresee the potential abilities they have before they engage in the learning process and would take the necessary steps on the way to becoming accomplished professional translators. In both cases, I wish to highlight that this idea of authenticity is based on the possibility of a complete self-understanding and on a human essence that can be determined by consciousness. If we question the persuasiveness of these assumptions, we may have to think about authenticity in another way. Heidegger’s conception of authenticity4 (1996), for example, shares with the modern concept the idea of being true to oneself, but he rejects the belief of a distinctive human essence. By analysing human participation in life (Dasein), he points out that, on the one hand, human beings can be inauthentic in doing something just because it is the way others behave. In this case, we simply apply or implement a programme; we believe without considering whether it is our own belief; “we can disown ourselves and live dispersed in ‘the they’”, as Russon puts it (2008: 97). By being inauthentic, our action is the “applied consequence” of a law, a tradition or a set of rules (Derrida 1992: 45). In Translator Education, this means that, as educators we may follow, for example, the description of learning outcomes literally, without leaving any space for invention and improvisation in the classroom. On the other hand, Heidegger also proposed that human beings could choose to be authentic by expressing an openness to the possible, that is, by remaining open to the transformative possibilities of an undecidable future (Russon 2008, Trubody 2015). Authenticity as a response to a unique situation is to answer a 4 Trubody reminds us that “Heidegger’s use of the term ‘authentic’ in German is an appropriation of the term eigen, an adjective meaning ‘own,’ ‘strange,’ or ‘peculiar’. Eigen gave rise to the word eigentlich meaning ‘real,’ ‘actual,’ or ‘truly’” (2015: 18).

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call5 that does not offer a foreseen answer, that “puts one in the position of having to originate a way of taking up the call” (Russon 2008: 101). A singular response to a call is necessarily incalculable because it “exceeds everything that could have been anticipated as a response” (Gasch¦ 1994: 231). Here we discover that our world has no significant weight itself, but that we must set the terms of conceptualization and thereby impose meaning on our world. In doing so, we recognize our meaning-giving power ; we experience “the fundamental imperative to be answerable to the call of value, to the call of care” (Russon 2008: 100). We discover that the world does not reveal itself to us, but we are the one who makes sense of it: we determine of which things we care and which value we place on them. In the translation classroom, this means for example that a text, like a call, demands to be answered, strives for interpretation and meaningfulness. Hence considering that we dispose how to enact a response to a singular situation in relation to the unique particularities within the actual circumstances, we take unlimited responsibility for our actions and interpretations. The stance of authenticity is defined precisely by the imperative of responsibility, and this in a twofold sense: it is the stance that acknowledges “it’s up to me,” and it is the stance that is definitively attuned to letting itself be bound by what matters. (Russon 2008: 103)

The implications of this concept of authenticity for Translator Education are crucial. Authentic experiential learning clearly does not mean either working merely with authentic translation commissions in the classroom nor with tasks based on real-life scenarios. Authenticity in Translator Education means carrying out embodied action framed by recognizing the responsibility of coming into the world as a unique and singular being. For this reason, learning is a matter of risk and trust, because we do not know where we will end up in the learning process. Hence, learning implies transforming the learner into something unforeseen and new. Therefore, in order to engage with the concept of authenticity in Translator Education, we must assume the responsibility that accompanies authentic learning and we must acknowledge its ethico-political dimensions. As education professionals, we need to have an informed sense of what the aims of education are in order to make authenticity possible. However, as Kiraly points out, in spite of the considerable number of descriptions of classroom activities, the field of Translator Education is lacking in-depth epistemological (and deeper educational) debate (2014). I would like to argue that in extensive engagement with educational and epistemological assumptions, the purposes, the subject and the place of Translator Education need to be brought to the fore in translator5 Here: “an appeal or demand for something to happen or be done” (Oxford Dictionaries).

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education discourse. We need to become aware of why we act in certain ways if we want to strive for authenticity in Translator Education. Hence, in the next section I turn to what are perhaps some of the most fundamental issues in Translator Education: Who educates? Who is to be educated? Where do we educate? What are the purposes of Translator Education? I wish to focus first on the ecology of Translator Education, that is, on the relationships between the educational agents and their environment in order to promote authentic learning. Subsequently, I will analyse the teleology of Translator Education, the purposes that govern educational action.

The Ecology of Translator Education Authenticity demands from the teacher an openness to the possibility of that which is different and singular. In translation classrooms, it requires, for example, an awareness of the diversity of languages among the students. As Dizdar puts it, with particular attention to the relationship between major and minor languages, we have to affirm the singularity and uniqueness of every utterance in the translation classroom to counteract lingual imperialism (2012: 157). However, we would not be aware of that which is different (other languages, worldviews, traditions, cultures, etc.) without (mis)interpreting it. In order to acknowledge the other as a singular and unique being, we have to confront the imperative of giving meaning to what is unpredictable, not by pre-assigning an objective presence to the other, either by foreseeing its singularity or by applying a calculable scheme, but by acknowledging the ethico-political implications of the invention of the other. Teaching translation does not mean actually following recipes but making “wise situated judgement about what is educationally desirable” (Biesta 2013: 140). Translator Education is not a matter of cause and effect, but of events, that is, of moments in which the unforeseeable and unexpected can take place and in which both teachers and students can act authentically. As Dizdar continues (2012: 157–158), one of the attitudes underlying this kind of Translator Education is an awareness of the frame in which Translator Education is enclosed (the educational institution, lecture room, course type, duration and interval, etc.) and of the subjects that play a role in the educational process (students and teachers in their material, cognitive, emotional, ideological, and sociocultural contexts). In this regard, I wish to highlight that the participants in the educational process as meaning-giving agents actually influence the educational framework with their assumptions and actions. Here is an example. As educational research has focused traditionally on those between the ages of 6 and 21, educational assumptions are made on the

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basis of observations with children and young people. In the early 1920s, however, when adult education emerged, some problems appeared, as Holmes and Abington-Cooper point out: One was that pedagogy was based on the premise that the purpose of education was the transmittal of knowledge and skills. Adult learners seemed to feel this was insufficient and frequently resisted teaching strategies that pedagogy prescribed, such as lectures, assigned readings, drills, quizzes, note memorizing, and examinations. (2000)

Teachers noted that the characteristics of adult learners and the goals they strove for did not suit their pedagogical assumptions. In fact, adults are independent beings that have forged their identities from unique personal experiences. For this reason, a purely transmissionist conception of knowledge does not apply to adult education. Thus, many teachers began to express doubts about the validity of the learning model. The dichotomy of pedagogical-andragogical learning is a matter of considerable debate and suggests that teachers’ perceptions of learners have a profound impact on the educational assumptions they accept. The Bologna Process, however, reveals a tendency to consider students as children. One important consequence of this situation is that universities are seen as institutions that exist to help students evolve to acquire the knowledge provided by an independently existing world. Nevertheless, as we have explored in relation to the concept of learning, this representational assumption – that there is a world out there that is present in itself and which we can have accurate knowledge of –, poses major problems for Translator Education. The term ‘translator training’ constitutes another example in the field of Translator Education. This denomination is more popular than ‘translation or translator education’ as we can see by searching for the keyword ‘training‘ in the Translation Studies Bibliography. There are 2554 hits for this term, while there are a mere 709 hits for ‘education‘. It should be noted here that ‘training‘ is based on the epistemological assumption that learning comprises the acquisition of skills through practice and instruction until a pre-determined standard of proficiency has been reached. In gaining a full appreciation for this term, we could conclude, as Kelletat does, that ‘translation training‘ should be shifted from universities to training schools, where the students are trained to develop the skills that the translation and interpreting marketplace requires (2015: 191). By contrast, according to Kelletat, translation as the profession of lingual and cultural mediation requires proper Translator Education. Here, the students become experts in language and culture; they learn to translate and interpret, and have time for deep reflection on the theoretical foundations of translation studies, philology, linguistics, and cultural studies (2015: 191). In opposition to translator training, students who delve into Translator Education learn how to

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engage in the profession of confronting the (im)possible task of speaking in the name of another (Dizdar 2009, 2012; Bahadir 2010); they reflect on the ethicopolitical consequences of their translation decisions, and they take the risk of coming into the world as unique and singular beings.

The Teleology of Translator Education Translator Education is governed by certain purposes. In fact, the term ‘education’ – which comes from the combination of two Latin words ex and ducere, meaning ‘to lead out of ’, to guide and provide the learner with the means to be open to the world – embodies a multitude of concepts that generally refer to the intervention in someone’s life for the purpose of somehow leading this life in a better way. Therefore, “education is always bounded by a certain ‘teleology’, that is, by an intention for a particular kind of learning to take place” (Biesta 2009: 105). According to Biesta, the aims of education tend to function in three domains: qualification, socialization and cultivation of human subjectivity (2010). These domains are related and even overlap. Synergies and conflicts could appear between the three domains.

A Matter of Qualification? Curriculum Development First and foremost, a qualification allows students to do something. It is related to an infinite range of activities from specific occupations like specialized translator training for technical texts to general considerations about ethical and socio-political values. For the purpose of the qualification, educational institutions specify the knowledge, skills and dispositions that students should learn. This is similar to what Hagemann calls “a specific concept of what superior performance in translation involves” (in this volume). In Translator Education, superior performance is frequently articulated with the term ‘translation competence’. The idea of competence focuses on what translators should be able to do rather what they need to know. The notion of competence has a certain rhetorical allure; what student of translation would not want to become a competent professional? By comparing competence with knowledge it becomes clear that the former is more practical and more holistic than the latter, because it seems to cover knowledge, skills, and action as an integrated entity. This idea seems to be linked to a growing interest in the utility and function of Translator Education within higher education, which is in turn related to a growing trend towards evidence-based professionalization of the field, of standardized accountability and assessments. In fact, the Bologna

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Process has lately reinforced these trends. The increasing predominance of this terminology manifests a cultural change, as Kelletat accentuates, that is connected with a market orientation of higher education that is taken for granted, growing bureaucracy and lessening democracy within the faculties, and finally, increasing economic competitiveness and effectiveness (2015: 189–190). Yet the concept of competence is not only associated with certain political tendencies, it is also beset with various educational problems. To begin with, there are the terminological ambiguities. Even within the framework of the Bologna Process, there is considerable confusion over the definition of ‘competence’ and its relationship to ‘learning outcome’ (Presas 2012: 141–142). In spite of these terminological ambiguities, the basic problem with the notion of competence, however, is that it tries to cover all possible educational eventualities, thus leading to excessively long checklists for everything. The definition of competence becomes so broad that it may be difficult to see what is not included in the idea. Some examples of these lists are the EMT Competences for professional translators (2009) or the model proposed by Göpferich et al. (2009). The qualification should allow students to practice the translational profession in the future and give superior performance in future professional situations. Hence, we should not confound educational specifications of the knowledge, skills and dispositions either with a description of the (current) professional standards and norms for translators and interpreters, nor even with an empirical description of professional performance. The learners may work in a future in which professional conditions have already changed. It is impossible to foretell precisely what the profession will like be in the future, and therefore to prepare the students for any defined set of future conditions. An educational specification of that which qualifies would-be-translators to exercise the profession does not have anything to do with a description of the (professional) reality, but rather with judgements about what is educationally desirable in relation to a particular constellation of educational purposes.

A Matter of Socialization? Transmitting Traditions Apart from the qualification, Translator Education pursues the professional socialization of the students. The practices of socialization are motivated by the idea of inserting the newcomers into existing cultural, socio-political and professional structures. This insertion secures cultural and social continuity and contributes to the reproduction of existing knowledge and practices. This means, as Rorty puts it, to get the students “to take over the moral and political common sense of the society as it is” (1999). Similarly, in the context of Translator Education, the students adopt the taken-for-granted sense of the

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professional fields of translation and interpreting. However, they learn the ‘common sense’ that the teacher considers relevant with reference to personal professional experience. Nevertheless, one of the main problems of safeguarding existing traditions and knowledge is that they may perpetuate preconceived translation concepts and practices, which do not take the scientific community’s latest developments into account. As Dizdar points out, Translation Studies as Gegenwartswissenschaft (studies of the present) have considerable transformative potential for reflecting about our own contemporaneity, for reconsidering the economization tendencies within the humanities, and redefining the distorted relationship between practice and a market orientation in Translator Education (2015). However, this potential can only be fulfilled if the university is not merely a place where traditions are kept alive, but instead where critical reflection about one’s own doing is promoted and where educators participate in the politics of university as well as in the politics of translation (2015: 201).

A Matter of Cultivation? Authentic Translator Education The translation students need to be professionally socialized; education should, however, leave them sufficient space to become unique, autonomous and independent translators or interpreters and allow them to be authentic. Then, as Dewey says “the social definition of education, as getting adjusted to civilization, makes of it a forced and external process, and results in subordinating the freedom of the individual to a preconceived social and political status” (Dewey 2011). The students must have the opportunity to demonstrate who they are and who they want to be. Individuals should be allowed to cultivate their humanity and freethinking through the educational process. Similar to the question of authenticity, the conception of cultivation of humanity implies, however, a modernist humanistic framework related to the nature of human beings and their potential to become rational autonomous beings. As we have already mentioned, with the emergence of the modern worldview, the individual sought autonomy, self-directness and independence. Through the cultivation of human subjectivity by means of education, the individual was able to accomplish these objectives, that is, become a fully autonomous, rational and thus free human being. This humanist conceptualisation of learning as cultivation is primarily based on a horticultural metaphor. As Biesta points out, it refers to “the fostering and pruning of human qualities that are potentially already ‘there’, somewhere ‘inside’ the one whose humanity is being cultivated and whose humanity requires cultivation” (Biesta 2014). This means that humanism sees education as the

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cultivation of something that is potentially inside the human being and that is somehow the essence, nature and destiny of the human being. Like the modern concept of authenticity, the concept of learning as cultivation creates a space of interiority, an essence, that is possible to acknowledge and that could be “brought to the surface” through education. However, like authenticity, education seen as the cultivation of human subjectivity has also become problematic following the postmodern ‘death of the subject’. For Biesta, the crucial problem with humanism is that “it posits a norm of what it means to be human and in doing so excludes all those who do not live up to this norm or who are unable to live up to it” (2014: 16). This understanding of education as cultivation ends in the socialization of students into a certain conception of humanity. “It specifies what the child, student or newcomer must become before giving them an opportunity to show who they are and who they will be. It is, therefore, unable to be open to the possibility that newcomers might radically alter our conception of what it means to be human” (Biesta 2014: 16). For Biesta the question of what it means to be human needs to remain radically open in order to allow the new beginning of something radically different and unique. Promoting Translator Education in this sense means to be radically open to the possibility of new text interpretations, different translation decisions, and unique lingual and cultural expression. Moreover, it involves the responsibility for the invention and for the active articulation of alterity, both on behalf of the students and the teachers. It implies the imperative to observe the ecology and teleology of education: the relationships between the educational agents as “a voice that is heard and a body that is seen” (Bahadir 2010b: 135), their environment, and the purposes they serve.

Conclusion The considerations about what it means to learn authentically points to the conclusion that authenticity in Translator Education may be characterized by a radical openness that allows new and singular responses. I have not only argued that Translator Education has to be open to the emergence of the invention of what is unforeseen and new, but have also emphasized the crucial importance of the fact that invention is always linked to responsibility. I have tried to show some ways in which authentic Translator Education works. This is why I have suggested that authentic learning is a transformative (and violent) process that can be described as an enacted and emergent phenomenon that concerns not only the craniums, but the students’ and teachers’ corporeal selves as well, the environment of Translator Education, and the purposes that rule the educational

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process. Authentic learning, far from being a transparent and painless activity, implies the risk of becoming someone new and unexpected, and thus the violence of transforming the learner into something unforeseen and different. If we want to seriously uphold the appeal for authentic Translator Education, we have to think about education not only as a way to qualify the students to do a certain predetermined set of activities, nor as a form of transmitting the field’s ‘common sense‘, but also as an attitude that makes the educational event possible, that is, the responsible invention of the unpredictable.

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Dewey, John / Dutton, Samuel T. / Small, Albion W. (2011). My Pedagogic Creed. Michigan: University of Michigan Libraries [1897]. Dizdar, Dilek (2006). Translation. Um- und Irrwege. Berlin: Frank and Timme. Dizdar, Dilek (2009). “Translational Transitions: ‘Translation Proper’ and Translation Studies in the Humanities”, in Michaela Wolf / Kate Sturge (eds.): The Translational Turn (2), 89–102. Dizdar, Dilek (2012). “Dekonstruktive Rahmenüberlegungen”, in Barbara Ahrens (ed.): Translationswissenschaftliches Kolloquium II. Beiträge zur Übersetzungs- und Dolmetschwissenschaft (Köln/Germersheim). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 133–165. Dizdar, Dilek (2014). “Translationslehre: Ziele und Methoden überdenken”, Lecture on the occasion of the colloquium held in honour of Prof. Heidemarie Salevsky for her 70th birthday, Humboldt University, Berlin [17 October 2014]. Dizdar, Dilek (2015). “Translationswissenschaft – als Gegenwartswissenschaft”, in Dieter Lamping (ed.): Geisteswissenschaft heute. Die Sicht der Fächer. Stuttgart: Kröner, 194–209. EMT Expert Group (2009). “Competences for professional translators, experts in multilingual and multimedia communication” http ://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/pro grammes/emt/key_documents/emt_competences_translators_en.pdf [03. 08. 2014]. European Commission (2008). The European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Firmino Torres, Manuel / Leite, Carlinda (2014). “Assessment of and for Learning in Higher Education”, Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1, 14–29. Freud, Sigmund (1917). “A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-Analysis”, Standard Edition 17, 135–145. Gal‚n-MaÇas, Anabel (2013). “L’Apprentissage par Projets dans la Formation de Traducteurs. Une Exp¦rience pour Professionnaliser l’Êtudiant”, Babel 59:1, 41–56. Gasch¦, Rodolphe (1994). Inventions of Difference. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. Göpferich, Susanne / Jakobsen, Arndt / Mees, Inger M. (2009). “Behind the Mind – Methods, Models and Results in Translation Process Research”, Copenhagen Studies in Language 37. Frederiksberg: Samfunds Litteratur. Gonz‚lez Davies, Maria (2004). Multiple Voices in the Translation Classroom. Activities, Tasks and Projects. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Guignon, Charles (2004): On Being Authentic. London: Routledge. Hagemann, Susanne / Neu, Julia (2013). “Vernetzte Translationslehre”, in Silvia HansenSchirra / Don Kiraly (eds.): Projekte und Projektionen in der translatorischen Kompetenzentwicklung. FTSK: Publikationen des Fachbereichs Translations-, Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Reihe A, 61. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 189–209. Hagemann, Susanne (2014). “Images of Higher Education: Developing and Administering Translation Studies Programmes in Germany”, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 8:2, 149–166. Heidegger, Martin (1996). Being and Time. New York: State University of New York Press. Holmes, Geraldine / Abington-Cooper, Michele (2000). “Pedagogy vs. Andragogy : A False Dichotomy?”, JOTS 26 (2).

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Kelletat, Andreas F. (2015). “Zwischen allen Disziplinen? Bildung und Ausbildung im Übersetzer-Studium”, in Dieter Lamping (ed.): Geisteswissenschaft heute. Die Sicht der Fächer. Stuttgart: Kröner, 180–193. Kiraly, Don (2000). A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education: Empowerment from Theory to Practice. Manchester : St. Jerome. Kiraly, Don (2005a). “Project-based Learning: A Case for Situated Translation”, Meta 50:4, 1098–1111. Kiraly, Don (2005b). “Situating Praxis in Translator Education”, in Kristina K‚roly / Ýgota Fûris (eds.): New Trends in Translation Studies: In Honour of Kinga Klaudy, 117–138. Kiraly, Don (2012a). “Growing a Project-based Translation Pedagogy : A Fractal Perspective”, in Hannelore Lee-Jahnke / Martin Forstner (eds.): La CIUTI, Chef de File pour la Promotion de l’Employabilit¦ et de la Recherche / CIUTI: Leader in Advocating Employability and Research 57.1, 82–95. Kiraly, Don (2012b). “Skopos Theory Goes to Paris: Purposeful Translation and Emergent Translation Projects”, in Christina Schäffner / Hanna Risku / Jürgen Schopp (eds.): In memoriam Hans J. Vermeer 4, 119–144. Kiraly, Don (2013). “Toward a View of Translator Competence as an Emergent Phenomenon: Thinking Outside the Box(es) in Translator Education”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 197–224. Kiraly, Don (2014). “From Assumptions about Knowing and Learning to Praxis in Translator Education”, inTRAlinea. Special Issue: Challenges in Translation Pedagogy. [http://www.intralinea.org/specials/article/2100] Mitchell-Schuitevoerder, Rosemary (2013). “A Poject-based Methodology in Translator Training”, in Reine Meylaerts et al. (eds.): Tracks and Treks in Translation Studies: Selected Papers from the EST Congress, Leuven 2010, 127–142. Newmann, Fred M. / Marks, Helen M. / Gamoran, Adam (1996). “Authentic Pedagogy and Student Performance”, American Journal of Education 104, 280–312. Presas, Marisa (2012). “Training Translators in the European Higher Education Area”, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 6(2), 138–169. Rorty, R. (1999). “Education as Socialization and as Individualization”, Philosophy and Social Hope. New York: Penguin Books. Russon, John (2008). “The Self as Resolution: Heidegger, Derrida and the Intimacy of the Question of the Meaning of Being”, Research in Phenomenology 38, 90–110. Splitter, Laurance J. (2008). “Authenticity and Constructivism in Education”, Studies in Philosophy and Education 28, 135–151. Tan, Zaixi (2008). “Towards a Whole-Person Translator Education Approach in Translation Teaching on University Degree Programmes”, Meta 53.3, 589–608. Taylor, Charles (1991). The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. Trubody, Ben (2015). “Heidegger, Education and the ‘Cult of the Authentic’”, Journal of Philosophy of Education 49.1, 14–31. Ulmer, Gregory (1985). Applied Grammatology. Post(e)-Pedagogy from Jacques Derrida to Joseph Beuys. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press.

Susanne Hagemann (University of Mainz/Germersheim)

Chapter 2: (Non-)Professional, Authentic Projects? Why Terminology Matters

The inspiration for this chapter came from the fact that the Second International Conference on Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation (NPIT2), held at Mainz University in May 2014, included a panel on Authentic, Non-Professional, Project-Based Translation Work in Translator Education, where I was invited to present a paper. The NPIT2 call for papers referred to non-professional translation as “the most widespread form of translational action” and explained: “Such an action occurs when an individual translates or interprets without receiving pay.” (“Call”) Defining non-professional as ‘unpaid’, and/or professional as ‘paid’, is of course not specific to NPIT2 but accords with, for instance, Pym’s terminological recommendation: “If a translator is paid, they are professional” (2011: 89). However, I began to wonder about the connection between this definition and the panel to which I had been asked to contribute. This was the starting point of a foray into the terminological complexities of classroom projects. (By classroom projects, I mean projects that are carried out by students with support from their teachers in the context of a degree programme. The classroom may be a virtual one, and meetings may be scheduled as required, rather than at a fixed time every week.) In the following, I shall argue that the terminological choices we make in discussing classroom projects are not neutral. For instance, while we can regard unpaid projects as examples of non-professional translation, in the sense of unpaid translation, this implies a very specific view of project work. If we wish to promote different views, we will need different terminologies. In other words, I hope to show that the terminology of classroom projects matters because the same project can appear in quite different guises depending on the terminology in which we couch our descriptions. I shall begin by exploring the implications of (non-)professional as well as a number of partial synonyms, from volunteer to expert-in-training, and proceed to suggest an alternative approach, namely avoiding short-hand labels in favour of a competence-related terminology that distinguishes between different aspects of projects and student performance. A

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final section will be devoted to some other terms that recur in publications on classroom projects, including especially authentic and the term project itself. My example will be a multilingual project for the blogging community Global Voices, which was organized by the German Department of Mainz University’s Faculty of Translation Studies, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies (FTSK) in 2012. Students in our department all study German as their B language, and we offer German in combination with twelve A languages. Our projects therefore often involve more than one language combination even when we do not join forces with other departments at FTSK. We moreover encourage students to develop and manage their own projects, for which they get credits in a seminar on project management. The Global Voices project was initiated by one of the German Department’s MA students and subsequently managed by other students in our project-management seminar. The actual translations were produced by four classes in the German Department and five in other departments at FTSK. The languages involved, in addition to German, were English, French, Greek, Russian, and Spanish (“FTSK”). The client, Global Voices, is a non-profit organization that describes itself as “a community of more than 800 bloggers and translators around the world who work together to bring you reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media” (“About”). Since Global Voices works exclusively with volunteer translators and relies “on grants, sponsorships, editorial commissions, and donations to cover [its] costs” (“About”), the project is a typical example of non-professional translation as defined by the NPIT2 organizers. What does the NPIT2 conference’s definition of non-professional translation tell us about the Global Voices project? I shall begin by stating the obvious: the definition tells us not only that payment makes a difference, but also that the difference is important enough to serve as a basis for a binary classification of types of translatorial action. And from one point of view, this is certainly true. In our unpaid project, students did not experience what it is like to translate for a living. They were neither faced with the implications of order acquisition and line prices for their personal finances, nor did they write invoices, let alone have to deal with clients unwilling to pay. But then, professional translation in the sense of ‘paid translation’ covers in-house work as well as freelance assignments; and while there are some important similarities between the two (such as the speed at which translators may be expected to work), financial issues are quite different. Being paid does not necessarily involve negotiating fees and writing invoices. While I agree that issues surrounding fees, and more generally self-employment, should have a place in translation degree programmes, payment as such is not a useful defining characteristic for projects because it is neither a necessary

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nor a sufficient condition for project-based learning processes. It is true that the term professional in the sense of ‘paid’ seems meaningful when applied to projects such as those described by Kiraly (e. g. 2013: 217–19), Schmitt (2008), or Schwarz (2010), where students translate at higher-range market prices and under market conditions. However, such projects constitute only one example of the variety of classroom projects, and not necessarily the prototypical one. There are at least two perspectives from which unpaid projects such as Global Voices have a raison d’Þtre as well. Firstly, not translating under market conditions usually means being able to translate at a more leisurely pace, which allows more time for research, discussions, and feedback. While students certainly need to learn to translate quickly because this is what they will have to do when they translate for a living, they also need opportunities to reflect thoroughly on what they are doing and on feedback they have been given as this is an essential part of the learning process. Furthermore, they need space to explore various research methods in order to acquire or consolidate relevant procedural and declarative knowledge. Secondly, unpaid translation services may be worth something in other than financial terms. Not all colleagues at FTSK would agree with me on this point. I have heard at least two of them argue that for a translation to have any value, it must be paid appropriately. I do not share their view. We should of course not offer free, or under-priced, translations to clients who would otherwise have to pay for them in the marketplace (though it is worth noting that this, too, would be covered by the above definition of non-professional). But the non-profit sector is a different matter. I would argue that it is not a bad thing for students at a university in a fairly free, peaceful, and prosperous country to donate some of their time and budding skills to the concerns of others who are less privileged than they are – in the case of Global Voices, to help the marginalized and the censored to be heard internationally. The use of payment as a criterion is not exclusive to the term non-professional. It also occurs with a partial synonym such as volunteer translation, which is sometimes used for unpaid projects conducted with a view to helping others. For instance, Olohan (2012) theorizes volunteer translation against the background of altruism as described by behavioural economics, and Hokkanen (2012: 299–306) compares the concepts of volunteering and service with regard to church interpreting. Calling the Global Voices project an example of volunteer translation would on the one hand make it clearer that Global Voices is a nonprofit organization, not a for-profit desirous of saving on translation costs (but it would at the same time raise the question of whether student groups actually volunteer, or are volunteered by their teachers). On the other hand, applying this terminology to the classroom would once more suggest a significant difference between paid and unpaid projects without taking account of the function which both types of project fulfil in teaching and learning. The same problem would

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arise with Jääskeläinen, Kujamäki, and Mäkisalo’s term non-profit translation (2011: 144–5). I shall return to this point later. First, however, I want to take another look at the term non-professional. In addition to ‘unpaid’, the term can be associated with a second characteristic, a lack of institutionalization in the sense of formal – and especially university – training1, membership in professional associations, and codes of ethics (see S¦guinot 2008: 2–3 for professionalization). In some publications, the two characteristics serve to describe different concepts (see e. g. McDonough Dolmaya 2012: 174). In others, they are combined to form a single concept: for instance, P¦rez-Gonz‚lez and Susam-Saraeva define non-professional translators and interpreters as “individuals not only without formal training in linguistic mediation but also working for free” (2012: 151). In yet others, quality is added as a further possible criterion (see e. g. Jääskeläinen/Kujamäki/Mäkisalo 2011: 146–7).2 Some researchers, however, have questioned whether the field of translation, including translator training, is not too loosely structured for it to be called a profession. Thus, Katan summarizes the relevant results of his international survey of nearly 1000 translator and interpreter respondents as follows: […] when asked to focus on the wider reality they become acutely aware that they lack societal recognition, and that translators, in particular, lack status. They are also concerned about deprofessionalization from the cowboys but not (yet) from IT.3 Yet, there is not really much mention or apparent awareness regarding wider professional autonomy or many of the key traits deemed necessary for the transformation of an occupation into a profession. In fact, control of output and its use in wider society is hardly mentioned, nor is the need for a recognized body of T/I knowledge (rather than practice) or professional certification/qualifications. It would appear that the T/I group surveyed are focused on their local realities, their immediate, and very individual, developmental paths, and focused very much on the text. There is little sign of the mediator or activist, or of the HAP [Higher Autonomy Professional] consultant living in the same world as their client. Hence, academic theory is out of sync with this reality, and for the moment we still have an occupation 1 My use of training in this paper is generic and includes education. See below for a discussion of the two terms. 2 It is worth noting in this context that professional has two antonyms, namely non-professional and unprofessional, and that a failure to comply with quality and/or ethical standards would often be referred to as unprofessional rather than non-professional. Interestingly, Harris (2009–14) has chosen to name his blog about “Natural Translation, Native Translation and Language Brokering” Unprofessional Translation. 3 When the respondents were asked where they saw competition coming from, they focused on non-specialist translation amateurs (referred to as “cowboys” by one respondent) and subject-specialist translation amateurs, while technology played a comparatively minor role (Katan 2011: 73).

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rather than a fully fledged profession. (2011: 84; see also e. g. Neather 2012: 249, Olohan 2012: 193–4, Schopp 2012: 329–31)

If this is the case, then universities might aspire to professionalize the field, but the status quo becomes questionable as an objective of translator training. The use of professional/non-professional in this second sense, associated with institutionalization, sometimes focuses on formal training as a defining characteristic. This obviates the problem of how professional the field is, but raises other questions. For example, Jääskeläinen refers to the translatorial behaviour of first-year students as non-professional and to that of fifth-year students as professional-like or semi-professional (1993: 99–100). Similarly, Hönig categorizes advanced students as semi-professional (“semiprofessionell” [2011: 61]). This usage – which is not exclusive to the two authors I have quoted – emphasizes the fact that students have begun but have not yet completed their training. If we apply this terminology to projects (which neither Jääskeläinen nor Hönig does), we will set project work in the context of a degree programme, but once more without specifying the nature of the contribution it makes to the programme. And we will at least imply a correlation between the amount of time students have spent in the programme and the degree of competence they have developed – a correlation which of course does not necessarily exist. Kiraly’s recent term pre-professional (in this volume) seems more promising in that it deemphasizes the notion of automatic progression. So far, I have argued that while we can apply the terms non-professional and professional to classroom projects, their established definitions do not fit in well with the specifics of a teaching and learning situation. In particular, they focus on differentiations that may well be less important in the classroom than outside; and conversely, they fail to indicate what project work is intended to achieve for students. Another relevant point is provocatively made by Pym: Translation professionals not infrequently engage in the sublime arrogance of supposing academics are somehow there to serve them. Theory, research, and teaching would have as their only goal the betterment of the profession and only the profession. If we want to know how to translate, apparently we should do research on what the best professionals do; if we want to know the right decisions to make, we should interview the professionals with the most years of experience. Many trainers and researchers have thus adhered to an unspoken pact, pretending to support professionals who at the same time claim to need no such support. (2012: 81)

Pym goes on to suggest that, instead of promoting a closed-shop mentality, we need to take crowd-sourced and machine translation seriously (2012: 82–5), and look at how it interlinks with professional, for example revision and post-editing, services: “Professional translators […] still think they sell a specialized production process; they thus oppose the integration of machine translation and

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volunteers. Increasingly, they will have to realize that what they sell is their seal of approval, their trustworthiness, their responsibility” (2012: 86). In the context of projects, therefore, the opposition between professional and non-professional (however defined) is not contradictory : a project will not necessarily be either one or the other but may include elements of both. We might want our terminology to allow for this possibility, rather than closing it off by means of the prefix non-, which commonly expresses contradictoriness. In the following, I shall discuss some other ways of talking about project work. My starting point is the fact that Jääskeläinen uses novice as a synonym of nonprofessional (1993: 100). Since she does not explain the pedagogical assumptions behind this term, it may be no more than a convenient stylistic alternative in her case. By contrast, when Kiraly spoke of novices in his 2000 monograph, he situated his use of the term in a complex educational approach. (I use the past tense advisedly.) Kiraly drew on Hoffman’s model of expertise development in distinguishing five stages: novice, initiate, apprentice, journeyman, and expert. His definition of novice (2000: 58), which closely followed Hoffman’s (1998: 84–5), read: “‘a probationary member’ of a knowledge community with minimal exposure to the domain”. This definition suggests what Kiraly’s classroom projects aimed to do, namely enable students to become members of a knowledge community ; and the five stages of becoming a member are obviously relevant to teaching and learning processes. However, Kiraly has recently said that he is “no longer very comfortable with the idea of a ‘novice’ translator” because the term […] has strong overtones of the neophyte, almost completely lacking in experience, desperately in need of (cognitive) apprenticeship under a “master” of whatever it is that is being learned. But the apprenticeship system itself (from which cognitive apprenticeship surely and logically devolved or evolved) smacks of conventional reductionist epistemology, of filled receptacles pouring their contents into less-filled ones, of knowledge-as-truth being passed down from master to apprentice and from generation to generation. (2014)

This is one drawback of Hoffman’s terminology. In fact, Hoffman himself calls attention to his model’s “reliance on an outdated, male-oriented perspective” (1998: 95). Moreover, as Hoffman also points out (1998: 84), his terminology was originally associated with craft guilds. Is the metaphor sufficiently dead by now, or does it suggest that translation is a craft – and if it does, is this what we wish to suggest? Finally, novice etc. are designations for persons, and as such, they may be taken to imply a homogeneity of translation competence that in practice does not actually exist. For example, a translator may have excellent research skills but at the same time lack self-confidence and therefore ignore his or her own power

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of decision. For these reasons, I have come to think that we may need yet a different terminology. A term that has gained considerable currency is Harris’s natural translation (e. g. 1973: 137). However, this seems unsuitable to me in the context of classroom projects because it revolves around a complete lack of training. Thus, according to a recent definition of Harris’s, natural translators “are people who do translation of a simple kind without having had any training in translation, either formal or informal. They have been observed among very young children, though natural translation […] is by no means limited to them” (2009). In this sense, even first-year students are not natural translators because they have already started their training. By contrast, in propagating the term native translator, Toury emphasizes the fact that “[t]he acquisition of translating as a skill […] does not involve the mere unfolding of the innate competence, but is always connected with and dependent on some environmental feedback resulting from the socio-cultural circumstances surrounding the emerging translator and his activity” (1984: 191). He argues that training “can be justified only to the extent that it leads to the attainment of the ‘natural’ results (that is, to the establishment of an advanced ‘native translator’) in a quicker and more efficient way” (1984: 193), and calls for the introduction of “a developmental model which is constructed exclusively around the evasive notion of socialization, or even the acquisition of a habitus” (22012: 289). In this context, students could certainly be referred to as native translators. However, this would once more direct attention away from the specifics of the classroom situation. If we want to speak of students in general, and of what project work can contribute to translation learning, Washbourne’s term experts-in-training (2013: 44) has the advantage of focusing both on the learning process and on its ultimate goal without ascribing a specific set of competences to any individual student, or group of students. Translation by experts-in-training is an apt description of what I would regard as the core of the Global Voices project, albeit only with Washbourne’s proviso that “[t]he use of ‘training’ in this ad hoc term does not preclude translator education or its goals” (2013: 44). The use of training in connection with translation degree programmes is not uncontroversial. While it serves as a generic term in some publications (e. g. Kelly 2005), in others a sharp distinction is drawn between training and education. Bernardini for one argues that “[t]he aim of [training] is to prepare learners to solve problems that can be identified in advance through the application of pre-set, or ‘acquired’ procedures”, whereas “the core aim of education is to favour the growth of the individual, developing her cognitive capacities, and those attitudes and predispositions that will put her in a position to cope with the most varying (professional) situations”. The former is “cumulative”; the latter, “generative” (2004: 19). Kelly and Martin sum up current usage as follows:

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In very general terms, ‘training’ tends to be preferred by those who adopt a more vocational or market-driven approach to developing translator and interpreter skills, while ‘education’ is favoured by those who situate the acquisition of these skills in the broader social context of higher or tertiary education, although this split is not entirely clear-cut (22009: 294).

My own use of training rather than education in this paper is partly motivated by Washbourne’s term experts-in-training, and partly by the connection between project work and the translation market. However, I do not intend to suggest that education, in Bernardini’s sense, is any less important (quite the contrary, in fact). As far as projects such as Global Voices are concerned, while they are usually regarded as an opportunity for students to acquire market-relevant competences, they are not a priori associated with either education or training, but can be used for both purposes; and it is worthwhile noting in this context that the purpose intended by a teacher will not necessarily be identical to that sought by (each of) their students. In the practice of classroom projects, the education/training distinction may therefore be less clear-cut than some definitions suggest. Speaking of experts-in-training moreover begs the question of what we mean by expert. Not surprisingly, there are various answers. Washbourne himself discusses ethical expertise but not translation expertise in general. Pym, applying discourse analysis to uses of the terms expert and expertise in translation studies, concluded almost twenty years ago that they are not neutral but ideological, and that “[t]he ideology of the expert is self-justifying” (1996: 4). To put it very bluntly and simplistically, according to Pym we attribute the label expert to those whose discourses and practices accord with our own, and then refer to them in order to confirm the quality of our own work. Pym emphasizes that while sound empirical research is valuable, it does not offer an easy way out of the quandary : […] the appeal to science is itself often a major strategy for shoring up expertise. After all, […] there is always some personal or collective interest at stake in the setting up of any scientific research. Why focus on one particular area […]? Why choose some hypotheses and not others […]? What is the authority of the person organizing the research […]? (1996: 8)

If we apply Pym’s analysis to the term expert-in-training and to the Global Voices project, it will become clear that both can take on quite diverse meanings depending on students’ and teachers’ underlying concepts of translation, translators, and translator training. For instance, the project lends itself to a holistic approach which includes aspects such as learning to work with HTML files, coordinating with other team members, and meeting deadlines, but it can also be used for a language-and-culture-centred type of teaching and/or learning in

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which technological and organizational aspects become extraneous. Proponents of either method may lay claim to the term experts-in-training, each on the basis of their own notions of expertise. Shreve, taking his cue from Pym, argues: To be an expert […] means first and foremost to be able to perform domain-specific tasks at a level consistently and demonstrably superior to the performance of others (novices, students, experienced non-experts). Implicit in the notion of expert performance is an objective evaluation or assessment of some kind that establishes a demonstrable difference between the “superior” performances expected of experts and performances at lower levels. This assessment, at least in the case of translation performance, is not a trivial problem. […] the solution is to capture the multiple value systems translations can represent in performance models reflective of different performance-assessment situations. (2002: 151–2)

What is relevant here is that, in the current absence of such a bundle of operationalizable models, or of one generic model, the term experts-in-training will continue to remain to some degree ideological. By speaking of experts-intraining in connection with project work, I indicate that, in my view, translator training should relate to a specific concept of what superior performance in translation involves; but the nature of this concept is not self-evident and will remain open unless I explain it at some length. Before proceeding to discuss the terminological dimension of such an explanation, I shall take a brief look at another aspect of what Pym calls ideology. The term professional is obviously easier to operationalize than expert, for example in terms of work experience4 gained or income earned as a translator. However, it is no less ideological than expert when used in the context of classroom projects. Degree programmes are necessarily selective even when their design is holistic because it is impossible to reproduce the multiplicity of work situations in a few modules (or, for that matter, in the lifetime of any single translator). The moment we apply professional to what students should learn to do, the term will thereby become normative and raise questions of selection very similar to those raised by Pym for uses of expert. Since this paper focuses on the implications of terminology for our views of classroom projects, I shall not set out the details of my own concept of superior 4 As a number of authors have pointed out, work experience alone is not a sufficient condition for superior performance and therefore for expertise. See e. g. Ericsson (1996: 3–4), and in translation studies Jääskeläinen (1993: 99–100 and 2010: 214–20), Risku (1998: 90), and Shreve (2002: 157 and 2006: 28). While Jääskeläinen, Kujamäki, and Mäkisalo (2011: 148–52) rightly remind us that a failure of working translators to achieve high quality in empirical settings may be due to problems caused by the research design or the concept of quality used, it seems unrealistic to assume that, if these problems were rectified, the performance of all would be equally good.

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performance in translation here. I shall, however, give an example of the terminology I would use to describe both project work and the performance of an individual expert-in-training. The example derives from a developmental model of translation competence created by Andrea Cnyrim, Julia Neu, and myself on the basis of Risku (1998). In our model, we provide labels for ideal-typical competence levels rather than real persons (2013: 30–4 and passim).5 This seems viable to me from my present terminological perspective as well. Focusing on competences obviates the problems posed by terms such as novice. It does not associate learning with an apprenticeship, or translation with a craft. Moreover, since our model is ideal-typical, it does not claim to reflect any specific individual’s learning processes (2013: 13–14), and can therefore accommodate the fact that an individual translation student may have achieved different levels of competence depending on which aspects we spotlight, and also on the precise nature of the task at hand. The five dimensions of translation competence that the model comprises6 are closely intertwined, which enables us, on the one hand, to view the project work done by students as an integrated whole, and on the other, to distinguish between different aspects of a student’s performance. Applying the terminology of our developmental model to the Global Voices project as a whole would involve saying that, depending on the texts chosen, the project was appropriate for Levels 3 or 4, which we refer to as conceptual and procedural competence and multidimensional competence respectively.7 The project was suitable for promoting student development in some, but not all, dimensions of translation competence. For instance, since the project was carried out by several translation teams as well as a project-management team, it was relevant to co-organization, which is part of Risku’s dimension of selforganization and relates to how the translation process is integrated into various frameworks of social action (Risku 1998: 235). By contrast, the project may not have contributed much to the advancement of students’ guiding images of 5 Following Risku (1998: 88–90 and passim), we sometimes refer to the extremes of the scale as layperson and expert. However, ideal-typical extremes by definition involve possessing a characteristic in the utmost possible degree, and will therefore be homogeneous. 6 The dimensions, first described by Risku (1998: 131–239), are guiding images of translation (i. e. representations of the purpose of translation), macrostrategy formation (i. e. determining the goal of translatorial action), information integration (i. e. processes ranging from the use of previous knowledge via source-text reception to research), planning and decisions (i. e. procedures chosen in a specific translation situation), and self-organization (i. e. self-management as well as integration into frameworks of social action). They thus include both cognitive and social aspects of translation. 7 In addition to its five dimensions of translation competence, the model has a total of five levels: (1) lay competence, (2) basic functional competence, (3) conceptual and procedural competence, (4) multidimensional competence, and (5) autonomous and progressive competence. As implemented in our own department, Level 3 covers the second and third BA years, and Level 4, the two MA years.

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translation, i. e. their notions of what translation can be about, because many students would already have been familiar with the predominantly reproduction-oriented guiding image8 promoted by Global Voices. As far as an individual student’s performance is concerned, I shall take one of our student project managers, in her first MA year, as an example. At one point she was faced with the issue of defective source texts, which she identified as a risk. On her own initiative, she consulted a Global Voices editor and posted their joint suggestions in our online project forum, where the translation teams were able to access them. She thus assumed appropriate and responsible roles in her interactions with other stakeholders, and therefore scored highly on co-organization. By contrast, in the dimension of guiding images she remained much closer to the lay end of the scale. For instance, she spoke of some defects “having no relevance to translation”, as if there could be any type of defect that did not confront a translator with ethical issues linked to his or her possible roles (in fact, translation as reproduction, for example, would involve reproducing defects in the interests of the original author’s voice, but perhaps at the expense of their power of conviction). She moreover proved quite reluctant to reflect on, let alone critically question, her assumptions. If we consider this student an expertin-training, then she might have benefited from taking part in a further project geared to help students expand their range of guiding images. What are the implications of this kind of competence-related terminology for project work? It is immediately obvious that speaking of competences involves far longer descriptions than classifying an entire project as non-professional, or students as semi-professionals. This is not a disadvantage, however. Rather, it indicates, firstly, that even when we take a holistic approach, we need to differentiate between various aspects of both the project and students’ performance because we cannot expect either to be homogeneous. Secondly, it reinforces a point made earlier : when talking about classroom projects, we should explain not only our general pedagogical approach but also our concepts of translation and of the specific goals of translator training because they are not inherent in project work as such. The need to explicate our concepts and goals has a bearing on assessment as well. We measure students’ performance against learning objectives; but whose objectives, or intended learning outcomes, are they – the teacher’s or the student’s? What happens if the two disagree? Questions such as these are obviously not first and foremost terminological; but they are worth briefly mentioning here not only because they do have a terminological component but also because the many-sidedness of projects offers a high potential for disagreement. For 8 See e. g. advice such as “Translators are encouraged to use bracketed ‘translators’ notes’ when they needed [sic] to change something in the original post.” (“Lingua Translators Guide”).

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instance, in the anonymous final evaluation of the Global Voices project conducted by one of our project managers, a student said: “I would have preferred to translate more texts myself […] because what matters in specialized translation is routine and observing text-type conventions” (quoted in Mölbert 2012: 4; my translation). The project would doubtless have lent itself to translating large amounts of text, and also to working with text-type conventions. But if the unnamed teacher of this course intended the project to provide students with a holistic experience of translation that included aspects ranging from co-organization via revision to information and communication technology, then the question of whether we define learning objectives or outcomes from the student’s or from the teacher’s perspective becomes paramount. If the student rejects the teacher’s objectives because they do not seem relevant to him or her, and instead aims for a different set of outcomes, how do we assess performance? Another term we need to consider in connection with project work is authentic. Was the Global Voices project an authentic one – and what does the term tell us about the project? Before I began work on this paper, I would have said unhesitatingly that it was an authentic project because the translations were subsequently used outside the classroom in which they were produced. Authenticity for me would have resided in the existence of users other than the translation group (including the teacher), outside or inside FTSK.9 But other definitions are possible. For instance, Schopp maintains that an authentic commission in translator training involves “the holistic and systematic working through of a commission in the commercial sense, that is, taking into account all stages of the translation process, starting from a price estimate in response to a client’s or commissioner’s request, to the final proofreading by the client and permission to print” (2006: 175–6). The Global Voices project would then have been inauthentic not only because it was unpaid but also because it lacked features such as an imprimatur and a contract setting out “all relevant parameters such as description of the work, final form of the text, grammatical and visual quality and due date” (Schopp 2006: 177). Interestingly, on the basis of this definition, an authenticity deficit will be found not only in some classroom projects but also in quite a number of paid projects in the translation market. For Schopp, the issue of authenticity seems to be closely bound up with his conception of what it would take for translation to become a full profession (2012:

9 This is the implicit definition of authenticity on which the concept of networked translation teaching developed by Julia Neu and myself is based. Interestingly, we did not find it necessary to make our definition explicit when we published an account of our networked projects (Hagemann/Neu 2013); it seemed self-evident to us at the time. – An internal networked project, for users inside FTSK but outside the project teams’ classrooms, is described in S‚nchez (2012).

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329–31). Authenticity in this sense embodies a vision rather than a current reality. Krenzler-Behm’s concept of authenticity has some similarities with Schopp’s in so far as her demarcation criteria include the existence of a real client who is available for queries, a negotiation of terms and conditions, a clear definition of the translation’s intended use, degree of publicness, and addressees, as well as payment for the job (2013: 16). She differs from Schopp in her recommendation that the source text should be suitable for real-time classroom translation, and that it should be non-specialized because she considers most specialized texts too demanding (2013: 16, 88–9). However, this recommendation seems to spring from Krenzler-Behm’s basically instructionist approach to teaching (2013: 198–204, 339) rather than from any assumptions about authenticity as such. While its usefulness is open to argument, it does emphasize the fact that project work needs to be considered in the context of a classroom situation. From a different point of view, Kiraly has defined authentic project work as “the collaborative undertaking of complete translation projects for real clients” (2005: 1002). Does this make the Global Voices project authentic? The answer will depend on whether “collaborative” refers generally to the involvement of several translators (in the sense in which e. g. Folaron (2010: 233) speaks of “volunteer, collaborative networks”) or specifically to Kiraly’s own pedagogical approach, whether we regard Global Voices as a “real client” even though they do not remunerate their translators, and whether a selection of texts from a larger website qualifies as “complete”10. A later definition of authentic, collaborative translation project reads: “a holistic piece of work undertaken by a team of students in the service of a real-world client or user” (Kiraly 2012: 84). Leaving aside the fact that the definiendum is different here, this definition is somewhat easier to apply to the Global Voices project because, from the perspective of student experience, the project may be “a holistic piece of work” even though it does not involve translating the “complete” website. And while Global Voices might still not count as a “real client” – witness the distinction drawn in this article between “translations commissioned by real-world clients” and “other types of published work”, where “[g]roups of my students and I have sought out NGOs needing translations that they could not pay for” (2012: 91) –, the project would qualify as authentic on the strength of it being undertaken for the benefit of users of the Global Voices website. 10 Compare Gal‚n-MaÇas (2011: 3), who defines authentic practice as “working on real translation projects, such as translating an entire website, documents involved in the sale of equipment (sales agreement, technical specifications, user manuals, etc.), software with all the corresponding documentation – hard copy or electronic format – or an entire magazine etc.” This would exclude the Global Voices project because we did not translate the entire website.

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Another definition in an earlier publication of Kiraly’s raises an even more interesting issue: “Authenticity is the degree to which the activities undertaken in the classroom are representative of the nature and complexity of activities performed by professional translators in the course of their work.” (2000: 58) Here, authenticity is said to be a matter of “degree”. This fits in with the poststructuralist critique of the concept: “To claim that a category is authentic is to argue that it is genuine, natural, true and pure. […] the concept of authenticity is closely related to the notion of essentialism in that authenticity implies immaculate origins. It follows then that the anti-essentialism of poststructuralism and postmodernism rejects the idea of the authentic as such” (Barker 2004: 9). Classroom projects are – I am tempted to say : essentially – hybrid. Their origins are never immaculate because they always spring from a dual need: the classroom’s and the client’s. The point of our projects is precisely that they are carried out in a teaching/learning situation and not (or not only) in the marketplace – even if there were such a thing as ‘the’ translation marketplace. For instance, we will support students if there are any problems they cannot handle by themselves, and we will not let them get themselves into a situation where they might incur substantial damages, even though this does happen to freelance translators. Our projects are never the same as any section of the heterogeneous translation market, and there is no reason why our terminology should gloss over, rather than emphasize, their hybridity. This is why I have used the term classroom projects rather than authentic projects in this paper. A potential disadvantage of the term classroom projects is that some definitions of project leave open the question of whether the translations produced will actually be used or not. Thus, Kelly defines project-based approach as a type of teaching and learning “where an entire student group assumes responsibility for an authentic or realistically simulated large-scale translation commission” (2005: 116); and for Hansen-Schirra and Kiraly, classroom project work (Projektunterricht) is “a networked, situated, holistic learning experience” (2013: 7; my translation). Yet the presence or absence of a client (and/or of external users) can make a substantial difference not only to student motivation but also to aspects of the translation process ranging from co-organization to decisionmaking, and should therefore be reflected in our terminology. A viable solution for this problem would be to speak of projects in a business sense. For instance, the British project-management method PRINCE2TM defines project as “a temporary organization that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to an agreed Business Case11” (OGC 52009: 3). The 11 “The Business Case presents the optimum mix of information used to judge whether the project is (and remains) desirable, viable and achievable, and therefore worthwhile investing in.” (OGC 52009: 21)

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notion of “delivering one or more business products” implies the existence of somebody to whom the products will be delivered – in the case of translations, the client or user. Since according to PRINCE2TM, all projects “involve a team of people […] working together […] to introduce a change that will impact others outside the team” (OGC 52009: 3), it is clear that the teacher and the student translators themselves will not count as users. The PRINCE2TM definition excludes translation assignments whose sole purpose is classroom practice; but it is compatible with a concept of project work such as Hansen-Schirra and Kiraly’s. Introducing a business definition of project into a teaching/learning context moreover emphasizes the hybridity of classroom projects which, as I have argued, the term authentic project fails to convey adequately. Numerous other terms could be discussed here. My final example, which I am not going to explore in detail, is minimally invasive. The concept of minimally invasive education is defined as “a pedagogic method that uses the learning environment to generate an adequate level of motivation to induce learning in groups of children, with none or minimal intervention from a teacher. In MIE [minimally invasive education], the role of the teacher is limited to providing, or guiding learners to, environments that generate adequate levels of interest” (Mitra et al. 2005). How does this terminology relate to classroom projects in translation studies? Rather than examine the obvious links between the definition of minimally invasive and project work (such as the fact that projects tend to engender a motivational environment, and are often predicated on a belief in learner autonomy and self-responsibility), I want to draw attention to a puzzling issue. In some of the classes in which the Global Voices project was carried out, students translated from B into A, and in others, from A into B; but as with many other projects at FTSK, the target language was invariably the teacher’s A language. This makes sense if we believe that teaching involves imparting our knowledge to students; but in how far is it compatible with the definition of a minimally invasive approach? And why is the native-speaker principle in teaching so tenacious? Is this simply due to institutional inertia, or to students wanting the teacher to (be able to) guarantee the “correctness” of the target text, and/or to teachers being reluctant to give up a position of power? Looking at the ramifications of the term minimally invasive can make us question our assumptions about directionality in translation teaching. To sum up, I hope to have shown in this paper that it is worth giving serious consideration to the terminology we adopt in discussing classroom projects. The factors we need to take into account are, firstly, existing terms with their definitions, contexts of use, and implications; and secondly, on the assumptions and expectations which we ourselves bring to projects carried out in translation degree programmes and which comprise both translation- and pedagogyrelated aspects. Seemingly convenient terminological short-cuts such as (non-)

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professional may well prove less than helpful because they tend to oversimplify three very complex processes, namely translation, teaching, and learning. Our terminology can both reflect and shape the ways in which we think about these processes. We should deliberately employ it to conceptualize flexible, variegated, and training-centred approaches to project work.

Works Cited “About” (n. d.). Global Voices. http://globalvoicesonline.org/about/ [03. 03. 2014]. Barker, Chris (2004). The SAGE Dictionary of Cultural Studies. London: SAGE. Bernardini, Silvia (2004). “The Theory behind the Practice: Translator Training or Translator Education?”, in Kirsten Malmkjær (ed.): Translation in Undergraduate Degree Programmes. Benjamins Translation Library, EST Subseries 59. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 17–29. “Call for Papers” (2013). 2nd International Conference on Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation. http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/ikk/402.php [03. 03. 2014]. Cnyrim, Andrea / Hagemann, Susanne / Neu, Julia (2013). “Towards a Framework of Reference for Translation Competence”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Translationswissenschaft 10. Tübingen: Narr, 9–34. Ericsson, K. Anders (1996). “The Acquisition of Expert Performance: An Introduction to Some of the Issues”, in K. Anders Ericsson (ed.): The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1–50. Folaron, Deborah (2010). “Networking and Volunteer Translators”, in Yves Gambier / Luc van Doorslaer (eds.): Handbook of Translation Studies. Amsterdam: Benjamins, I: 231–4. “FTSK” (n. d.). Global Voices. http://de.globalvoicesonline.org/author/ftsk/ [03. 03. 2014]. Gal‚n-MaÇas, Anabel (2011). “Translating Authentic Technical Documents in Specialised Translation Classes”, The Journal of Specialised Translation 16. http://www.jostrans. org/issue16/art_manas.pdf [10. 04. 2014]. Hagemann, Susanne / Neu, Julia (2013). “Vernetzte Translationslehre”, in Silvia HansenSchirra / Don Kiraly (eds.): Projekte und Projektionen in der translatorischen Kompetenzentwicklung. FTSK: Publikationen des Fachbereichs Translations-, Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz in Germersheim, series A, 61. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 189–209. Hansen-Schirra, Silvia / Kiraly, Don (2013). “Einleitung”, in Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Don Kiraly (eds.): Projekte und Projektionen in der translatorischen Kompetenzentwicklung. FTSK: Publikationen des Fachbereichs Translations-, Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz in Germersheim, series A, 61. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 7–10.

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Harris, Brian (1973). “La Traductologie, la traduction naturelle, la traduction automatique et la s¦mantique”, Cahier de linguistique 2, 133–46. http://www.erudit.org/revue/cl/ 1973/v/n2/800013ar.pdf [25. 07. 2014]. Harris, Brian (2009). “Essential Definitions”, Unprofessional Translation. http://un professionaltranslation.blogspot.de/2009/07/essential-definitions.html [25. 07. 2014]. Harris, Brian (2009–14). Unprofessional Translation. http://unprofessionaltranslation. blogspot.de/ [25. 07. 2014]. Hoffman, Robert R. (1998). “How Can Expertise Be Defined? Implications of Research from Cognitive Psychology”, in Robin Williams / Wendy Faulkner / James Fleck (eds.): Exploring Expertise: Issues and Perspectives. New York: Macmillan, 81–100. Hokkanen, Sari (2012). “Simultaneous Church Interpreting as Service”, The Translator : Studies in Intercultural Communication 18.2, 291–309. Hönig, Hans G. (2011). “Übersetzen lernt man nicht durch Übersetzen: Ein Plädoyer für eine Propädeutik des Übersetzens” [1988], in Susanne Hagemann (ed.): Übersetzen lernt man nicht durch Übersetzen: Translationswissenschaftliche Aufsätze 1976–2004 by Hans G. Hönig. Translationswissenschaftliche Bibliothek 3. Berlin: SAXA, 59–72. Jääskeläinen, Riitta (1993). “Investigating Translation Strategies”, in Sonja TirkkonenCondit / John Laffling (eds.): Recent Trends in Empirical Translation Research. Kielitieteellisiä tutkimuksia / Studies in Languages 28. Joensuu: University of Joensuu, Faculty of Arts, 99–120. Jääskeläinen, Riitta (2010). “Are All Professionals Experts? Definitions of Expertise and Reinterpretation of Research Evidence in Process Studies”, in Gregory M. Shreve / Erik Angelone (eds.): Translation and Cognition. American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series 15. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 213–27. Jääskeläinen, Riitta / Kujamäki, Pekka / Mäkisalo, Jukka (2011). “Towards Professionalism – or Against It? Dealing with the Changing World in Translation Research and Translator Education”, Across Languages and Cultures 12.2, 143–56. Katan, David (2011). “Occupation or Profession: A Survey of the Translators’ World”, in Rakefet Sela-Sheffy / Miriam Shlesinger (eds.): Identity and Status in the Translational Professions. Benjamins Current Topics 32. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 65–87. Kelly, Dorothy (2005). A Handbook for Translator Trainers: A Guide to Reflective Practice. Translation Practices Explained. Manchester : St. Jerome. Kelly, Dorothy / Martin, Anne (22009). “Training and Education”, in Mona Baker / Gabriela Saldanha (eds.): Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London: Routledge [1998], 294–300. Kiraly, Don (2000). A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education: Empowerment from Theory to Practice. Manchester : St. Jerome. Kiraly, Don (2005). “Project-Based Learning: A Case for Situated Translation”, Meta: Journal des traducteurs / Meta: Translators’ Journal 50.4, 1098–1111. Kiraly, Don (2012). “Growing a Project-Based Translation Pedagogy : A Fractal Perspective”, Meta: Journal des traducteurs / Meta: Translators’ Journal 57.1, 82–95. Kiraly, Don (2013). “Towards A View of Translator Competence as an Emergent Phenomenon: Thinking Outside the Box(es) in Translator Education”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Translationswissenschaft 10. Tübingen: Narr, 197–224.

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Kiraly, Don (2014). “On Being a Novice …” Personal e-mail to Susanne Hagemann [16. 04. 2014]. Quoted by permission. Krenzler-Behm, Dinah (2013). Authentische Aufträge in der Übersetzerausbildung: Ein Leitfaden für die Translationsdidaktik. TransÜD: Arbeiten zur Theorie und Praxis des Übersetzens und Dolmetschens 58. Berlin: Frank & Timme. “Lingua Translators Guide” (2014). GlobalVoices wiki. http://wiki.globalvoicesonline.org/ article/Lingua_Translators_Guide [21. 04. 2014]. McDonough Dolmaya, Julie (2012). “Analyzing the Crowdsourcing Model and Its Impact on Public Perceptions of Translation”, The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication 18.2, 167–91. Mitra, Sugata et al. (2005). “Acquisition of Computing Literacy on Shared Public Computers: Children and the ‘Hole in the Wall’”, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 21.3, 407–26. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet21/mitra.html [25. 07. 2014]. Mölbert, Nina Brigitte (2012). “Umfrage für Studierende zur Evaluation des Global Voices Projekts.” [Unpublished project evaluation, submitted on 28. 08. 2012.] Neather, Robert (2012). “‘Non-Expert’ Translators in a Professional Community : Identity, Anxiety and Perceptions of Translator Expertise in the Chinese Museum Community”, The Translator : Studies in Intercultural Communication 18.2, 245–68. OGC (52009) [Office of Government Commerce]. Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2TM. London: The Stationery Office [1996]. Olohan, Maeve (2012). “Volunteer Translation and Altruism in the Context of a Nineteenth-Century Scientific Journal”, The Translator : Studies in Intercultural Communication 18.2, 193–215. P¦rez-Gonz‚lez, Luis / Susam-Saraeva, S¸ebnem (2012). “Non-professionals Translating and Interpreting: Participatory and Engaged Perspectives”, The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication 18.2, 149–65. Pym, Anthony (1996). “Ideologies of the Expert in Discourses on Translator Training.” Papers on Translator Training. http://usuaris.tinet.cat/apym/on-line/translation/ex pert.pdf [22. 04. 2014]. [Print version in Yves Gambier / Mary Snell-Hornby (eds.): Problemi e tendenze nella didattica dell’interpretazione e della traduzione. Special issue of KoinÀ: Quaderni di ricerca e didattica sulla traduzione e l’interpretazione. Misano Adriatico: Istituto San Pellegrino, 139–49.] Pym, Anthony (2011). “Translation Research Terms: A Tentative Glossary for Moments of Perplexity and Dispute”, Papers on Research Methodology. http://isg.urv.es/publicity/ isg/publications/trp_3_2011/pym.pdf [08. 05. 2014]. [Print version in Anthony Pym (ed.): Translation Research Projects 3. Tarragona: Intercultural Studies Group, 75–111. Page breaks differ between the two versions.] Pym, Anthony (2012). On Translator Ethics: Principles for Mediation between Cultures. Trans. Heike Walker. Benjamins Translation Library, EST Subseries 104. Amsterdam: Benjamins. [Revised and updated version of Pour une ¦thique du traducteur (1997).] Risku, Hanna (1998). Translatorische Kompetenz: Kognitive Grundlagen des Übersetzens als Expertentätigkeit. Studien zur Translation 5. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. S‚nchez, Alejandra (2012). “Bezug zwischen Lernzielen und Qualität am Beispiel des Projekts ‘Kulturspezifika’.” Unpublished BA thesis. Germersheim: FTSK.

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Schmitt, Helmut (2008). “Translator Competence through Project-based Translation Praxis”, in Frank Austermühl / Joachim Kornelius (eds.): Learning Theories and Practice in Translation Studies. Lighthouse Unlimited 138. Trier : Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 63–83. [Electronic publication on CD-ROM.] Schopp, Jürgen F. (2006). “How Good Is an Authentic Commission for Teaching Translation?”, in John Kearns (ed.): New Vistas in Translator and Interpreter Training. Special issue of Translation Ireland 17.1, 171–80. Schopp, Jürgen F. (2012). “‘Sprachberufe’ in Bewegung? Bemerkungen zum Begriff der Professionalität und zu aktuellen Entwicklungstendenzen im Translationswesen”, in Niina Nissilä / Nestori Siponkoski (eds.): Languages in Motion: VAKKI Symposium XXXII. Vaasa 10.–11. 2. 2012. VAKKI Publications 1. http://www.vakki.net/pub lications/2012/VAKKI2012_Schopp.pdf [08. 05. 2014]. Schwarz, Hans (2010). “Praxisbezug durch Projektarbeit”, MDÜ: Fachzeitschrift für Dolmetscher und Übersetzer 56.3, 20–1. S¦guinot, Candace (2008). “Professionalization and Intervention”, in John Kearns (ed.): Translator and Interpreter Training: Issues, Methods and Debates. Continuum Studies in Translation. London: Continuum, 1–18. Shreve, Gregory M. (2002). “Knowing Translation: Cognitive and Experiential Aspects of Translation Expertise from the Perspective of Expertise Studies”, in Alessandra Riccardi (ed.): Translation Studies: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline. Cambridge: CUP, 150–71. Shreve, Gregory M. (2006). “The Deliberate Practice: Translation and Expertise”, Journal of Translation Studies 9.1, 27–42. Toury, Gideon (1984). “The Notion of ‘Native Translator’ and Translation Teaching”, in Wolfram Wilss / Gisela Thome (eds.): Die Theorie des Übersetzens und ihr Aufschlußwert für die Übersetzungs- und Dolmetschdidaktik / Translation Theory and its Implementation in the Teaching of Translating and Interpreting: Akten des Internationalen Kolloquiums der Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliqu¦e (AILA), Saarbrücken, 25.–30. Juli 1983. Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 247. Tübingen: Narr, 186–95. Toury, Gideon (22012). Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Benjamins Translation Library, EST Subseries 100. Amsterdam: Benjamins [1995]. Washbourne, Kelly (2013). “Ethical Experts-in-Training: Connected Learners and the Moral Imagination”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Translationswissenschaft 10. Tübingen: Narr, 35–52.

Don Kiraly (University of Mainz/Germersheim)

Chapter 3: Authentic Project Work and Pedagogical Epistemologies: A Question of Competing or Complementary Worldviews?

In this chapter I would like to present three of many possible world views and their corresponding pedagogical epistemologies1 and show how they can lead to different approaches to translation pedagogy. As suggested by Doll (2002) and Davis (2004), these three particular pedagogical world views: 1) empirico-rationalism, 2) constructivism and 3) emergentism, can be traced back in intellectual history as far as ancient Greece.2 Limited space permits the inclusion of just a few exemplary thinkers that have been associated with these different perspectives, and it goes without saying that the characterization of these prominent individuals as belonging to one or the other group of thinkers is hardly etched in stone. The objective here is to promote an awareness of and reflection on various worldviews by translator educators and their implications for pedagogy – but not to paint any sort of definitive or comprehensive picture of them.

1 This tripartite classification represents just one of many possible ways of naming and categorising pedagogical epistemologies. The intention here is to illustrate one way of viewing competing trends in pedagogical thought and practice; no claim to objective truth or completeness is intended or implied. The line of reasoning presented here was largely inspired by the writings of William Doll, who was a renowned professor of education at Louisiana State University, and Brent Davis, who has been a professor of mathematics education at several universities in Canada. Both have written widely on the history of pedagogical epistemology and on various aspects of post-positivist and post-modern education. 2 Empiricism and rationalism can, of course, be depicted as distinct epistemologies as they see truth as being accessible in two radically different ways: through the senses or through reasoning respectively. Nevertheless, both views see truth as being discoverable, identifiable, accessible and retrievable; the upshot is the common features of teaching approaches based on empiricist and rationalist views: teacher- and content-centered instruction.

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Empirico-Rationalism: A Cornerstone of Folk Pedagogy (which in turn is a cornerstone of contemporary translator education)

I use the term empirico-rationalism to refer to the positivist, modernist worldview that dates back to the well-known writings of the philosophers and scientists of the Enlightenment. It is based on the thinking of two somewhat distinct groups of thinkers: on the one hand, empiricists like Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Humes, Galileo and Newton, and on the other hand, rationalists like Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza and Comte (the founder of positivism). While both groups of thinkers sought to discover the true nature of the world around them, they approached their quest for stable and universal truth from two different directions. The empiricists believed that careful observation (and measurement) of features of the world could enable the perspicacious human mind to discern its nature (a bottom-up approach to securing truth), whereas the rationalists believed that it is through logical reasoning that we can come to know objective truth about the world (a top-down approach). While the methods of seeking truth for empiricists and rationalists may be different, both believe that knowledge is pre-defined and can be discovered if sought with the proper means and tools. In any event, from a positivist perspective, whereby truth can be found by examining the world directly (empirically) and/or through reason, the teaching/ learning process can essentially be understood as one involving the transmission and accumulation of objective knowledge – regardless of how the knowledge was originally acquired by the educator. Teachers can be seen as holders of knowledge that they can pass on to their students. This kind of pedagogical activity can, of course, be seen in classrooms around the world in many fields of study and at every level of education. And it is this positivist worldview tradition, I believe, that was an important source of the folk pedagogy that for a long time was the norm in Translation Studies classrooms. The arguments of the universally acknowledged philosophers and scientists of the Enlightenment have been bolstered by the writings of numerous thinkers that both preceded and followed them. In fact, both empiricism and rationalism in philosophy and science can be seen to have roots that go back at least to ancient Greece. Socrates, Euclid, and Plato, for example, are generally seen as rationalists, while Sophist atomists like Epicurus and Democritus are considered to be early or at least proto-empiricists3. And a century before Descartes came on

3 The history of Western modernism from an educational perspective has been discussed at length and in depth in the works of William Doll (Trueit 2012). I will not even broach the topic

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the scene, the less famous but still very influential pedagogue, the Renaissance arts master Petrus Ramus created the concept of ‘method’, which he developed within the scope of his pedagogical work. A Frenchman of the 16th century, Ramus wrote a treatise on ‘method’, elucidating what he believed was the ideal structure for teaching the classics and for passing knowledge on from one generation to the next. Ramus’ ideas on implementing a rigid curriculum and devising strict lesson plans spread quickly from country to country and were handed down from generation to generation (Doll 2008: 182; Triche & McKnight 2004). They are sure to have had an impact on Descartes himself and gradually made their way down through the centuries to modern classrooms around the world through the works of such influential figures as Frederick Taylor in the US at the beginning of the 20th century. Taylor became famous for enhancing manufacturing processes to ensure that the greatest possible amount of productivity could be obtained from each individual industrial worker. While Taylor’s ideas were eventually met with opprobrium in the field of industrial management for their dehumanizing effect on workers, they were hailed by educators as a boon to improving education, and were adopted in educational circles and applied to one curriculum after another across the United States and in many other countries. The positivist, reductionist rationale developed by the American behaviourist curriculum specialist Ralph Tyler in the first half of the 20th century, and which drew extensively on Taylorism and the stimulus-response theory of B.F. Skinner, was only discredited in the field of education in the 1990s. And in fact, it continues to play a major role in curriculum development and pedagogical practice even today (Doll 2008: 182; Pinar 2008: 491). Despite having fallen into disrepute as a basis for effective management decades ago, Taylorism still pervades folk pedagogy and has been cited as a key factor contributing to the ills that plague education in the US, for example, with regard to the pervasively excessive emphasis on standardized testing and the current obsession with teacher accountability (Roskelly 2009: 201). An important feature of the positivist (empirico-rationalist) worldview is that it is based on a Cartesian, mechanical understanding of the world and a representational view of knowledge in the mind (both perspectives that are rapidly losing their lustre as we move inexorably into the post-positivist era in which science and technology are no longer seen as offering a panacea for solving the ills faced – and created – by mankind). From this dated perspective, as defended by empiricists like Bacon and Newton, the world functions much like a clock: in a complicated, mechanistic fashion (MorÅöl 2001, 107). Both the physical world and the mental worlds can be seen from this perspective to function essentially of links between Western and Eastern epistemological thought here, but will be doing so in forthcoming publications.

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in the same way. Knowledge is considered tangible, capable of being stored in the mind (and inside the brain) and as suitable for being divorced from personal experience and passed on in propositional form to other individuals – for example from teachers to learners. It is through Taylorist thought, based on Ramist ideals, that this epistemology is applied to classroom practice: Most current pedagogical procedures…require classroom learning to be broken down into simple tasks and arranged methodologically into the right sequence of steps to train students in bureaucratically predetermined knowledge, skills and dispositions. (Triche and McKnight 2004: 39)

This particular perspective on learning underlies the omniscient transmissionist role of the ‘instructor’ in the classroom and the understanding that the teacher must actually ‘possess’, in some sense, the knowledge that is to be acquired by the students, and must be able to transmit that knowledge to them efficiently and effectively. From this perspective, interactive classroom discussion – if it is seen as anything other than a disturbance of the efficient distribution of knowledge from one brain to others – provides an opportunity to practice pre-defined skills and consolidate canonical and practical knowledge acquired directly from the teacher or from other expert sources of input. Discussion among learners themselves within this approach is often unnecessary if not harmful. True knowledge about the world can be identified, packaged and transmitted by teachers – and ingested and accumulated by learners. It is by no means certain that the translation teacher standing in front of a “Who will take the first sentence?” classroom4 is actually aware of the history and traditions that I am suggesting lie behind the long-standing tradition of ‘training’ future language professionals in this fashion. And yet, it has been well established in various sub-fields of education that conventional ‘chalk-and-talk’ teacher-centred instruction is based on an objectivist or positivist worldview that sees the sources and locus of knowledge in a ‘realist’ manner (knowledge understood as a true reflection of the objectively real and directly perceivable world) (Doll 1993, Davis & Sumara 1997). To reiterate: from this perspective: 1) knowledge is to be found in individual minds (particularly in the teacher’s mind in an educational setting); and 2) it represents objective truth about the world that is discoverable through reason and/or through the careful observation of reality. There is surely also at least a tacit understanding that the teacher’s professional experience may well have contributed to his or her relevant knowledge. But a quintessential characteristic 4 This refers to the article by Christiane Nord: „Wer nimmt mal den nächsten Satz” (1996), in which she explains this widespread didactic technique and goes on to outline a plethora of alternatives for the translation studies classroom. (For a constructive crique of Nord’s didactic proposals, see Kiraly 2000: 57–62)

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of this sort of folk pedagogy is that the teacher’s expertise can be reduced to axioms, principles, guidelines, rules, and perhaps hints and tricks – in any event ‘words of wisdom’ that can be received – conduit fashion – by individual learners and stored in the black box of their mind, located in turn within their brain. From this perspective, translation students’ actual experience in dealing with the authentic, situated work of the translator would be of negligible relevance for the learning process – at least during class. Authentic experience might, of course, still be considered an important part of a student’s learning activities outside of the classroom, for example during a work placement or once they begin working on the job. But within the programme of study per se, it is the students’ ability to cognitively retrieve and integrate the truths transmitted by the teacher that really counts. From a positivist educational perspective, learners do not need to experience the messy, complicated real world of professional translation for themselves; it is far more expedient for teachers to distil, simplify and transmit knowledge and skills: the mainstay if not the very essence and raison d’Þtre of modern institutionalized education. It is interesting to note that the ‘method’ Nord (1996) proposes to move beyond the folk pedagogy underlying the who-will-take-the-next-sentence teaching approach is fully compatible with Ramus’, Taylor’s and Tyler’s pedagogical approaches. She proposes identifying specific sub-domains of the translator’s target competence and specifying the precise content that needs to be taught to build up overall translation competence. She suggests using a Socratic approach to interaction in the classroom (based on Socrates’ rationalist view that truth could be known by the teacher and deduced by the students through logic and with the teacher’s guidance). I believe that Nord’s method does indeed represent a step beyond folk pedagogy, beyond an a-theoretical, asystematic teaching approach towards an actual educational pedagogy, one that acknowledges its underlying epistemology and builds on a coherent and logical set of principles that can be discussed and assessed by the community of translator educators. And while this is a method that is very much at odds both with a social constructivist and an emergentist approach to facilitating learning, it does represent an epistemologically grounded model for instructionism that may well suit certain teachers, learners, learning situations – and particularly early stages of learning within an institutional setting. What is important, in my view, is not having one particular epistemology or attempting to promote learning in one particular way, but creating and applying coherent and principled pedagogical approaches that can be demonstrated to be viable tools in educational praxis. Some teachers will surely find that their personal beliefs about the nature of knowing and learning led them beyond a reductionist, Ramist didactic approach of the type that Nord proposes. Both conventional folk pedagogy, and positivist

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instructionism5 are sharply at odds with an increasingly widespread postpositivist worldview – not only in education but also in philosophy and the social and even the natural sciences. From a post-positivist perspective, most knowledge is not something that can be discovered empirically or rationally ; instead, ‘knowing’ is a non-linear process of context-dependent, embodied and enactive meaning-making (or -construal) involving a myriad of inter-related knowing systems, from neurons to brains to individual minds through communities of practice and on to cultures and societies (and in fact the environment as a whole). I believe that two major strands of post-positivist educational thought have been evolving in education for some time now and which I will refer to here as: social constructivism and emergentism. The former served as the basis for my original collaborative approach to translator education centred on authentic project work (Kiraly 2000) and the latter has been guiding my pedagogical thinking as I have moved beyond social constructivism (Kiraly 2012a, 2012b).

2.

Social Constructivism: Beyond Instructionism and Radical Constructivism

Before moving on to summarize briefly the underlying epistemological tenets of social constructivism, it is important here, I feel, to reiterate some of the key differences between Piaget’s radical constructivism and Vygotsky’s social constructivism. While the former can be seen as still being tied to a rather positivist worldview, the latter I construe to be firmly in the post-positivist realm. Both theories suggest that we learn most often not by ingesting truth discovered empirically or rationally, but by creating our own understandings of the world. For Piaget, this was largely a process of individual cognition (which, in turn, allows for social interaction), whereas for Vygotsky, it is social interaction that precedes and sets the stage for thought. For Vygotsky, learning is much more a matter of construing (that is, interpreting) the world than it is a matter of constructing knowledge about the world. In the social constructivist theory that is closely linked to the Russian polymath Lev Vygotsky, the world is interpreted by individuals in and through social interaction.6 The first radical constructivist perspective, dating back to ancient Greece, has been attributed to the Sophist Protagoras in the fifth century BC. 5 The term instructionism is attributed to Seymour Papert (1993). 6 Space limitations prohibit me from reviewing the social constructivist perspective in detail. The reader is referred to A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education (Kiraly 2000) for a thorough discussion of social constructivist theory and its application to translator education.

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Protagoras is famous for a statement to the effect that: ‘Man is the measure of all things’, which has been interpreted as suggesting a relativist philosophical view of man’s relationship with knowledge. During the Enlightenment period, it was Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian and jurist who developed an epistemology that represented a distinct contrast to reductionism. In one of his major works, published in 1710, Vico introduced and defended his famous verum factum principle (stating that only that which is made can be known to be true), which was based on the view that knowledge derives from creation or invention and not from observation. Vygotskian understandings of learning, the mediational role of culture, scaffolding (interactive support for learning provided by more knowledgeable others) and the zone of proximal development (ZPD) have been adopted and adapted for educational applications in a wide number of pedagogical domains, including mathematics and science education. Along with Lev Vygotsky, one of the two most important thinkers associated with social constructivist epistemology is the American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer John Dewey. One of the three principle representatives of American pragmatist philosophy (along with Charles Peirce and William James), Dewey rejected the ‘spectator view of knowledge’ and believed that knowing emerges through action. While he firmly believed in the utility of the scientific method, he saw the goal of its application not as the discovery of truth about the world but instead viable explanations which communities of thought and practice can agree to use. Learners, in his view, need to be situated, involved and implicated in relevant authentic activities rather than be passive recipients of teachers’ knowledge. The social constructivist approach I proposed for translator education (Kiraly 2000) was inspired largely by the work of Vygotsky and Dewey, and was focused on the mainstays of learner autonomy, cognitive apprenticeship and authentic collaborative project work in the classroom. Active and interpersonal cognition in an authentic learning environment was the crux of this social constructivist view of learning. As Dennis Sumara and Brent Davis have put it: For the constructivist […] cognition is not a process of ‘representing’ a real world that is “out there” waiting to be apprehended but, rather, is a process of organizing and reorganizing one’s own subjective world of experience. (Sumara and Davis 1997: 409)

Sumara and Davis succinctly identify the quintessence of the paradigm shift entailed in constructivist thought in general: the abandonment of the belief held by the rationalist and empiricist philosophical traditions that objective truth can be found ‘out there’ in the world and either transmitted or ingested: […] constructivism suggests that ideas and beliefs […] emerge because they are personally viable in a given context, not because they are ideal. In terms of social interaction, such subjective constructions need only be compatible with the con-

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structions of others, for the measure of viability is not a match with some externally determined standard, but the maintenance of one’s integrity in a given context. (ibid)

From such a perspective, learning is far less a matter of acquisition or the intake of input, and far more a process of contextualized, situated, re-construction of the self (a more experienced, competent, autonomous self). While both radical and social constructivism emphasize the need for embodied action as the basis for learning, social constructivism adds the primordial interpersonal component in coming to know and becoming. It is dependent on authentic and collaborative interaction as an essential feature of an effective learning environment. As they prepare to introduce their readers to post-constructivist educational theory, Sumara and Davis state that a remaining problem with (radical) constructivism is that it supports an intrapersonal (if not intracranial) view of cognition: […] while constructivism represents an important departure from cognitivism and other representational models of cognition, it shares one fundamental tenet […] that the locus of cognition is the individual. (ibid)

Although social constructivism holds that sense and knowledge are created through interaction with one’s social environment and hence emerge from the interstices of interpersonal interaction, in the end, the individual mind is still the place where knowledge is ‘constructed’ and stored. In addition, the construction metaphor still emphasizes the reification of knowledge and the understanding that the processes at work are largely mechanical: simple or complicated at best. As I hope to show in the final section of this article, the step beyond constructivism towards emergent knowing represents a significant move beyond the mechanistic, positivist, reductionist worldview that has dominated education for centuries – towards an approach that acknowledges the non-linear and unpredictable nature of authentic (non-reductionist) learning systems.

3.

From Teaching and Acquisition to an Emergent Learning Perspective in the Post-positivist Era

In addition to his contribution to social constructivist thought, Dewey’s work on metaphysics has also been identified as an important contribution to the process philosophy that initially developed at the end of the 19th century and was championed by the renowned British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (Whitehead 1950). This philosophical perspective sees the world in evolutionary terms as being in constant flux – as Heraclitus did in

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ancient Greece according to the dictum attributed to him to the effect that: ‘no man can step into the same river twice’ (Kenny 210: 17). Process philosophy reemerged late in the 20th century as complexity science and thinking, which are currently being investigated in a range of natural and social science domains. In the following, I will revisit complexity theory and the concept of emergence as I have started to apply them to translator education (see Kiraly 2012a, 2013, 2014). In this section, which, because of space limitations, can at best whet the appetite of readers interested in delving deeper into post-positivist options in translator education, I have taken the liberty of quoting others extensively in order to introduce readers to a few of the many eloquent voices in the domains of educational philosophy and pedagogical research that are contributing to dialogue within post-positivist communities of educational theory and practice in a number of domains. I believe that these voices can contribute to a viable epistemological foundation for at least some of those translation teachers who find themselves disenchanted with chalk-and-talk transmissionism in the classroom and who find themselves drawn towards collaborative, situated, praxis-oriented pedagogy. The first voice is that of Hanna Risku, who, to my knowledge, is one of the very few translation studies scholars to date who has come out unequivocally in favour of adopting a post-positivist epistemology for furthering translator education. Due to the major role played by the environment, any attempts to explain translation by describing processes in the mind of an individual alone are bound to fail. The mind is only one part of the story. We need to find out not only what happens in a translator’s mind, but also what happens elsewhere, e. g. in their hands, and their computers, on their desk, in their languages or in their dialogues. Translation is not done solely by the mind, but by complex systems. These systems include people, the specific social and physical environments and all their cultural artefacts. (My emphasis). (Risku 2010: 103)

Risku’s perspective on translation processes echoes the ecological views of Leo Van Lier on second language learning: An ecological approach … shifts the emphasis from scientific reductionism to the notion of emergence. Instead of assuming that every phenomenon can be explained in terms of simpler phenomena or components, it says that at every level of development properties emerge that cannot be reduced to those of prior levels. Second, ecology says that not all of cognition and learning can be explained in terms of processes that go on inside the head. (Van Lier 2000:248).

Let us take a closer look at the points Risku and van Lier raise here. First of all, there is the question of ‘complexity’. The distinction between complicated and complex systems has been attributed to the early computer scientist Warren Weaver (1948). Complicated systems, according to Weaver, are mechanical,

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much like a clock or any type of machinery (or a computer for that matter) and reducible to their component parts. A competent technician can break them down into their individual pieces, repair or replace them with identical spare parts if necessary and put them back together and they will still function as they did before. Complexity, however, refers to systems that have a very large number of component parts and, most importantly : that are not reducible to those parts; they exhibit emergent (unpredictable, self-organizing, self-generating) properties, resulting in their being more than the sum of their parts. Prime examples of complex systems are anthills, all living organisms and the brain. Complex systems are dynamic and tend to be nested inside other systems. As an example, mathematics educationalist Brent Davis has noted that: The brain […] is not a static form, but a vibrantly changing system that is fractally organized: neurons are clustered into mini columns, mini columns into macro columns, macro columns into cortical areas, cortical areas into hemispheres – and at every level agents interact with and affect other agents. (Davis 2004: 101)

It is in contexts involving such complex systems that tidy positivist reductionism and Euclidean flowchart-type models may prove to be of very limited value. The fractal (recurrent and infinitely self-similar at all scales) nature of complex systems complements the essential complex-system nature of self-organization or ‘autopoiesis’ (Maturana and Varela 1980). It is interesting to note that fractal geometry, which has since been used to explain an enormous array of natural phenomena, was only construed as a mathematical system in the late 20th century by the mathematician Beno„t Mandelbrot (1983) (even though its roots date back to the 17th century). The very structure of a complex system changes as it interacts with other systems – that is, as it learns. In applying these features of complex systems to learning processes, Davis states: This is one of the reasons that the cognitivist brain-as-computer metaphor is problematic. Each event of learning entails a physical transformation of the brain; hence subsequent events of learning are met by a different brain. On the biological level, personal learning is not about acquisition, processing or storing, but about emergent structuring. (2004: 101) (My emphasis)

In the context of educational philosophy, the post-positivist mind-set encourages us to view cognition itself as just such an emergent adaptive system. It does not involve static knowledge as much as it does dynamic knowing – constantly changing, imminently situated and embodied thinking-in-action: Knowing is fractal-like: a continuous, re-iterative event through which one knits together one’s history, one’s immediate situation, and one’s projects. Such knowing is never fixed, never stable. (Davis & Sumara 2000: 831)

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From this perspective, learning in classrooms becomes a radically different affair from the often passive ingestion of predetermined knowledge that is the focus of reductionist epistemology. A fractal, self-similar view of learning suggests that an embodied approach to classroom practice will be reflected in a less artificially structured curriculum as well (for a more detailed discussion of this point, see Kiraly 2012): The postmodern perspective of curriculum respects the messiness of the whole and does not try to justify and segment parts of the whole into closed boxes. In this open framework, there is room for play, chance, and the turmoil inherent in learning. Learning does not always have to proceed in sequential steps, but is complex and moves in fits and starts. The postmodern paradigm embraces exceptions and does not feel a need to find the ultimate truth (Lewis 2004: 121–122).

William Doll has summed up the essence of the postmodern classroom in terms of a departure from conventional chalk-and-talk pedagogy as follows: Learning now occurs, not through direct transmission from expert to novice, or from teacher to student, but in a non-linear manner in a class exploring a situation/problem/ issue together, and indeed from multiple perspectives. (Doll 2008: 193)

This brings us back to the kind of collaborative, authentic-project-based pedagogy to which I hope to have contributed through A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education (Kiraly 2000) and that has begun to flourish in 21st century translator education. Within translation studies per se, contributions to the literature on post-instructionist approaches to translator education up to the turn of the millennium were limited to the work of Mackenzie & Nieminen (1997) and Jean Vienne (1994), which were not overtly grounded in any particular epistemology, world view or pedagogical theory, but which nevertheless served as an important source of inspiration for my own approach, which was grounded in social constructivist principles. The theoretical perspective provided by emergence yields an even more powerful incentive for undertaking authentic project-work in the classroom than social constructivism did. The near-authentic working conditions that emerge from work on a real project in the classroom reflect the understanding of cognition and learning as embodied action rather than the accretion of bits of knowledge and skills. As Risku has stated: If learning is situated and context-dependent instead of abstract and decontextualized, the management of different professional situations becomes the primary educational objective…. Therefore it is of paramount importance that teachers of translation and interpreting integrate authentic or near-authentic translation tasks into their teaching. (Risku 2010: 101) (My emphasis)

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An emergentist view not only allows but requires teachers to climb down from their pedestals of omniscient authority, and it implies an obligatory change in their roles from distillers and transmitters of knowledge to guides and companions on the students’ road to experience and expertise. From this perspective, syllabus design is no longer a task to be accomplished by a teacher alone prior to the start of a course; it becomes a tentative plan that emerges with new challenges and unexpected turns – a dynamic plan leading to unpredictable outcomes as a course progresses. Learning objectives become far more difficult to specify because they will differ from student to student and will, in the best of cases, evolve in a unique manner for each student throughout each course and throughout an entire programme of studies. A change in our underlying pedagogical epistemology, in our basic understanding of what it means to learn how to function as language-mediation professionals, would bring with it a plethora of new challenges for teachers, learners and our educational institutions themselves. This, however, would be a small price to pay for a pedagogy that is far better suited than mere chalk-and-talk to the still-emerging postpositivist Zeitgeist. By way of concluding this introduction to emergent pedagogical epistemology, which serves as the foundation for the deliberations on curriculum development and instructional design in Chapters 4 and 5 of this volume, I would like to propose the following dynamic vortex model of learning processes, which for me reflects the essence of learning in terms of a non-linear, embodied, enactive and autopoietic (self-generating and self-sustaining) system. It assumes that learning systems are fractal and the model can hence depict learning within an individual, a class session, a group or even a community of practice. Rather than focusing on static states, without depending on computer-like metaphors like inputs and outputs, and without focusing on initial states and learning outcomes, the model attempts to depict learning as emerging incessantly through lived experience in an ever-changing environment that both simultaneously hosts learning and is changed by and through that learning. In this view, learning is not caused by teaching, cannot be caused, designed or engineered by efficient didactic transmission of knowledge. Instead, it can be understood to be “occasioned”, that is, emerge surprisingly and unexpectedly from intended and unintended efforts and circumstances (Brent Davis 2004). Or, drawing on an analogy with a phrase often attributed to Heraclitus, we might say that learning ‘bubbles forth’7 from the complex of affordances, or ‘possibilities for action’ brought forth by the dispositions, resources, activities and lived experiences that contribute to experience. In institutional settings, unlike naturalistic ones like the environment in 7 By analogy with the statement attributed to Heraclitus: “the world bubbles forth”.

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which small children almost universally acquire tremendous communicative competence in their native language(s) without formal instruction, a curriculum is most often used in an attempt to streamline, regulate and unify learning processes. In Chapter 5, we will look at an example of curriculum development in translator education from the perspective of the emergent view of learning presented here.

Figure 1: A dynamic single-vortex model of non-institutionalized learning

Works Cited Davis, Brent (2004). Inventions of Teaching. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Earlbaum Associates. Davis, Brent / Sumara, Dennis (1997). “Cognition, Complexity, and Teacher Education”, Harvard Educational Review 67.1, 105–125. Doll, William E. (2008). “Complexity and the Culture of Curriculum”, in Mark Mason (ed.): Complexity Theory and the Philosophy of Education. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K., Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 181–203. Doll, William E. (2002). “Ghosts and the Curriculum”, in William Doll / Noel Gough (eds.): Curriculum Visions. New York: Peter Lang.

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Doll, William E. (1993). A Postmodern Perspective on Curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press. Kiraly, Don (2000). A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education. Manchester : St. Jerome. Kiraly, Don (2012a). “Growing a Project-Based Translation Pedagogy”, META 57.1, 82–95. Kiraly, Don (2012b). “Skopos Theory Goes to Paris: Purposeful Translation and Emergent Translation Projects”, MTM 4: 119–144. Kiraly, Don (2013). “Towards a View of Translator Competence as an Emergent Phenomenon: Thinking Outside the Box(es) in Translator Education”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 197–224. Kiraly, Don (2014). “From Assumptions about Knowing and Learning to Praxis in Translator Education”, in Maria Piotrowska / Sergiy Tyupa (eds.): inTRAlinea, Special Issue: Challenges in Translation Pedagogy. Lewis, Nancy S. (2004). “The Intersection of Postmodernity and Classroom Practice”, Teacher Education Quarterly Summer, 119–134. Mackenzie, Rosemary / Nieminen, Elina (1997). “Motivating Students to Achieve Quality in Translation”, in Kinga Klaudy / Janûs Kohn (eds.): Transferre Necesse Est. Budapest, Scholastica, 339–344. Mandelbrot, Beno„t B. (1983). The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: Henry Holt & Company. Maturana, Umberto / Varela, Francisco (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co. MorÅöl, Göktu (2001). “What is Complexity Science? Postmodernist or Postpositivist?”, Emergence 3:1, 104–119. Nord, Christiane (1996). “Wer nimmt denn mal den ersten Satz? Überlegungen zu neuen Arbeitsformen im Übersetzungsunterricht”, in H. Gerzymisch-Arbogast / J. Haller / E. Steiner (eds.): Übersetzungswissenschaft im Umbruch, Festschrift für Wolfram Wilss. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 313–327. Pinar, William (2008). “Curriculum Theory since 1950: Crisis, Reconceptualization, Internationalization”, in F. Connelly / M. He / J. Phillion (eds.): The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 491–514. Risku, Hanna (2010). “A Cognitive Scientific View on Technical Communication and Translation. Do Embodiment and Situatedness Really Make a Difference?”, Target 22:1, 94–111. Roskelly, Hephzibah (2009). “Teaching Like Weasels”, in Sri Shapiro (ed.): Education and Hope in Troubled Times. London: Routledge, 198–209. Triche, Stephen / Douglas McKnight (2004). “The Quest for Method: The Legacy of Peter Ramus”, History of Education 33.1, 39–54. Vann Lier, Leo (2000). “From Input to Affordance: Social-interactive Learning from an Ecological Perspective”, in J. P. Lantolf (ed.): Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University, 245–259. Vienne, Jean (1994). “Toward a Pedagogy of Translation in Situation”, Perspectives 1, 51–59. Weaver, Warren (1948). “Science and Complexity”, American Scientist 36:4, 536–544.

Don Kiraly and Sascha Hofmann (University of Mainz/Germersheim)

Chapter 4: Towards a Postpositivist Curriculum Development Model for Translator Education

1.

Introduction

In this chapter, we will present an approach to the conceptualisation of ‘translator competence development’ that emerged within the context of a European Union sponsored project1 that was initiated to establish an international platform for work placements in the language mediation domain. The originators of the project – which was entitled the European Graduate Placement Scheme (EGPS) – including both authors of this chapter, believed that it was essential within the scope of the project to focus both on the actual day-to-day practice of work placements, as well as on theoretical considerations that might help justify and explain the incorporation of work placements into translation studies curricula. The modelling of the development of translator competence in students enrolled in translator education curricula represented an important desideratum from the very outset of the project. The consortium felt that without an understanding of how translator competence develops over time, it would be futile to try to define an appropriate role for work placements within that development process. In the end, the competence development model in fact proved to be a key outcome of the project, serving to initiate, accompany and promote on-going reflection – not only among the educators involved in designing and carrying out the project, but also among students at the participating universities as well as managers and work placement mentors in the companies that agreed to hire them – on the nature of learning processes and the role of the university in fostering those processes. The genesis of our competence development models drew upon four key sources of inspiration: 1) the social constructivist approach to translator edu1 The European Graduate Placement Scheme. This EU project ran from 2012–2015. The University of Mainz was represented in the project by the Division of English Linguistics and Translation Studies. The other university partners were: the Universitat Autonom‚ of Barcelona, the Pedagogical University of Crakow, and Salford University in the UK.

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cation developed in Kiraly (2000); 2) emergent epistemology as presented in Chapter 2 of this volume; 3) the cognitive modelling of translator competence that has been a fertile area of research in translation studies over the past two decades; and 4) the Dreyfus & Dreyfus (1980) model of skill acquisition, which we believe can serve as a framework for scaffolding learning experiences from the elementary through advanced stages of competence development. Interestingly, the Dreyfus model was the centrepiece of a chapter entitled “The development of translational competence” in Andrew Chesterman’s influential work Memes of Translation (1997). In Section 5 of this chapter we will take a fresh look at the Dreyfus model – specifically from the perspective of emergent epistemology – which we believe can yield both a curriculum development and pedagogical approach that goes beyond Chesterman’s interpretation of the model in providing a firm rationale for the incorporation of experiential learning and authentic projects in Translation Studies curricula. The discussion of worldviews in the previous chapter and the general model of emergent learning presented in Chapter 2 of this volume set the stage for these deliberations, which will culminate in the presentation of a second model – one that portrays translation competence development in institutional settings, with a focus on the curricular implications of the model as well as a third one that depicts our conceptualisation of experiential learning during work placements as an integral component of the translator’s higher education. The elucidation of a set of Moodle projects at the FTSK in the next chapter explicates the subsequent stages of this modelling process in the areas of course design and didactic implementation.

2.

Shifting attitudes towards workplace practice within translator education

First, let us define two terms that we will be using throughout this chapter : practice and praxis. Practice will be used consistently to designate only habitual professional workplace activities (rather than repetitive tasks imposed by a teacher with pedagogical objectives, which we will refer to as ‘exercises’). Our understanding of the concept of praxis is that it brings together theory and workplace practice, yielding what might be called ‘informed practice’ or, in Donald Schön’s terms: “reflective practice” (Schön 1987). Praxis entails reflection on practice that can lead to improved performance and eventually, superior competence. In the workplace, as in the classroom, practice can become praxis when habitual professional activities are reviewed, modified and improved as the result of reflection.

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In the field of Translation Studies, the relationship between translation theory and practice has been an uneasy one and has been debated almost since the discipline was established. Translation scholars have described this relationship as tense or problematic2 and sometimes see the closer linking of the theoretical and the practical as a threat to the status of translation studies as an academic discipline. For a long time, the focus on practice-relevant skills and knowledge that are part and parcel of the translator’s responsibilities at the workplace did not keep pace with more theoretical discussions on how to handle translation problems per se on the text, sentence and word levels. This is surely due in part to the relative youth of the discipline of Translation Studies but to some extent it is also a result of a basic fear within the Translation Studies academy of the influence of actual translation practice on programmes of study – which are expected to have a theoretical orientation in line with the aura and status of intellectualism that is the hallmark of university-level programmes of study. Already in the 1980s, Snell-Hornby noted the chasm separating theory and practice in translator education, a chasm that in her opinion was established and has been maintained in order to mitigate the danger of having the discipline be or appear less scientific. She relates this to the “philological tradition” from which translation studies emerged (1986:12). The stigma of translation as a practical craft remained the bane of translation studies for years. Neubert and Shreve, for example, pointed out that the study of translation was often based on an “armchair conceptualization of translation” whereas “translation reality is rarely studied”. (1992:5) Schmitt (1990a:34 et seq.) noted at about the same time that the actual phenomena of the everyday work of the translator were not reflected in research and teaching. Yet, as Risku (2002) points out, a change in attitudes towards practice began to emerge already in the 1980s with what she calls milestones of ‘situated translation’ including Strategie der Übersetzung (Hönig & Kussmaul 1982), Skopos Theorie (Reiss & Vermeer 1984) and The Theory of Translatory Action, developed by Holz-Mäntärri (1984). At the same time, Risku notes, second generation (situated) cognitive science emerged with its emphasis on the embodied nature of cognition to complement the incipient shift in the understanding of translation as situated practice, that is, practice that is dependent not only on knowledge and skills stored in translators’ minds, but also on the interplay of participants involved in social translation processes, the print and ever-evolving digital tools at the translator’s disposal, and the plethora of material, social and cognitive factors that come together in a unique constellation during the completion of each translation. Another phenomenon that has to be considered when discussing an opening 2 See, for example, Hagemann & Neu (2013:191).

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towards workplace practice today is the embedding of programmes of study in the Bologna educational environment and the adequacy of the results to date. Today, more than fifteen years since the Bologna Process began, buzzwords like ‘general and specific competences’, ‘learning goals’ and ‘learning outcomes’ are widely used within higher education, concepts of course that were established, especially in the English speaking world, long before the Bologna process began. The effective, learner-centred and structured design of curricula, paired with a shift towards seeing students as competence-acquiring learners, is the success story being touted throughout Europe. On the other hand, the implementation of the Bologna Process in many cases has led to reglementation that one might call the ‘schoolification’ of educational programmes, accompanied by the renaissance of teacher-centred instruction resulting in a highly regimented learning environment that culminates in an obligatory assessment of performance before each handful of ECTS points is granted. Curricular content is now delivered in modules, which have been designed to clearly specify learning goals and the competences to be acquired through them. One feature of this rigid reglementation has been the metaphorical packing of learning outcomes and the curricular contents of each programme of study into modules in curriculum models. Modules are presented as containers (which we have depicted as rectangular boxes in Figure 1) that are filled with knowledge and skills, and are then labelled with learning outcomes to represent the achievement of some predefined educational goal – which may or may not be aligned with the demands of the market.

Figure 1: A Linear Curriculum Model for Translator Education (MA in Translation Studies at the FTSK, 2015)

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For example, Figure 1 depicts the current curricular framework of the MA in Translation programme at our own university. In this system, each module comprises either three or four courses that students’ select from lists approved for inclusion within the respective modules. The system does not allow for obligatory sequencing of any kind, which means that there can be no prerequisites set for taking any particular course. An upshot of this is that all courses are elementary. There is no room for progression in terms of difficulty, complexity, depth of topics – or pedagogical approach. The panoply of courses offered becomes little more than a patchwork quilt of content to be accumulated in a sequence that is based more on chance than anything else. In discussing the so-called modularisation of translator education programmes as a result of the Bologna Agreement, Kelly notes the self-evident advantages of this approach to curriculum designers: Such a structure can afford a particular programme considerable flexibility, and of course allows the overall competence to be acquired to be sub-divided into smaller, more manageable, more easily assessable, gradable units. (Kelly 2007: 137)

But at the same time, she also acknowledges the risks that modularisation brings with it: “The danger of this compartmentalization is, however, that from the students’ point of view it can be difficult to establish relations between the different component parts”. (Kelly 2007: 137). She goes on to underline a key motivation underlying our creation of the alternative curriculum model that we are proposing in this chapter : [..] the rigid application of the list of competences and, perhaps more so, their assignation to particular departments at universities with inflexible bureaucratized systems have given rise to a sadly impermeable set of separate compartments of knowledge which are rarely approached from the coordinated networking perspective which is so necessary for full development of translation competence. (ibid 138)

We will see in the next section how this compartmentalisation of knowledge is also reflected in current models of translation competence, which, much like some contemporary modularised curriculum models (including the ones in our own Translation Studies programme), depict the translator’s competencies as the largely isolated contents of separate containers with only the vaguest of links between them. In our view, this is not only a problem of the relevance and clarity of the models. We believe it also reflects a potential lack of pedagogical coherence in terms of how institutions and teachers – but also students – structure the acquisition of knowledge and skills in preparation for the workplace. We strongly agree with Risku’s (2002: 531) admonition that:

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…If these skills are not applied within the relevant context, they become useless. Attention has to be paid to the process as a whole. Therefore, it is paramount that teachers of translation and interpreting integrate authentic or near-authentic translation tasks into their teaching.

This was precisely the view taken by Kiraly (2000) in his elaboration of A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education, which demonstrated and advocated the use of truly authentic projects in the translator education curriculum as early and as frequently as possible. As will be seen over the course of the remainder of this chapter, this view has been adjusted in the light of the past 15 years of experience with authentic project work at the FTSK as well as emergent epistemology, which has superseded social constructivism as the basis of our pedagogical belief system.

3.

Translator competence and competencies revisited

When we set out within the scope of the EGPS project to discern a suitable role for work placements within translator education programmes, it was clear that both a theoretical and a practical perspective on the nature of the skills and knowledge that translators need to perform competently in the workplace were needed. This would then need to be followed up with a model of the eminently dynamic process of translator competence development. But in all of the existing graphic models of translator competence that we have come across (for example: Pacte (2005:610), EMT (2009:4) and Göpferich (2008:155), translator competence is represented as a static, two-dimensional image of a meta-competence divided into competencies. The models depict the learning outcomes and the competencies to be acquired by the end of the educational process and how this expert knowledge can be applied in the translation process to perform translatory actions (cf. Cnyrim, Hagemann & Neu 2013). But so far, they have not attempted to depict possible, suitable or effective (alternative) paths for acquiring the appropriate skills and knowledge. A closer look at the influential PACTE model shows that the different translation competences are depicted as being essentially of equal volume and presumably weight. This is manifested in the comparable size of the various ‘subcompetence boxes’ in the model. The questions of competence acquisition, learner and teacher input in the competence acquisition process, and the need for a differentiated critical assessment of the respective competence levels over time remain elusive. Taking another look at our curriculum boxes, it is also clear that in Translation Studies, we currently often lack a consensus description of the content of the boxes. We know quite a bit about the labels on the boxes as they

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have been defined in the various models but the content packed into these boxes varies from institution to institution (and of course even from module to module, from course to course!) often depending on the historical development of translation studies within a country or a local educational environment – as well as on each lecturer’s professional translation experience and interpretation of the relevant curricular constraints and educational objectives. From an educational philosophy perspective, curricular box models can be seen to reflect an underlying empirico-deductive epistemology. They invite us to understand the contents of curricular boxes as being both operationalizable (clearly definable and measurable), and acquirable by learners in a step-by-step, cumulative and essentially linear manner. Curriculum planning – and not only in translator education – has conventionally been understood as a process of defining – by dissecting a macro-competence- into its composite parts and specifying learning outcomes and competence levels – the specific skills and knowledge needed at subsequent stages of education, and of organizing the transmission of that knowledge and those skills to the minds of learners, whose task it is to accumulate them in preparation for later use in real-world contexts. Stuart Campbell (1998) has concisely summed up this view as follows: Translation competence can be separated into relatively independent components, and those components can be used as building blocks in curriculum design… Translation is a matter of intervention in the development of the various components of translation competence. (Campbell 1998: 163).

4.

A Case for (Further) Pragmatic Abduction in the Study of Translator Competence

From an epistemological point of view, it is interesting to note that, as pointed out in the meta-analytical work on models of translation competence by Kelly (2002), none of the models of translator competence published by that time, except for the one created by Campbell (1998), had been created on the basis of inductive experimental research. In the meantime, the longitudinal TransComp study has been carried out by Susanne Göpferich to test her competence model (2011:7), but that model itself, like the EMT and PACTE models, was clearly the product of abductive armchair theorizing – which we in fact feel is a particularly viable approach to knowledge-building from our post-positivist perspective. In each case, patently subjective but presumably informed and trustworthy opinions of stakeholders (programme graduates, translation teachers, professional associations and students) were collected and distilled to propose a plausible set of sub-competence constellations – not ones that have been demonstrated or

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‘proven’ to actually exist in any positivist ontological sense, but ones that the evidence collected suggests are useful to stakeholders in the educational process.3 In our view, there can be no question at this exploratory stage in the research on ‘translator competence’ that overall translator competence and its component competencies are essentially reductionist tools with fuzzy boundaries that have been and can be used successfully to better comprehend and to operationalize the tremendously complex process of translation and the knowledge & skills needed to engage with it professionally. Nor do we believe that these conceptualisations are any less useful for having (virtually) no empirical basis because, from our post-positivist perspective, they clearly comprise socially constructed knowledge. In the absence of any objective proof for the ontological existence of any particular translatory sub-competences, plausible ones proposed by trustworthy stakeholders and recognized experts on translation matters can surely be used as heuristics to define what academics, students, educational administrators and professional organizations understand or believe to be the features, components, aspects or qualifications that translators must have in order to function expertly and professionally. If we can discern plausible and justifiable constellations of translatory sub-competences, we can use them as highly productive tools for designing both curricula and learning opportunities. Hanna Risku (1998) has summarised our perspective as follows: Neither theory nor empirical research nor both together will allow us to discover the truth about translation processes […] Whether the data we collect come from situations, experiences, research results, written source and target texts, observed behaviours or verbal statements, they must be interpreted, and they will reflect just a part, a few aspects of the objects of our inquiry. […] Hence, I do not understand science as a “collection of knowledge about reality” – separate from activities involving the “design and control of reality […] – instead I see it as a constructive part of human societies. (1998: 18) (Translation: Don Kiraly)

Space does not allow us to undertake here a review of the many definitions and models, both graphic and verbal, that have been proposed abductively to depict translation competence4. In lieu of a consensus view of which particular competencies are subsumed within the translator’s macro-competence, the model presented at the end of this chapter, as well as the derived instructional and curricular models that are introduced in the following two chapters, reflect the view of translator competence that has been depicted by Kelly (2002 & 2007). 3 This approach to research clearly reflects the pragmatic scientific method proposed by Charles Saunders Peirce in the early part of the 20th century. 4 The reader is referred to Kelly 2002 and 2007 for references to publications presenting many of these models.

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Kelly’s model has been chosen as a suitable heuristic because we believe 1) it reflects a careful, well-balanced analysis of a number of other models; 2) it is clear, precise and comprehensive; and 3) her cogent discussion of its features suggests that her model is imbued with a high degree of ecological validity. In a nutshell, Kelly (2002 & 2007) describes translation competence5 as comprising seven sub-competences (or competencies): – Communicative and textual competence in at least two languages and cultures – Professional instrumental competence, including the use of documentary resources, terminology research and management as well as the use of translation-related computer programmes – (Inter)cultural competence – Thematic competence including suitable knowledge of domains in which one translates as well as translation theory – Interpersonal competence, including the ability to work as a member of a team – Psychophysiological competence, including the translator’s self-concept, selfconfidence and also his or her attention span and memory capacity, etc.. – Strategic competence, including skills and knowledge of how to organize one’s work, resolve problems and evaluate one’s own work. It is this strategic sub-competence that Kelly sees as the key sub-competence that links the others to each other. From Kelly’s perspective, in our rapidly changing world, the task of the educational institution is not so much to train translation students to merely use particular translation strategies, techniques and tools, but to educate them – to teach them how to learn for a lifetime, to prepare them for a series of positions in different domains over the course of their careers, and to be valuable members of society. This, in essence, is the key distinction between translator training and translator education and one that clearly needs to be taken into consideration in the curriculum development process. From our perspective, the university has a two-fold mandate vis — vis its students: to train them by providing them with basic knowledge and skills they will need to perform largely routine translationrelated tasks, and to educate them to act ethically, responsibly and professionally – particularly in matters requiring discretionary judgement and action, for example when novel situations and challenges arise, and when things don’t go as planned. Göpferich’s (2008: 13–14) situated view of translator competence (which 5 Which I have referred to elsewhere as translator competence, that is the multi-facetted array of knowledge and skills needed by a professional translator. I have used translation competence to refer to the narrower set of skills and knowledge needed to undertake a translation per se.

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appears to be radically at odds with the compartmentalised depiction of competencies in her model) is also particularly germane in the context of a postpositivist, ecological worldview: Strictly speaking, there is no [translation] competence per se as our cognitive processes and hence our competences are co-determined by our working conditions and our work environment. Our constructions of sense, built upon word meanings, are dependent upon textual and situational contexts. These realisations are taken into account by the cognitive separation of brain, body and environment inherent in earlier paradigms of cognitive science: symbol manipulation and connectionism. This new paradigm emphasizes, in addition to situatedness, also the social nature of problem solving processes and attributes a significant role to artefacts and cooperation partners.

Precisely in line with this viewpoint, what we are proposing is not some sort of slavish adherence to a particular conceptualisation of the translator’s (compartmentalised) competence or to a programmatic cookie-cutter curriculum for our students, with their potentially very diverse inclinations, skills, background and employment aptitudes and aspirations. Instead, we are proposing an approach to help students wean or emancipate themselves from the passive roles imposed on them during well over a decade of schooling and to help guide them in creating their own paths to personal, academic and professional fulfilment. At this point, having selected a plausible initial set of competencies that can conveniently serve the modularised curricula dictated across Europe by the Bologna Agreement, it is essential that we link the competencies to be developed to both the target meta-competence (translator competence) and to our underlying epistemology (which is very much in line with the emergent worldview discussed in Chapter 2). One model that finds support from a number of domains and has also been applied by Chesterman (2000) in the context of the study of intuition and rationality in translation is the model of skills acquisition developed by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus (Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1980), which will be introduced in the next section of this chapter.

5.

A fresh look at the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition

It was in 1980 that the brothers Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus – the former a professor of philosophy and the latter a professor of engineering, both at the University of California, Berkeley – introduced their now classic “Five-stage model of the mental activities involved in directed skill acquisition.” The authors explain that an individual who wishes to acquire a new skill has two options. He or she can, they say : “…pick it up by imitation and floundering trial-and-error, or […] can seek the aid of an instructor or instructional manual”. (1980:1)

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They go on to discuss findings by researchers in a number of skill acquisition domains (piloting, chess and language acquisition), winding up with a verbal model of instructed skill acquisition that proceeds in four stages, that represent steps on a teaching/learning continuum from non-situational, fragmented, and analytical to situational, holistic, and intuitive. The authors are adamant in emphasizing the role of personal experience in the learning process from beginning to end: Our approach is to take the reliance on everyday familiarity in problem solving not as an anomaly, but as a pervasive and essential feature of intelligent human behaviour. Therefore, in the account of skill acquisition which follows, concrete experience plays a paramount role… …we argue that skill in its minimal form is produced by following abstract formal rules, but that only experience with concrete cases can account for higher levels of performance. (Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1980:5)

The four stages in the Dreyfus model are: novice, competent, proficient and expert. Here are the quintessential features of these stages:6

The novice stage …the instruction process begins by decomposing the task environment into context-free features which the beginner can recognize without benefit of experience. .. The beginner is then given rules for determining an action on the basis of these features. ..To improve, the novice needs monitoring, either by selfobservation or instructional feedback, so as to brings his or her behaviour more and more completely into conformity with the rule. (ibid: 7)

The competent stage Competence comes only after considerable experience actually coping with real situations in which the student notes or an instructor points out recurrent meaningful component patterns. These situational components, in terms of which a competent student understands his environment, are no longer the context-free features used by the novice… We will call these recurrent patterns aspects… The instructor can formulate principles dictating actions in terms of these aspects. (ibid:8)

6 The authors also include a fifth stage: ‘mastery’ that differs only insignificantly from the expert level.

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The proficient stage Increased practice exposes the performer to a wide variety of typical whole situations. Each whole situation, for the first time, has a meaning which is its relevance to the achievement of a long-term goal. Aspects now appear to be more or less important (salient) depending on their relevance to this goal. Given a set of aspects and their saliences, the performer uses a memorized principle which we call a maxim to determine the appropriate action. (ibid: 10)

The expert stage Up to this stage, the performer needed some sort of analytical principle (rule, guideline, maxim) to connect his grasp of the general situation to a specific action. Now his repertoire of experienced situations is so vast that normally each specific situation immediately dictates an intuitively appropriate action… (ibid: 12) Critics of the Dreyfus model have indicated that there is no empirical evidence that these (or any other particular) stages exist along the path leading from novice to expert behaviour, but from the perspective of a post-positivist epistemology, where there is no claim for the need for an ontological representation, stages of development can be seen as another valuable heuristic, particularly against the backdrop of centuries of educational practice grounded in an empirico-rationalist epistemology. One apparent problem that arises in doing so is the discrepancy in the use of the terms competent and competence by the Dreyfus brothers on the one hand and in translation studies and contemporary educational contexts on the other. For the former, the learner who is considered ‘competent’ is still working at the level of fragmented and analytical problem recognition and still has the situational, holistic and analytical stage of proficiency to go through before approaching the stage of expertise. But ‘translator competence’ has been used in translation studies essentially to refer to a target or end state of the institutional educational process. While this question could be debated at some length, in the context of the model presented here, ‘expertise’ will be understood as the ideal long-term goal of the translator’s lifelong learning process – whether it emerges within or outside of an educational institution. For the sake of simplicity, however, we will continue to use the term competence to refer to the knowledge & skills of the professional translator. The Dreyfus’ distinction between the competent and the proficient translator is, however, one that deserves further consideration in the context of translator education. The Dreyfus’ generic model of competence acquisition of course makes no

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mention of the particular competencies that have been identified and studied in translation studies, but these competencies do appear to lend themselves particularly well to educational discourse and design given the current competence orientation that is almost pervasive throughout Western education today.

6.

Chesterman’s Application of the Dreyfus Model

In his chapter on competence development in Memes of Translation, Chesterman (2002) draws on the Dreyfus & Dreyfus theory of competence acquisition to explain how translators might acquire translator competence. At this point, a chasm emerges between his and our conceptualisations in terms of the need for and relevance of authentic experiential learning during the process of moving from the novice towards the expert stage of competence acquisition. In his chapter, Chesterman lists teaching techniques comprising: exercises with strategies, exercises on accountability, exercises on the communication norm, exercises on the relation norm and exercises on expectancy norms. He lists a panoply of topics that should be covered in the curriculum and even specifies the stage at which they should be dealt with. All of the exercises he suggests are created, contrived, applied and controlled by the teacher. There is no indication at all that authentic, autonomous or collaborative experience of the real work of translators in the workplace is of any relevance in Chesterman’s curriculum or classroom. As Williams has suggested with reference to Chesterman’s description of his recommended teaching approach: [..] the widespread use of the passive voice in the description of the relationship between trainer and trainee (‘students can be asked to …”, ‘students should be given’) indicates a largely teacher-centred classroom, which may impede his goal of attaining the emancipation of the trainees. (2000:15)

The same concern arises if we consider the list of no fewer than 17 alternative translation exercise types in Nord (1996), which was already discussed in Kiraly 2000:54–58). The teacher-centred and controlled classroom is the setting for each and every one of these learning activities even though Nord states explicitly that “the role of the teacher should be limited as far as possible to mediation and, if necessary, arbitration” (326). Nord concludes her article by stating: “[..] I do not believe that ‘autonomous learning’ makes sense in translator training because it means that students will not get the needed critical feedback and will not be trained in the useful secondary objective of being able to defend their translations” (ibid). Kiraly (2000) discusses how most of Nord’s proposed teaching exercises can be used effectively within the context of a curriculum that includes authentic

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projects. This assessment holds true for the educational models being proposed here as well. We also feel that Chesterman (2000) offers a plethora of invaluable insights into both curricular and didactic features than we can also subscribe to. Where we part ways, then, is not so much in terms of what needs to be learned as how it can be learned. Whereas conventional (and even innovative) teachercentred instruction is grounded in a reductionist, rationalist, Cartesian, conduit-like view of learning, as epitomised by Chesterman and Nord, our emergentist view allows us to interpret the Dreyfus competence acquisition model as emphasizing the transition from conscious, contrived and simple (as understood in terms of complexity theory) learning to the subconscious, authentic and complex in a dynamic, largely unpredictable and uncontrollable but clearly emancipatory, embodied, enactive and empowering process. Before moving on to the dynamic modelling of competence development from an emergent epistemological perspective, we would like to re-introduce Figure 1, an incipient model of this very process (taken from Kiraly 2000) that is reminiscent of contemporary non-dynamic models of translator competence. Underlying it is an emancipatory social constructivist epistemology that places the individual learner at the centre of the learning process and sees his or her empowerment (self-reliance, experience and expertise) as the over-riding goal of education. The model comprises three supporting columns: autonomy, authenticity and expertise. Kiraly (2000) saw translator education as a process of pedagogical and curricular design that would structure the parallel increase of these three qualities in learners over the course of their programme of studies. Autonomy would be increased by starting with the motley crew of uninitiated individuals at the beginning of the undergraduate degree programme, moving through stages involving pair-work and then collaborative groups. Experience would entail reflection on action: consciousness-raising at the lower end of the curriculum, moving on through simulated project work and finally to authentic project work over the course of the programme of studies. Expertise would be scaffolded from early ‘instructional’ work through the apprentice level to the journeyman stage – that is, being able to competently complete the basic tasks of a professional translator upon completion of the programme of studies. While we are still in agreement with the overall tenor of this model, looking back on this model today, its parts appear oddly disconnected, linear and in some cases, arbitrary. These are aspects we wish to improve in the new emergentist models to be proposed at the end of this chapter.

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Figure 2: Dimensions of development toward translator competence (Kiraly 2000: 58)

7.

Towards the Dynamic Modelling of Translator Competence Development

In designing the model of translator competence development (Figure 3), I7 initially incorporated the competencies identified by Kelly in the form of individual sub-vortices, which, like the overall vortex itself, are intended to reflect the notion of perpetual dynamic change and growth over time. The emphasis in the Dreyfus model is on the progression from rule-based learning towards autonomous action and from conscious awareness of problem solving to intuitive action. This and related continua (which will be outlined further in the next chapter and in the didactic intervention model presented there) are acknowledged in our model and taken a step further. The competency vortices swirling up from the bottom of the figure eventually merge into a single super-competence over time. The implications for translator education are significant: rather than having a smorgasbord of courses to be sampled in modules spread over a course of study, the model suggests that there can be a progression in terms of learning and also presumably with respect to teaching strategies over the course of a programme of studies, as students move along the continuum from novice to competent or even proficient translators. It is hoped that the organic, dynamic nature of learning in this model will 7 The models presented in this chapter were created by Don Kiraly with the invaluable assistance of Wendy Fox and Michelle Lin. Don Kiraly is solely responsible for any errors contained in these models. The extensive discussions between the authors following the creation of the models have contributed significantly to our respective understandings of the processes reflected in them.

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Figure 3: A Multi-Vortex Model of Translator Competence Development

strike a radically different chord with translator educators compared to the conventional box-based models of translator competence that the reader is familiar with. The essential changes have involved adding: the dimension of time, a dynamic quality that reflects emergentist epistemology, and the features of the learning environment that can lead to the development of competence – all set against the backdrop of a post-positivist emergentist worldview. Together, these factors depict an evolutionary shift from building-block style curricula and uniform conduit-type teaching to autonomous, lifelong learning over the course of a student’s programme of studies and into the graduate’s professional life. The underlying emergent worldview is, in my view, an integral component of the model. Starting from a different epistemological perspective would no doubt lead to a very different model of skill & knowledge acquisition – as well as curriculum design and pedagogical practice. From the perspective illustrated by this model, expertise development is an autopoietic process, that is: a self-perpetuating, self-regulating one supported by

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affordances or features of the environment (including more knowledgeable others, learning resources, activities, team members, tasks, etc.) that can guide experience and can potentially lead to learning. The affordances are represented as bands interwoven around the vortex, suggesting that a learner’s level of expertise at any given moment is co-determined by the specific tasks and activities they engage in and learn from, their personal and interpersonal disposition for translating, their disposition for learning, the human and material resources available and drawn upon and a plethora of other affordances of the learning environment. Instructional intervention can indeed play a major role in this process, but from this viewpoint, learning is clearly the largely unpredictable and unprogrammable result of a complex interplay of processes and not merely or even significantly the direct result of teaching. The model also suggests that learners themselves must be proactive seekers of knowledge far more than merely passive recipients of teachers’ wisdom. Emergent processes proceed apace and not as the direct effect of one or more specific causes or stimuli (like instruction, for example). Teachers can also be seen as key agents and participants in the establishment and maintenance of conditions under which learners can perform the real work of professional translators and thereby develop professional expertise. The adoption of a view of translator competence as an emergent process is clearly an innovative step towards improving and refining collaborative, learner-centred approaches to translator education. In no way does this model supersede or obviate the social constructivist approach developed in Kiraly 2000. Instead, it is clearly intended to be seen as a refinement of that earlier approach.

8.

Competence and the Work Placement

Figure 4 represents a detailed view of part of the emergent competence model near the end of the student’s programme of post-graduate studies. It is at this stage that the EGPS project envisaged requiring students to undertake a work placement in a translation company. In this model, the work placement, where students finally have the opportunity to be fully incorporated into the day-today work of the professional translator and/or project manager, is the venue for the rapid expansion of what we will call strategic workplace competence, which overlaps considerably with Kelly’s concept of strategic competence. During the early development of the EGPS project, the institutional partners agreed that the ideal time for a work placement for translation students would be at the MA level

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after a basic understanding of the norms, practices and tools of professional translation has been acquired through coursework.8

Figure 4: Zooming in on the Learning Vortex: Emergent Workplace

The model in Figure 4 depicts my (D. Kiraly’s) current understanding of a plausible role for a work placement within the development of strategic workplace competence and that is to provide the unique affordances of a professional working environment to facilitate the merging of (institutionally expedient competencies. In our view, it is specifically the experience of undertaking actual work in the workplace that allows the learner to move beyond the fragmented competences imposed by the classical curriculum (see Figure 1 on Page 70 for an example) and to merge them into a unified translator meta-competence. Unlike highly specialised classes that purport to cover specific sub-sets of subject matter or of discrete skills (a type of class that is still pervasive in translator education curricula), the professional work done in the workplace can be seen to be comprised of fractal (that is, self-similar) multi-dimensional authentic projects, through which knowledge and skills can emerge and evolve as the placement student progresses from one to the next. Although some critics argue that this leads to an ‘apprenticisation’ of translator education9, we believe that authentic practical experience within the protected learner environment of the higher education institution is a key to this progression of knowledge and skills 8 The proposed progression of this coursework from a didactic perspective is outlined in the next chapter. 9 See, for example, Schopp (2006, 2013).

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because it allows the student’s personal network of competence to be validated in a real life scenario. This blending of workplace experience with the curriculum also enables the student to recognize gaps in certain competencies that are needed to perform translation tasks, and to perhaps develop strategies to develop those inadequate competencies. The aspects of workplace competence listed to the left of the model in Figure 4 are not meant to be seen as discrete, reductionist entities but are rather more like facets of a crystal, or perhaps more apt metaphorically : like the self-similar structure of a romanesco cauliflower, self-similar but irreducibly interconnected bundles of learning, experience and competence. In terms of Aristotelian distinctions between types of knowledge, we have found the distinction between factual knowledge (Aristotle’s episteme), practical knowledge of the translator’s craft (techne) and practical wisdom (phronesis) to be potentially invaluable for distinguishing between knowledge, skills and personal capabilities that translation students need to acquire and develop in order to succeed on the professional translation market. By changing the way we look at competence, we hope to be able to change attitudes towards the work placement as well as towards the overall educational process itself. No longer should the work placement be seen as an optional extracurricular supplement added on to a university-level education in translation studies, but instead as a vital integrated stage in the process of merging the competencies developed in the institutional setting into an all-encompassing translator meta-competence. And no longer does the translation studies curriculum need to be depicted as a smorgasbord of courses, undifferentiated in terms of sequencing or pedagogical approach. The model we propose in fact can bring much-needed structure into the curriculum, not in terms of rigid prespecified boxes filled with content to be acquired, but in the sense of promoting the self-organization of skills and knowledge from the simple to the complex and from teacher-centred instruction to highly autonomous learning. From an invitation to joining the translators’ community of practice through the teaching of basic skills, knowledge and standards, on to the simulated performance of realistic translation work down to increasingly authentic workplace activity – the curriculum can become a pedagogically sensible and well-structured introduction into the professional translators’ community of practice.

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Works Cited Campbell, Stuart (1998). Translation into the Second Language. London/New York: Longman. Chesterman, Andrew (2000). Memes of Translation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Cnyrim, Andrea/ Hagemann, Susanne / Neu, Julia (2013). “Towards a Framework of Reference for Translation Competence”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Translationswissenschaft 10. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 9–34. Davis, Brent / Sumara, Dennis (2007). “Complexity Science and Education: Reconceptualizing the Teacher’s Role in Learning”, Interchange 38.1, 53–67. Doll, W. E. (1993). A Postmodern Perspective on Curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press. Dreyfus, Stuart / Dreyfus, Hubert (1980). “A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition.” http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA084551 [01. 06. 2015]. EMT Expert Group (2009). “Competences for Professional Translators, Experts in Multilingual and Multimedia Communication.” http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/pro grammes/emt/key_documents/emt_competences_translators_en.pdf [01.05. 2015]. Göpferich, Susanne (2008). Translationsprozessforschung. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Göpferich, Susanne (2011). “From Multidisciplinarity to Transdisciplinarity : The Investigation of Competence Development as a Case in Point”, MikaEL 3. Kääntämisen ja tulkkauksen tutkimuksen symposiumin verkkojulkaisu. Electronic proceedings of the KäTu symposium on translation and interpreting studies 5, 1–24. Hagemann, Susanne / Neu, Julia (2013). “Vernetzte Translationslehre”, in Silvia HansenSchirra / Don Kiraly (eds.): Projekte und Projektionen in der translatorischen Kompetenzentwicklung. FTSK: Publikationen des Fachbereichs Translations-, Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Reihe A, 61. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 189–209. Hansen-Schirra, Silvia / Kiraly, Don (eds.) (2012): Projekte und Projektionen in der translatorischen Kompetenzentwicklung. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Hönig, Hans G. (1995): Konstruktives Übersetzen. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Horton, S. (2000). “The Competency Movement: Its Origins and Impact on the Public Sector”, The International Journal of Public Sector Management 13.4, 306–318. Kaindl, Klaus (20042). Übersetzungswissenschaft im interdisziplinären Dialog: Am Beispiel der Comicübersetzung. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Kelly, Dorothy (2002). “Un Modelo de Competencia Traductora: Bases para el DiseÇo Curricular”, Puentes: Hacia Nuevas Investigativas en la Mediaciûn Intercultural, 9–20. Kelly, Dorothy (2007). “Translator Competence Contextualized, Translator Training in the Framework of Higher Education Reform: In Search of Alignment in Curricular Design”, in Dorothy Kenny / Kyongjoo Ryou (eds.): Across Boundaries: International Perspectives on Translation Studies, 128–142. Kiraly, Don (1995). Pathways to Translation: Pedagogy and Process. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press.

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Kiraly, Don (2000). A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education. Manchester : St. Jerome. Kiraly, Don / Hansen-Schirra, Silvia / Maksymski, Karin (eds.) (2013). New Prospects and Perspectivs for Educating Language Mediators. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Mertin, Elvira (2006). Prozessorientiertes Qualitätsmanagement im Dienstleistungsbereich Übersetzen. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Neubert, Albrecht / Shreve, Gregory M. (1992). Translation as Text. Translation Studies, Volume 1. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. Nord, Christiane (1996). “Wer nimmt mal den nächsten Satz: Überlegungen zu neuen Arbeitsformen im Übersetzungsunterricht”, in Angelika Lauer et al. (eds.): Übersetzungswissenschaft im Umbruch. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 313–328. PACTE (2005). “Investigating Translation Competence: Conceptual and Methodological Issues”, META 50.2, 609–619. Risku, Hanna (1998). Translatorische Kompetenz. Tübingen, Stauffenberg. Risku, Hanna (2002). “Situatedness in Translation Studies”, Cognitive Systems Research 3, 523–533. Schön, Donald (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Schmitt, Peter A. (1990a). “Die Berufspraxis für Übersetzer und Dolmetscher : Eine Umfrageanalyse”, Mitteilungsblatt für Übersetzer und Dolmetscher. Berichtssonderheft des Bundesverbandes der Dolmetscher und Übersetzer e.V. Schmitt, Peter A. (1990b). “Was übersetzen Übersetzer? Eine Umfrage”, Lebende Sprachen 3/1990, 97–106. Schopp, Jürgen F. (2006). “Realer Übersetzungsbedarf und authentische Aufträge im Translationsunterricht – Übersetzungsübung und Übersetzungsauftrag (2)”, in Anneli Pajunen / Hannu Tommola (eds): XXXII Kielitieteen päivät Tampereella 19.–20. 5. 2005. Valikoima pidettyihin esitelmiin pohjautuvista artikkeleista. Tampere, Tampere University Press (Tampere Studies in Language, Translation and Culture, Series B 2), 156–169. Schopp, Jürgen F. (2013). “Auf halbem Weg…? Authentische Übersetzungsaufträge und professioneller Translationsprozess aus translationsdidaktischer Sicht”, in Anne Kathrin Ende / Susann Herold / Anette Weiland (eds.): Alles hängt mit allem zusammen – Translatologische Interpendenzen. Festschrift für P.A. Schmitt. Berlin: Franke und Timme, 225–241. Schreiber, Michael (1993). Übersetzung und Bearbeitung. Zur Differenzierung und Abgrenzung des Übersetzungsbegriffs. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Sinner, Carsten (2002). “Zu Theorie und Praxis in der Übersetzerausbildung”, Lebende Sprachen 3/2002, 101–110. Snell-Hornby, Mary (1986). Übersetzungswissenschaft – eine Neuorientierung. Zur Integrierung von Theorie und Praxis. UTB für Wissenschaft. Uni-Taschenbücher. Band 1415. Tübingen: Francke. Stolze, Radegundis (2008). Übersetzungstheorien – Eine Einführung. 5th Edition. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Williams, Jenny (2000). Theories of Translation. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Don Kiraly, Lisa Rüth, Marcus Wiedmann (University of Mainz/Germersheim)

Chapter 5: Enhancing Translation Course Design and Didactic Interventions with E-Learning

1.

The genesis of a Moodle project in a Translation Studies degree programme

Since its inception some thirteen years ago, Moodle has become an almost ubiquitous open-source distance-learning platform, with tens of thousands of verified sites serving over 70 million users participating in over seven million courses worldwide.1 When, in 2013, the Gutenberg Teaching Council of the University of Mainz offered grants to support projects involving the creation, implementation and testing of blended and distance-learning courses to be run on the Moodle platform, three lecturers in the Division of English Linguistics and Translation Studies (DELTS) within the University’s Faculty of Translation Studies, Linguistics and Cultural Studies were eager to participate (Don Kiraly, Lisa Rüth and Marcus Wiedmann). We proposed taking an action-research approach to develop, teach and reflect on a set of two semester-long iterations of three different translation-related courses, representing three different stages of our BA and MA curricula. The objective was to assess the viability of using this technology to supplement conventional classes at the School – one of the largest of its kind in the world, but where distance learning has played a negligible role until very recently.2 The initial research questions for the Moodle project were: – Is Moodle an ecologically valid and potentially efficacious educational design tool for contributing to the development of students’ translator competence? and

1 https://moodle.net/stats/. 2 For the summer semester of 2014, a colleague of ours in the School’s interpreting department (Maren Dingfelder Stone), was granted a leave from her teaching duties at the University to create a Moodle course that would provide students with the opportunity to work autonomously on specific interpreter sub-competences to complement in-class instruction. Her interpreting studies project is discussed in Chapter 6 of this volume.

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– Is the use of Moodle dependent on lecturers sharing a social constructivist epistemology with the designer of the Moodle platform? An initial iteration of the three Moodle courses within the framework of the project was offered in the winter semester of 2013, and a second in the summer semester of 2014. In accordance with the cyclical principle of action research, the difficulties and findings that emerged during the initial iteration of the set of courses were used to justify modifications to the plans for the respective second iteration of each course. Qualitative data were collected in the form of: 1) students’ translations as well as their peer-editing and proofreading work undertaken over the course of the two project semesters and 2) student’s self-evaluations at different points during each semester-long course. A selection of these qualitative data will be discussed throughout this chapter to provide a students’ perspective on the usefulness of distance or blended learning in translator education.

2.

Three Moodle course facilitators with disparate educational backgrounds

In addition to the fact that we were all teaching staff members in the same division of the Mainz translator education school, the three translation course facilitators involved in the project had all gained years of experience as professional translators (German to English or English to German), and we were all interested in determining whether and to what extent we could use distance and blended learning in general – and Moodle in particular – to enhance students’ learning, and of course our own teaching. There were, however, considerable differences between us in terms of our educational background and pedagogical epistemology. Don Kiraly is a self-taught translator with an MA in teaching French and a PhD in Language Teacher Education. He has been teaching at university level for 36 years and has been translating professionally, and also publishing in the domain of translator education for some 30 years. In 2000, he published A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education. By the time the project began, Don’s own pedagogical epistemology had moved beyond a social constructivist perspective into the post-positivist realm of complexity thinking and an emergent understanding of knowledge and learning (Kiraly 2006, 2012a, 2012b, 2013).3 3 See also resources outside the field of translation studies that deal with learning as an emergent process: Doll (2008), Davis & Sumara (2010), Slattery (2006), Mason (2008).

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Lisa Rüth is a graduate of the School of Translation, Linguistics and Cultural Studies (FTSK) of the University of Mainz and had been teaching part-time in the English Department of the FTSK for several semesters when the Moodle project began. Lisa considered herself to be an autodidactic translation teacher, but she had reflected a great deal on her teaching approach and she felt that she had developed a largely social constructivist learning/teaching epistemology by the time the project began. While Lisa had the least teaching and professional translation experience of the three project leaders, she was the most experienced when it came to e-learning. She had worked on a university e-learning project in the area of advanced language acquisition, had shared responsibility for the online training programme of the largest German professional association for translators and interpreters (BDÜ), and had completed a 14-week blended learning course on e-learning and e-teaching. This made it easier for her to identify with the students and their needs related to this particular learning format. She was also able to share her considerable experience using Moodle with Don and Marcus, which made it far easier for the team to set up and get started with their courses. Like Lisa, Marcus Wiedmann is also a graduate of the translator education programme at the FTSK in which we were all teaching. He has been working as a freelance translator for about 15 years, and joined the FTSK teaching staff on a half-time basis in 2007. Having had no specific pedagogical training, Marcus considered his epistemology as essentially transmissionist in nature when the project began. The question of the importance of educational epistemology in our teaching practice was one of the reasons that the team was particularly eager to experiment with Moodle as a tool for enhancing our translation teaching practice. The reason for this was the explicit acknowledgement by Dr. Martin Dougiamas, the platform’s creator, to the effect that he had designed it specifically on the basis of a social constructivist epistemology (Dougiamas and Taylor 2003) – suggesting that a cornerstone of the Moodle approach is the belief that knowledge is largely ‘co-constructed’ rather than disseminated by teachers and ingested by learners. Given the prominent role played by social constructivist epistemology in the research done at the FTSK on translator education over the past 15 years (see Kiraly 2000 and Hansen Schirra & Kiraly 2013), an initial question that arose as we planned the project was whether teachers who use the platform must share a social constructivist pedagogical epistemology in order to implement it effectively ; to what extent might there be room for transmissionist pedagogical beliefs and practices as well as for what might be seen as almost diametrically opposed emergentist views and techniques?

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The three project courses: from simple to complicated to complex

It is important to note that the three teachers who participated in the project selected or actually created their respective courses on the basis of only a few basic constraints. They agreed that it would make sense to try out the Moodle platform in three courses that differed with respect to the nature and complexity of the skills and knowledge that students could be expected to acquire during those courses. Marcus chose to offer a course for lower-level BA students on the translator’s computer-based tools; Lisa would offer a course on English-German financial translation for more advanced BA students (who, however, had never had a course in the area of commercial or financial translation before); and Don decided to offer an authentic-project based course for MA students. It was also decided at the outset to use Moodle in three different ways: for Marcus’ basic skills course, he foresaw having students work independently on one Moodle unit per week, with no collaborative peer work and with no in-class sessions. Lisa chose a blended-learning format for her intermediate (simulated project work) course. Her students were required to complete one Moodle session per week (with some collaborative peer work included), but she also organized optional weekly in-class sessions in which the students could interact in person with Lisa and their peers to discuss the work that they had been doing on the Moodle site outside of class. Don planned to have his ‘authentic project’ class meet in class three times over the course of the semester : at the beginning, middle and end – for a semi-blended approach. The students would be working both individually and with peers outside of class, with specific tasks deriving from the project at hand to be accomplished in accordance with deadlines provided by the lecturer. While there was no other joint advance planning or coordination of the course contents or didactic techniques, the three project lecturers did meet on a bi-weekly basis throughout the project to discuss their and their students’ progress and challenges. These regular meetings had a major impact on the lecturers’ pedagogical development over the course of the project.

3.1

An introduction to CAT tools for translators (BA)

One of Marcus’ course offerings had always focused on the translation of HTML files using computer-aided translation (CAT) tools for BA students. The content covered by this course was derived from his experience as a professional translator who often translates texts using CAT tools (Austermühl 2001; Drewer

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2011) and to whom, in many cases, these texts are not provided as Word files, but in various formats, like HTML, for example, which is frequently used in web localization projects (see Jim¦nez-Crespo 2013). As Minako O’Hagan points out in response to a question regarding elements of localization, which, in her opinion, should be obligatory in translator education curricula: Tools such as TMs [translation memories] and terminology management systems are becoming widespread in the translation industry as a whole and therefore should ideally be taught as part of translator education programs. On top of being able to manage these tools, basic computing knowledge is important, such as different file formats, file management, tags and character sets that are essential for localization. (2006: 41)

Thus, this course was intended to bring specific basic skills and knowledge into translator training at an early stage in order to provide students with the necessary technical skills for simulated classroom projects and authentic translation work at later stages. Prior to the start of the project, Marcus had run the course in a classroom in a conventional, teacher-centred manner using several conventional didactic techniques: lectures, demonstrations and exercises. At times, Marcus lectured on aspects of file formats or CAT tools in general, but there were also times when he demonstrated how to complete specific tasks with the CAT tool the students were using, and there were also a number of exercises in which students completed tasks with the CAT tool that had been introduced earlier on. The aim of the exercises was to allow students to actually use the CAT tool themselves and translate HTML files with it. Depending on the specific topics or features of the tool that had been discussed previously, the exercises comprised additional tasks and materials (for example, a glossary or a translation memory) in order to allow students to familiarize themselves with the various functions of the tool over the course of the semester. Having taught the course in this conventional manner for a number of semesters, Marcus became dissatisfied with this format as it seemed to be difficult for the students to pick up all the necessary information to successfully complete the exercises without him having to revisit a large number of points he had already discussed previously in the lectures and shown through demonstrations. So Marcus was eager to join the distance-learning project in hopes that it would prove more effective than his conventional classroom approach, even though at the time, he was completely unfamiliar with Moodle. He initially believed that a key aspect of porting his course to a distance-learning format would involve him videotaping his lectures and demonstrations, which would allow students to watch them repeatedly and thus glean information from them at their own pace. Fortuitously, the three lecturers involved in the distance learning project were

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notified of the approval of their Moodle project just a few days prior to the start of the semester, so there was very little time for Marcus to set up the Moodle units to replicate his previous in-class units of instruction. As it then proved technically impossible to videotape decent quality lectures within the short period of time available, Marcus decided to look for alternatives for presenting the content of his lectures and demonstrations while retaining the exercises in his lesson plan. This, and the fact that Marcus wanted to keep students’ interest high throughout the semester, led him to use various Moodle features for the different units or topics, for example forum discussions, links and references to thirdparty information, presentations, and group activities. Hence, the initial porting of the whole course and then individual units into Moodle format led to considerable changes from what had previously been a compilation of lectures, demonstrations and exercises. In the end, no video- or audiotaped lectures were included in Marcus’ Moodle course. Thus, the content previously contained in lectures was incorporated into his Moodle units in various ways that differed from the concept of the lecture and that used various Moodle features. First of all, students had to undertake research based on suggestions and recommendations provided by Marcus. Some Moodle units contained Prezi or PowerPoint presentations, and in two cases a PDF file was provided containing a short article that Marcus himself had authored on the topic at hand. One topic was sub-divided into a number of subtopics that had to be researched by different groups of students. These groups then made their results available to the various other groups. In order to support students appropriately in the new distance-learning situation, where it was more difficult to resolve minor problems quickly than in a classroom situation, Marcus prepared a comprehensive set of instructions that included references to the CAT tool documentation for all of the exercises. These instructions also included specifications for file naming and formatting, uploading locations and deadlines for the submission of the completed exercises. As we can see from the discussion above, it became apparent that the shift from a conventional teacher-centred course to a Moodle course (without using video- or audiotaped lectures) led almost inevitably to the course being less teacher-centred and more collaborative. The students had no choice but to assume responsibility for finding and acquiring their own knowledge. Various benefits of this change are summarized in the following paragraphs, divided between Marcus’ observations and the students’ opinions that he collected in a course survey carried out after the first third of the second project semester. Marcus’ observations focus primarily on his impressions while reviewing the completed exercises the students handed in for correction and while observing the students’ interactions with Moodle over the course of the semester. First of all, Marcus observed that re-designing the exercises to suit the Moodle format

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served a purpose that was not initially intended. He found that having students receive files to translate together with a set of specific instructions within the distance learning situation in which every student worked from home led to the creation of a work environment that is quite similar to working for a translation agency as a professional freelance translator. Files were received that had to be translated with a specific CAT tool; a strict deadline was specified; and various other constraints were applied as well. Thus, by providing detailed obligatory instructions within these distance-learning courses, introducing students to the workflow of professional freelance translators was incorporated into the course as an additional learning benefit. A second observation was made with regard to the exercises. When Marcus corrected them, he found that their overall quality was clearly superior to that achieved by students in previous courses which had been held in a conventional classroom format with lectures, demonstrations and exercises. It was a revelation to him that his students were able to acquire the skills and knowledge autonomously that he had previously conveyed through a conventional instructional performance. This result suggests various advantages for courses dealing with the acquisition of basic translation-related skills. First of all, using Moodle could mean savings in terms of teaching resources and unnecessary repetitive preparation as the same Moodle course could be offered to subsequent groups of students without requiring the presence of and presentation by the lecturer for each new course. The Moodle course also encourages students to take responsibility for their own autonomous learning, a skill that will clearly be required of them in their professional lives as language professionals. Thirdly, Marcus offered students the opportunity to ask questions of him and the other course members via Moodle messages or via the course forum, but only a very small number of such messages or forum posts were submitted. In most cases, students felt that they could solve their problems themselves without asking the lecturer for help. This and the high quality of the students’ test results suggest that the basic knowledge and skills that students were expected to acquire in this course were presented and demonstrated in a clear, comprehensible manner. In addition to the July 2014 survey that was distributed to the participants in all three Moodle courses, Marcus’ course that was held in the summer semester of 2014 was evaluated by the students using a survey that was specifically designed to address the needs of the CAT tools group. This survey was conducted after the completion of the first third of the semester in order to be able to use the results to make adjustments to the course as necessary. It was completed by 21 students and included questions about students’ previous experience with Moodle as well as regarding their attitude towards Moodle in general and the CAT tools course specifically.

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This survey revealed that, although only 33 % of the students in Marcus’ class had any knowledge of Moodle before the start of the course and only 14 % had taken part in any type of distance learning course before, 52 % said that the fact that this course had been conducted as a distance learning course had contributed significantly to their decision to take part. In addition, 16 students either fully or almost fully agreed with the statement “I was able to learn how to use the Moodle interface quickly”. A total of 76 % of the students stated that they had no problems familiarizing themselves with the CAT tool that was introduced in the course. And 71 % reported that they had used the software documentation for this purpose while 87 % of these students indicated that the documentation had been helpful. Twelve of the 21 respondents either completely or almost completely agreed with the statement “Moodle and the distance learning course helped me learn how to work more autonomously”, and 14 students completely or almost completely agreed with the statement “I was able to focus better on the Moodle course content than in a course where I have to sit and just listen for 90 minutes”. Finally, 67 % of the students stated that they had the impression that they learned better in this distance learning course than in a conventional classroom course. One of the potential problems, though, is that in a conventional classroombased course, interaction between students and the lecturer is essentially limited to the weekly 90-minute session. In a distance-learning course, communication can be initiated at any time, which makes it difficult to answer every question that arises in a timely manner. This issue must be dealt with so that all participants in the course know that they should not expect instant responses to their queries and that tasks should not be left unfinished until the last minute.

3.2

Moodle in a specialized translation practice class (advanced BA level)

The blended-learning course that Lisa taught was a specialized practice class for financial translation. The students, all at the advanced BA level, had already completed several courses in non-specialized translation and/or in specialized translation in other fields. Against this backdrop, they were assumed to have already acquired a basic knowledge of translation strategies and other related translator competences. In this course, they were expected to complete translation assignments that would simulate professional translation work. Lisa focused on three interwoven, mutually-influencing translator sub-competences that would increase graduate employability and their chances of succeeding as freelance translators: – Subject-matter knowledge. The results of a survey carried out among the BDÜ’s members, conducted in 2011 by Hommerich Forschung, show that

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generalists are more likely than specialists to not be able to make a living on translating and/or interpreting alone, although they would like to do so (Hommerich/Reiß 2011). While in some cases, the language combination may be enough of a specialisation, for example, when translating from Greek to Finnish, this is not the case for popular language pairs such as English and German. With popular language pairs, competition is tough, and translators need to become subject-matter experts in their field(s) of specialisation in order to position themselves in less price-sensitive segments of the translation market and make a living on translation (Beth 2012, Durban 2014, Hendzel 2014). – Translatory skills. The translation process can be understood as comprising a set of sub-processes or tasks, including pre-translation tasks such as sourcetext analysis and post-translation processes like quality assurance. At the same time, translation is also a business process with sub-tasks above and beyond translation per se (Hofmann 2012). Therefore, translation graduates need to have developed a broad set of skills in different processes and subprocesses. – Workplace Competence. Work requirements, concepts and practices vary from field to field, from employer to employer and from employee to employee. And yet, there may be a certain “canonical knowledge of the occupation” (Billett 2009) shared by most workplaces within an industry. Knowing and adhering to these industry basics (such as assuming responsibility, the leitmotif of this course, and having strong interpersonal skills), plays an important role in developing workplace competence. These objectives were reflected in the structure of the course and the assignments the students had to complete throughout the course. The course structure was also influenced by Haythornthwaite’s (2002) three types of communication for learning communities (Hrastinski 2008): – Information exchange: Students need to be able to ask questions and receive feedback, and to share new information and ideas with their peers. For Lisa’s course, this meant that different communication channels had to be set up. – Task support: Students may need help to complete their work, from planning a group project to resolving conflicts. Lisa tried to anticipate problems and address them in advance. She also set rules for herself that she communicated to the students early on: Mails and messages sent to her on a working day would be answered on the same day. – Social support: Social relations are crucial to collaborative learning. For students to ask questions, share information and ask for help with their work, they need to feel comfortable in their learning environment. Lisa tried to

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create such an environment by “providing acceptance, respect, and a feeling of caring” (Bieg/Backes/Mittag 2011: 124) Like Don’s and Marcus’ respective classes, Lisa’s was run in two consecutive semesters, with the structure of the second iteration being modified based on the results of the first. The major change in the second iteration was a stronger focus on less teacher control and a higher degree of social learning. While in the first iteration of this course, students’ work was largely individual in nature and only a few assignments had to be completed by groups, Lisa decided to provide additional opportunities for group work during the second iteration. Two factors influenced this decision: student feedback regarding the effectiveness of the group learning experience, and Lisa’s realization that collaborative learning would prepare students better for work and lifelong learning as noted by Haythornthwaite (2002: 168): “[o]utside instructional settings collaborative learning may be the norm, and the model of the single information disseminator may not apply.” However, as collaborative learning is not popular with all students (Rüth 2013), Lisa aimed at a sound balance between individual work and group work. As each course progressed, the difficulty of the assignments increased. The first week was dedicated to giving the students time to explore the learning environment, with the students and teacher getting to know each other and starting to form a group. This worked particularly well in the second iteration, where students were asked to introduce themselves in a dedicated forum and discuss their personal definitions of a ‘good’ translation. At the same time, information material on the kind of texts the class was going to work on was made available for self-study. For simple individual work, Lisa used Moodle ‘assignment’ modules to collect translation work from students. The translations had to meet requirements specified by Lisa regarding file format and file name, and they had to be submitted within a non-negotiable time frame, with Moodle being set to not accept late submissions. These constraints were intended to contribute to a more realistic workplace-like environment. Even for simple tasks like this, Lisa provided detailed instructions as she knew they are crucial to success in e-learning formats. For each assignment, an overview of what had to be done was provided on the main page of the Moodle course. Regardless of the difficulty of the task, these brief instructions were accompanied by an FAQ page that provided more detailed answers to questions that were likely to arise. The source-text analysis was a more complicated individual assignment. It comprised four Moodle resources and activities:

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File. The source text was made available for download as a PDF file. Wiki. A wiki with extensive information on source-text analysis according to Nord (2009) was provided for individual preparation. While some students had already undertaken source-text analyses in previous courses, others were not familiar with the approach. Quiz. The source-text analysis itself was designed as a quiz consisting of different question types. The quiz also included questions on the content of the source text that would require further research on subject-matter websites. Page. To make sure the students were provided with all the information they needed to complete the task, brief instructions on the main page were complemented by a dedicated FAQ page.

In general, the quality of the answers provided in the source-text analysis and other subject-matter related assignments was satisfactory. In another individual assignment, which was designed to enhance translatory business skills, students were asked to reflect on and discuss various aspects of entrepreneurship in a forum, where they gave well-conceived answers. In this asynchronous setting, where students had time to think their answers through and do research, even the more introverted students, who did not feel comfortable voicing their opinions in face-to-face class settings, made significant contributions. In the second iteration, the very first assignment required students to work in groups – even though they had not yet met in person. Lisa assigned them to groups of four and set up group forums that were accessible only to the members of the respective group and the teacher, as well as a chat room to facilitate communication between the members of each group. The allocation of tasks within their respective group was left to the students themselves. Lisa closely monitored the activities within the group forums, intervening to avoid ‘social loafing’ (Latan¦ et al. 1979) when participation of group members in discussions declined to below 50 %. Only two students out of 27 failed to contribute to their group’s work; in later assignments, these students were assigned to separate groups to minimize the impact of non-participation on the work accomplished by the groups. The forum proved to be a valuable tool for student communication and was used in all group assignments for the remainder of the course. The chat room function had not been used and was thus not set up for the second iteration. For each new group task, the groups were re-assigned. Thus, each time they worked with others, the students had to go through the life-cycle of a group, developing strategies on how to form a group and organise a project, resolve conflicts, develop trust and get work done as a group and, finally, disband (Tuckman/Jensen 1977), having strengthened their interpersonal and discretionary skills. Lisa used a Moodle workshop for peer assessment of assignments involving proofreading and editing, activities that had been designed to hone translatory

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skills and promote workplace competence. On the basis of these assignments, students were asked to submit their translation work to the workshop. Moodle then automatically assigned one submission to each student who had uploaded a translation, and students were asked to proofread and edit their peers’ work based on Lisa’s pre-defined criteria, which were explained within the workshop. The workshop was accompanied by self-study information on how to work with the tracking changes feature of MS Word, and on how to give and receive constructive feedback. Lisa’s primary objective was to encourage students to take responsibility for their own actions and learning. This meant that the decision regarding the extent to which they wanted to improve their skills was left up to the students Throughout the course, different assignments had to be completed in Moodle, but attendance at the face-to-face sessions, during which this work would be discussed, was not mandatory. Students could also ask for feedback and revision of their work online whenever they wanted to. However, it was the students’ responsibility to seek out feedback on their work. The requirements of the course were simple and straightforward: each student had to complete 80 % of all Moodle assignments on time, and also had to pass a final translation exam. Within the bounds of these constraints, however, students had a great deal of leeway, deciding for themselves which tasks and classes to participate in and which ones to skip, and how much effort they would put into their work. Students were also encouraged to make suggestions for the topics they wanted to know more about both online and in person, and in one instance they voted on the mode of presentation (online or face-to-face) using Moodle’s feedback module. Judging from the feedback collected throughout and at the end of each course in open discussions and by email, there was a high level of satisfaction on the part of the students. Students appreciated the variety of the assignments and, above all, the freedom they were given to work on the exercises whenever they wanted to. Perhaps not surprisingly, being responsible for their learning was not seen as a burden, but as a motivating factor4. The blended-learning concept was wellreceived, but it played only a subordinate role in student evaluations. Rather, feedback centred around the teacher’s behaviour, which was perceived as motivated, supportive, respectful and caring, and the business-related contents of the course, which were met with great interest on the part of the students. According to the course objectives, by the end of the course, students could expect to have acquired a basic understanding of the financial markets and the forces behind them, be able to translate equity research of medium difficulty from English to German, would have increased their workplace competence, 4 See Bieg/Backes/Mittag 2011 for a brief introduction and further references.

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including generic skills, and would have developed a realistic idea of life as a freelance financial translator. These objectives were met in part. The results of the exam showed that, in her subjective estimation most of the students did not acquire as much subject-matter knowledge as Lisa had intended, but they had acknowledged the importance of specialisation and realised the need for selfstudy. The quality of their translations was generally satisfactory and they had started to reflect on the skills and competences they needed to master to succeed as a translator. Most importantly, they had taken responsibility for their own learning and had thus laid the foundation for future, life-long learning.

3.3

An authentic translation project (advanced MA)

In each of Don’s two Moodle courses, his students (who, unlike Marcus’ and Lisa’s students, were already enrolled in an MA degree programme in translation) assumed the task of translating two issues of an online journal (comprising a total of approximately 100 pages per semester and per course) on various aspects of economic sustainability5. All 37 of the students were enrolled in the MA Translation Studies programme at the FTSK, and all but one had completed a BA degree in the same field. It was assumed that the students had received considerable instruction in basic translation skills and knowledge and that they had also had a great deal of practice with the simulated translation of general and specialized texts into English – the second language for all of the participants – prior to the start of the Moodle course. Almost none of the students had previously taken a course involving an authentic translation project6. The objective of this course was to have students focus on the development of workplace competence: the interlinked array of skills needed to perform competently in a professional environment. They would have to complete translation and editing tasks effectively in teams and they would be expected to meet deadlines while devoting the necessary time and effort to resolving translation and text-production problems to professional standards. A related objective was having students learn how to learn both autonomously and with the assistance of peers. Marcus’ and Lisa’s Moodle courses were initiated and run over the same two5 See the Magazine for Economic Sustainability website at: http://www.factory-magazin.de/. 6 In this chapter, an ‘authentic translation project’ is understood as one that is undertaken for a real-world client who intends to use it to communicate with real L2 readers. From this perspective, whether or not the work is paid for is largely irrelevant, even though the promise of payment and/or public acknowledgement of the translators involved in the translation work would presumably affect the student translators’ sense of participating in an authentic project.

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semester period. Hence there was virtually no chance that students would actually progress from Marcus’ ‘instructional’ course to Lisa’s ‘simulated project work’ course and then on to Don’s ‘authentic project course’ over the course of the project. Prior to this project, there had been no overt attempt either formally or informally within the curriculum to coordinate or sequence either didactic techniques or learner autonomy among the School’s specialised translation courses. In fact, the three-part Moodle project turned out to be an outstanding opportunity for the three of us to finally focus in practical terms on curriculum progression in a principled manner. Each of Don’s Moodle classes met in a classroom three times (for 90 minutes per session) over the course of the respective semester : once at the beginning (to introduce the group to the project and to agree on deadlines and procedures), once in the middle (to finalize the first translation project, to discuss working with Moodle and to initiate the second project for the semester), and a third time at the very end of the semester (to finalize the second translation project and to discuss the students’ impressions of having worked with Moodle throughout the semester). In these courses, there were no exercises or other contrived didactic activities created and imposed by the facilitator – but essential milestones and deadlines were imposed in consultation with the students in the first semester to facilitate the flow of work within the group. A key incentive for the students in Don’s class was the prospect of having their names listed as the official translators of the published texts. The course structure met with the approval of the students during that first semester and it was therefore applied to the courses in the second semester as well – with only minor changes being made, for example, to the amount of time allotted for the completion of certain tasks. The students were first required to find parallel texts online and post links to them on Moodle for the entire group to use. They then contributed to the creation of a joint glossary by extracting terms from the part of the text that was assigned to them individually and researching those terms on their own. A joint glossary for each publication was then compiled from their individual results. Next, each student individually had to prepare and submit a rough draft of one segment of the overall text by a specific deadline to a Moodle ‘workshop’, where another student in the group would be assigned to edit her assigned partner’s draft. The original translator would then be expected to make revisions to her text on the basis of her editor’s comments. These revised texts would then be resubmitted to a Moodle workshop and yet another non-English native peer would proofread each text. The original translator would then have the opportunity (and responsibility) to make final changes to her text on the basis of this proofreader’s comments. With the assistance of the students in the first course, Don created a common style sheet. This style sheet, which covered common text

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formatting and translation conventions, was updated over the course of each semester on the basis of fresh input from each new group of students regarding the potential formatting and editing difficulties they identified as they worked on their texts. The overall assignment given to the students as a group at the beginning of the semester was to complete (to professional standards of accuracy and acceptability) the first translation over the course of the first seven weeks of the semester, and to complete the second translation over the course of the second half of the semester. During the initial class meeting, the students were introduced to our Moodle installation. They accepted Don’s suggestion of having each student edit another’s rough draft and of then having a second peer proofread the already edited version. Once final corrections were made by the original translator, the students’ final versions were to be uploaded to the Moodle platform so that Don could take care of the final proofreading and then submit the completed translations to the client. A selection of passages that were modified over the course of the first semester were extracted from the various student drafts and assessed. Great improvement was clear in all of the texts as they evolved from the rough draft, edited, proofread and final version stages. Unfortunately, retrospective data was not collected during that first semester on why proposed modifications were or were not incorporated into the translations as they evolved, so the data collected reveals only that the accuracy and acceptability of the texts did improve over time – but not why. To find out more about whether learning took place – and if so, when – students participating in the second semester’s iterations of the course were given the additional task of commenting on each and every suggested major change to their text over the course of the semester. Their proofreaders’ comments and their own responses were to be entered into a ‘reflective table’ that was inserted at the end of each student’s submitted text. Not only did this additional assignment yield valuable data on student learning in interaction with their peers, it also served as a stimulus for students to reflect on the feedback they received from their peers. In the second project semester as well, the quality of the English translations produced by teams of German students was exceptionally high, suggesting that non-native students can indeed produce first-rate translations even when working almost exclusively with other non-native peers. A pre-test, post-test experimental design would be valuable for assessing the degree to which students’ individual translation competence improves on the basis of such peer-learning activities. During the project, no attempt was made to measure the individual students’ translation competence, for example on the basis of a supervised translation test. The primary focus of Don’s Moodle courses was placed on ensuring the students’ preparedness for working both autonomously and within the context

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of interdependent teams (rather than in mere groups of individuals) to complete authentic tasks for which they would have to assume a great deal of responsibility. So the working situation in the course was much like the type of everyday situations they could expect to face either during a work placement or in a real job. The assumption that, by the time they took Don’s authentic project course, students would already have acquired a wide range of basic translation-related skills and knowledge, and would have had considerable practice with simulated translation work proved to indeed be the case, at least for most of the students who participated. The average quality of the texts submitted at the end of the semester was exceptionally good for non-native speakers of English. Don was able to proofread all 200 pages of texts submitted at the end of the second project semester within a very reasonable amount of time and submit them within a matter of days to the client for publication. Virtually all of the errors found during this final revision process were minor and were clearly due to the fact that the students were not native speakers of English, the target language. In order to gather data on students’ perceptions of their own learning processes during the authentic project courses, the students in both of Don’s project courses were encouraged to submit to the Moodle site, on a regular basis, blog entries in which they discussed difficulties, achievements and epiphanies they experienced with the platform and with the learning approach. For most of the students, the difficulties that did arise were largely related to competences outside the scope of translation work per se, for example when it came to following instructions (which was essential for the smooth completion of each group’s work), meeting deadlines, undertaking adequately diligent research during glossary preparation and the translation process, and devoting adequate time, effort, and empathy when providing their peers with editing and proofreading support. At the same time, it was precisely with regard to such nontranslation specific sub-competences where most students reported learning the most during the course. Students’ reflective comments: the Moodle blog in Don’s authentic project course An analysis of the students’ blog entries during the second iteration of Don’s Moodle course yields invaluable qualitative data on their perceptions of the course, its unconventional blended structure, its focus and objectives, and the value of working on ‘authentic’ translation projects, something that was new to almost all of them. In this section, a selection of representative extracts from the students’ blog entries has been included to illustrate the value of the course from the students’ perspective. (The positive comments far outnumbered the negative ones and emphasis has been placed here on the former rather than the latter.

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Most of the constructively critical comments referred to organisational matters that were quite easily rectified in subsequent iterations of the course). 1. The advantages of teamwork (mentioned by 10/37 students) “I very much liked the collaboration aspect of this class. It is one thing to ask peers for help when working on the same text where you come across the same challenges. Discovering completely new aspects of the text by seeing the questions of peers showed me how many things there are to consider when translating a whole journal together ; a small change on page 5 can affect page 55 and so on, so you always have to be aware of the rest of the text and you can’t just do your own thing”. 2. Assuming responsibility & time management (mentioned by 16 students) “I think this kind of class comes much closer to how things work in real life than the usual practice class. It therefore prepares us much better for our later jobs, when we will have to deal with deadlines and when we will be responsible for the final version of our translations”. “I really like this real life project because it gives us an insight into the real working life. We will always have to meet deadlines and this is really important because other people are waiting for our work and they can’t continue theirs until we have finished it. At the same time, the pressure to meet deadlines should not affect the quality of the translation or our proofreading too much. So I think I have learned a lot in terms of time management”. 3. The unexpected value of peer proofreading (mentioned by 14 students) “I liked the idea of having someone else correct our texts since, as everyone knows, you don’t see your own mistakes and you don’t know about them unless someone else corrects them. Thus, with the help of the proofreaders, we had specific feedback on our texts which we do not get in other courses. Furthermore, it was great to work as a proofreader too. I could learn that it is not an easy job. I always tried to make as many corrections as necessary but not to be overcritical since the text should remain in the style of the person who wrote it and should not be completely changed. In most of the cases, I did not really have to correct a lot of things, I just made improvements or gave alternatives. However, there was an obvious difference in the translations depending on how thoroughly someone had worked”. 4. Working on ‘authentic’ projects (mentioned by 10 students) “As we are working on a real project, we learn how we should behave in the ‘real working world’, which we are not taught in normal in-class sessions, un-

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fortunately. Therefore, I think that this course is quite helpful for our future careers because we obtain an insight into what our employers will expect of us”. 5. The absence of teacher-centred instruction (mentioned by 18 students) “I was a little sceptical about the idea of working from home for the rest of the semester because I feared that there might be little guidance by the instructor and that teamwork with people I didn’t know at all might lead to problems. My doubts soon proved to be unjustified. Thanks to clear instructions, clear deadlines and helpful, quick responses to questions, I really enjoyed working from home and didn’t miss in-class sessions at all. I found that I could not only rely on the instructor’s help, but also on that of my fellow students. I had the feeling that my partners put a lot of effort into proofreading my translation and that they made really good and helpful remarks. The feedback given by them and by the instructor was far more helpful to me than the feedback that you usually get in class.” 6. The value of the reflective table (mentioned by 10 students) “I think it was very helpful to be “forced” to reflect on our partner’s recommended changes and to write down whether we accepted them or not. I noticed that I first didn’t want to accept many of the recommended changes because I liked my solutions and I would probably have deleted the comments without thinking about them further if it hadn’t been our task to write down why we didn’t accept the recommendations. When I then thought about the comments I often found out that the solution of my partner was better than mine, so creating the table really helped me”. The students’ overwhelming approval of the Moodle-based authentic project courses suggests that a blended-learning approach to advanced translation courses is definitely viable within the scope of our degree programmes at the FTSK. The fact that the students found themselves working autonomously without the lecturer’s presence and personal supervision seems to have enhanced their sense of responsibility and empowerment. The blog entries demonstrate that the key features underlying the design of the Moodle-based authentic project course in fact turned out to be features that the students themselves found to be the most valuable aspects of this course: – teamwork, – autonomy & responsibility, – time management, – formative peer assessment, – authentic project work, – the absence of teacher-centred instruction and – student reflection on their own learning

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There were, of course, a number of aspects of the course that various students reported needed improvement, but each negative aspect was reported by either one or at most a handful of participants. A few contradicted the consensus view on the value of the reflective table, for example; some felt that having to meet strict deadlines contributed to stress in this class that students do not experience in other classes (with some of those who complained about stress admitting that stress is probably part of professional life and it may well have been good to be introduced to it in class); and a few indicated that some teacher-centred instruction (for example on precisely how to edit and proofread a peer’s text) would be very useful. These and all other constructively critical points have of course been taken into consideration in more recent iterations of Don’s authentic project Moodle course but they by no means vitiate the ecological validity of the approach.

4.

Moodle: A Way Forward for Translator Education?

To reiterate the introduction of this chapter, the initial research questions for the Moodle project were: – Is Moodle an ecologically valid and potentially efficacious educational design tool for contributing to the development of students’ translator competence? and – Is the use of Moodle dependent on lecturers sharing a social constructivist epistemology with the designer of the Moodle platform? On the basis of their subjective assessment of their students’ work and progress towards translator competence, and in light of the students’ overwhelmingly positive impressions of their own learning in the Moodle project courses, all three lecturers who participated in the project were convinced that Moodle represents a viable didactic platform for their respective courses. From the student’s reactions to working at a distance to the quality of their work, and the extent of their translator competence development, the qualitative evidence suggests that all three courses were at least as effective as their conventional inclass counterparts. One of the questions we intended to research was whether there was a need for a shared social constructivist epistemology for Moodle courses to be effective. Over the course of the project, it quickly became apparent that the platform itself as well as the exigencies of working at a distance and particularly without the direct supervision of a lecturer enhanced the students’ motivation and encouraged both teamwork and the assumption of students’ responsibility for their own work. Instead of requiring adherence to a social constructivist epistemol-

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ogy from lecturers when they start working with Moodle, the evidence suggests that the platform in fact promotes changes in teacher’s attitudes with respect to learning and teaching: away from a conventional transmissionist pedagogical epistemology and towards an increased emphasis on learner autonomy and multi-facetted proactive interaction. Having a distance-learning platform shifts both the students’ and lecturers’ focus of attention from the formers’ conventional receptive role and the latters’ traditional instructional performance and towards the task at hand: the completion of a translation brief for a real-world client. In this way, the lecturer can more easily become a guide and assistant to the students as they acquire basic translation-related skills, practice their translation skills in cooperative simulated projects and undertake their first steps as semi-professional translators as they complete authentic projects both autonomously and collaboratively. In a recent article, Richard Andrews, an education scholar at the University of London, addressed a question that has also arisen in the context of our multipleMoodle project at the FTSK: “Does e-learning require a new theory of learning” (Andrews 2011). After noting in his review of contemporary learning theory that it rarely addresses e-learning, Andrews, who shares our basic social constructivist understanding of learning processes (which we have expanded to include an emergent perspective), addresses a number of features of education that we also found relevant to our projects: 1. “In conventional learning and scholarship, there is an authoritative, hierarchical power system at work. The teacher acts as mediator for the student between the body of knowledge as enshrined in books, journals and other forms of print.” … 2. ‘Knowledge’ is seen to actually exist, to be ‘added to’ by research, and to be guarded by editors of journals who, among others, protect and preserve the discourses of induction into that community”. 3. “The student voice is always subservient to the authoritative power…” (Andews, pp. 116–117)

In e-learning, as Andrews points out, “the content can remain the same in either a conventional learning or an e-learning context. But the means by which the learning takes place changes the position of the learner in relation to the content/ existing knowledge.” (ibid). The authoritative teacher is essentially no longer physically present while learning is purported to be taking place. This contributes to a more democratic attitude towards knowledge and the socially and individually construed nature of knowledge becomes far more plausible and palpable. While in an e-learning environment, knowledge “can be conceived conventionally as an existing and authoritative body of knowledge, […]it can also be seen as a continually moving, fluid set of relationships between propositions on the one hand, and supporting or contrary evidence on the other”

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(ibid). This suggests that if we are still convinced of the viability of positivist epistemology, we can use e-learning as a way to displace the teacher’s authority and transmissionist efforts from the classroom to the online platform, with the main benefits being to make the ‘delivery’ of instruction more efficient, more uniform, and more focused on intra-cranial learning in the absence of the coconstructive interaction that discussion in the classroom can promote. From a social constructivist / emergentist perspective, however, we can see e-learning as an invaluable tool for empowering our students, for encouraging them to act professionally and responsibly and to take control of their own learning. When e-learning allows, encourages or requires students to create artefacts (like translations, for example, as in Don’s authentic project classes described in this chapter), it places the onus and responsibility for pro-active learning firmly with the students. The indication of students’ names in published translations can be seen as far more than an incentive for students’ CVs. It is in fact an act of empowerment through which course facilitators acknowledge the students’ role in the co-creation of their own knowledge and their emerging identities as fullfledged members of the professional community of translation practitioners. But it would be illusory to believe that most students can move from the transmissionist high school classroom directly into the authentic project classroom. We believe that the features of pedagogical progression that emerged largely as an unintended outcome of the tripartite Moodle project can provide a sensible and feasible solution to the problem of readiness for authentic work – readiness not only in terms of capability for professional behaviour but also in terms of the basic knowledge, for example, of translation norms, processes and techniques, quality standards, and tools. If we review the key features of the three courses, we can see a clear progression in terms of: – the complexity of the skills and knowledge to be learned – the degree to which learning activities were more or less contextualized – the teacher-centredness of the pedagogical approach adopted – the degree of authenticity of the learning activities Table 1 illustrates this progression with respect to the three courses taught in the Moodle project:

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Marcus’ Basic Tools Course Simple

Lisa’s Problem-Based Don’s Authentic Translation Course Project Course Complicated Complex

Didactic approach

De-conSemi-contextualized textualized Transmissionist Cooperative

Highly contextualized Collaborative

Degree of authenticity

Contrived

Highly authentic

Simulated

Table 1: Didactic progression from one Moodle course to the next

While the utility of this progression clearly needs to be subjected to extensive observation in additional courses including conventional classroom-based ones, the impression of the three project teachers was that this progression was logical, plausible and effective. In concluding this chapter, we would like to introduce in Figure 1 a model of didactic progression based on the general emergent model of learning (Chapter 3) and the model of curriculum-based institutionalized learning (Chapter 4) and also the progression that appeared to emerge intuitively during the course of our Moodle projects.

Figure 1: A proposed model of didactic progression in translator education

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Works Cited Austermühl, Frank (2001). Electronic Tools for Translators. Manchester : St. Jerome. Beth, Antje (2012). “Premiumkunden im Visier. Experten für Fachkommunikation”, MDÜ 5, 10–13. Bieg, Sonja / Backes, Sabine / Mittag, Waldemar (2011). “The Role of Intrinsic Motivation for Teaching, Teacher’s Care and Autonomy Support in Student’s Self-determined Motivation”, Journal for Educational Research Online 3.1, 122–140. Billett, Stephen (2009). “Workplace Competence: Integrating Social and Personal Perspectives”, in Christine Velde (ed.): Competence in the Workplace: Implications for Research, Policy and Practice. Dordrecht: Springer, 33–54. Davis, Brent / Sumara, Dennis (2010). “If Things were Simple…’: Complexity in Education”, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 16.4, 856–860. Doll, William E. (2008). “Complexity and the Culture of Curriculum”, in Mark Mason (ed.): Complexity Theory and the Philosophy of Education. Malden, Georgia: WileyBlackwell, 181–203. Dougiamas, M. / Taylor, P.C. (2003). “Moodle: Using Learning Communities to Create an Open Source Course Management System“, Proceedings of the EDMEDIA 2003 Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii. Drewer, Petra / Ziegler, Wolfgang (2011). Technische Dokumentation. Würzburg: Vogel. Dreyfus, Stuart / Dreyfus, Hubert (1980). “A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition.” http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA084551 [14. 09. 2014]. Durban, Chris (2014). “Chris Durban and the Chamber of Secrets”, Interview by Maria Leridi http://blog.peempip.gr/chris-durban-and-the-chamber-of-secrets/ [15.09. 2014]. Hansen-Schirra, Silvia / Kiraly, Don (eds.) (2013). Projekte und Projektionen in der translatorischen Kompetenzentwicklung. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Haythornthwaite, Caroline (2002). “Building Social Networks via Computer Networks: Creating and Sustaining Distributed Learning Communities”, in Ann Renninger / Schumar Wesley (eds.): Building Virtual Communities: Learning and Change in Cyberspace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 159–190. Hendzel, Kevin (2014). “It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times: How the Premium Market Offers Translators Prosperity in an Era of Collapsing Bulk-Market Rates”, Word Prisms. http://www.kevinhendzel.com/it-was-the-best-of-times-it-wasthe-worst-of-times-how-the-premium-market-offers-translators-prosperity-in-an-eraof-collapsing-bulk-market-rates/ [02. 09. 2014]. Hofmann, Sascha (2012). Prozessgestütztes Übersetzen: Vom funktionsorientierten Übersetzungsprozess zum GP-Modell für die Dienstleistung Übersetzen. Lichtenberg: Harland media. Hommerich, Christoph / Reiß, Nicole (2011). Ergebnisse der BDÜ-Mitgliederbefragung. Bergisch Gladbach. https://mein.bdue.de/viewtopic.php?p=33633#33633 Hrastinski, Stefan (2008). “Asynchronous and Synchronous E-Learning”, Educause Quarterly 4, 51–55. Jim¦nez-Crespo, Miguel (2013). Translation and Web Localization. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.

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Kiraly, Don (2000). A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education. Manchester : St. Jerome. Kiraly, Don (2012a). “Skopos Theory Goes to Paris: Purposeful Translation and Emergent Translator Competence”, in Hanna Risku / Christina Schäffner / Jürgen Schopp (eds.): Special Issue of mTm to Commemorate Hans J. Vermeer (mTm – A translation Journal). Athens: Diavlos, 119–144. Kiraly, Don (2012b). “Beyond Social Constructivism: Complexity Theory and Translator Education”, Translation and Interpreting Studies 6.1, 68–86. Kiraly, Don (2013). “Towards A View of Translator Competence as an Emergent Phenomenon: Thinking Outside the Box(es) in Translator Education”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Translationswissenschaft, Volume 10. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 197–224. Kiraly, Don (2014). “An Action Research Project on Moodle: Pedagogical Epistemology and Curricular Scaffolding”, Conference Proceedings: 4th International Conference on the Future of Education, 12–13 June 2014, Florence. Kiraly, Don / Hansen-Schirra, Silvia / Maksymski, Karin (eds.) (2013). New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Translationswissenschaft, Volume 10. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Latan¦, Bibb / Williams, Kipling / Harkins, Stephen (1979). “Many Hands make light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37.6, 822–832. Mason, Mark (2008). “What is Complexity Theory and what are its Implications for Educational Change?”, Educational Philosophy and Theory 40.1, 35–49. Nord, Christine (20094). Textanalyse und Übersetzen. Theoretische Grundlagen, Methode und didaktische Anwendung einer übersetzungsrelevanten Textanalyse. Tübingen: Julius Groos. O’Hagan, Minako (2006). “Training for Localization (Replies to a Questionnaire)”, in Anthony Pym / Alexander Perekrestenko / Bram Starink (eds.): Translation Technology and its Teaching. Tarragona: Servei de Publicacions, 39–43. Palmer, Parker (1998). The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Rüth, Lisa (2013). “‘Ein Erlebnis, das uns bereichert’ – Projektarbeit aus studentischer Sicht”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra (eds.): Projekte und Projektionen in der translatorischen Kompetenzentwicklung. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 285–293. Slattery, Patrick (2006). Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era. New York: Routledge. Tuckman, Bruce / Jensen, Mary Ann (1977). “Stages of Small-Group Development Revisited”, Group & Organization Management 2.4, 419–427.

Maren Dingfelder Stone (University of Mainz/Germersheim)

Chapter 6: Authenticity, Autonomy, and Automation: Training Conference Interpreters

The past few decades have seen fundamental changes in the practice and the training of conference interpreters. Interpreters’ briefcases have evolved from heavy bags bulging with paper dictionaries, print-outs, and copies to slim cases containing little more than a laptop or tablet computer ; available teaching materials have evolved from a collection of photocopied speeches and the occasional audio cassette to a plethora of slide presentations, video clips, online data, and digital audio recordings. The theory behind interpreter education has also progressed – greater awareness of the processes involved in interpreting and more attention paid to the complexity of interpreting with its multitude of settings, modes, and techniques, have instigated major changes in the teaching and learning strategies employed. These allow for more authentic learning experiences and greater learner autonomy, and they provide new, innovative ways to work towards the partial automation that is generally considered a stepping stone towards professional expertise. Traditionally, interpreter training has been comprised of classroom instruction (in the form of speeches interpreted by the learner, the recordings of which are subsequently critiqued by the trainer) and self-study (in the form of the accumulation of general and specific knowledge and vocabulary, tandem work, and occasional preparatory exercises). Despite the strong focus on practical work, the options for authentic learning experiences have been limited; on the other hand, autonomous learning has played a hugely important role, but has been didactically underappreciated and, all too often, has not been systematically tutored or monitored. With the help of technological advances, training institutions are now aiming to expand the spectrum of training options to reflect more adequately the realities of interpreting on the one hand, and to provide structure and guidance for optimal self-study on the other. The goal is to provide students with ‘the full package,’ i. e. a course that trusts learners to autonomously master near-professional challenges but that does not abandon them to the task of alleviating shortcomings revealed in these challenges. This chapter sets out two such options: the Germersheim Friday conference, recipient

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of the 2008 award for excellence in teaching of the Land Rhineland-Palatinate, and the recently developed Germersheim self-study platform MOPSI (Moodle Online Platform for Self-Study in Interpreting).

1.

Authenticity and Autonomy: Creating Pre-Professional Authentic Learning Experiences

1.1

The Friday Conference as a Lifelike Training Option: Premises

Conventional interpreting classes are, by design, artificial. In a typical conference interpreting programme, students are initially introduced to basic subcompetences such as note-taking, analysis, listening comprehension, and reformulation. This is accomplished by means of preparatory exercises (Chabasse/ Dingfelder Stone 2015) and/or by carefully and methodically exposing students to simple, manageable interpretation tasks (Ilg/Lambert 1996). Once these preliminary steps have been mastered, students progress to the simulation of interpreting situations by means of (generally) authentic speeches presented to them in a (generally) non-authentic learning setting, i. e. in a classroom session without a real target-language audience being present. The simulated interpretation performances are critiqued by the trainer. Building on this feedback, and incorporating the trainer assessment into their self-study and their classroom practice, learners then gradually bring together these sub-competences into a comprehensive interpreting competence. This process is neither linear nor simple, but rather emerges as a unique pattern for each and every learner. In translator education, Don Kiraly depicts these sub-competences as vortices merging into a super-vortex of overall translation competence [See Figure 3 on Page 82]. The beauty of his model is that it encapsulates the fluid, often unpredictable nature of learning. Rather than slotting sub-competences into a flawless, linear edifice of super-competence in a fixed series of steps identified positivistically by some curriculum development committee, the model views learning as a dynamic event, a ‘dance’ of sub-competences that merge to create an inherently multi-facetted, ever-emerging and potent holistic process. As such, the model can easily be applied to interpreter training as well: here, too, sub-competences that are developed over time as separate yet interconnected processes ultimately come together to create interpreter competence, in a process as evasive and fickle as it is in translator education. As unpredictable as the gradual merging of the competence vortices may be, it still requires an environment conducive to learner development to make it happen. Each training institution thus aims to provide learners with the best

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possible array of trainers, tools, and techniques to allow them to succeed. However, conventional classroom instruction, particularly for larger groups, imposes a range of practical restrictions. Useful and motivating feedback is a crucial factor for improvement (Behr 2015), but if the trainer is to provide indepth assessment of each student’s performances on multiple occasions throughout the semester, and if teaching sessions are limited to standard 90minute periods, then the total length of simultaneously interpreted material per class cannot, as a rule, exceed a maximum of 20–30 minutes. Likewise, students will be working individually, rather than in pairs, to maximise microphone time and feedback opportunities; pre-class preparation for the session may vary significantly ; and students’ performances will be recorded and held up against the original script to be compared in sometimes excruciating detail. None of this reflects professional interpreting practice, yet training learners in an authentic conference setting is impossible not only for the above-mentioned constraints, but also for reasons of feasibility. Quite understandably, no conference organiser will be inclined to offer their event to serve as an instructional exercise for interpreters-in-training due to the risk of communicative failure. However, in order to fully prepare learners for their professional careers, authentic interpretation situations are important for learner motivation and for enhancing learners’ problem-solving skills. A mock-conference, like those currently organised by many interpretation schools, is a superb way for learners to experience real-life problems and constraints, but to do so within a protected environment. At the FTSK in Germersheim, such events – known as Friday conferences – have been in use for decades. The basics of the format have not changed much since their beginnings in the 1970s. the conference is organised by the Germersheim teaching staff, which invites speakers to expound upon topics within their respective areas of expertise. These talks might range from a technical discussion of marquee production in Italy to a scientific presentation of archaeological excavations in Bavaria, to a legal debate on court interpreters as a violation of fair trail rights. The speeches can be given in one of the (currently nine) languages offered in the M.A. programme in Conference Interpreting; they are followed by a discussion where questions may be asked by members of the audience in any of the official languages. The booths in this weekly event are manned by students who are in their third or fourth semester. Working in teams of two, students are responsible for their own preparation; on a rotational basis, one booth is the organising booth, acting as an information conduit for the other student interpreters prior to the conference. During the event, the introduction to the speaker is interpreted in the consecutive mode, while the interpretation of the subsequent presentation and discussion is simultaneous. In many cases, students will need to either provide or work from a relay, meaning that one interpretation (e. g. Italian-German) serves as a basis for

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the other booths’ interpretations (German-English, German-Spanish, GermanDutch, etc.). Students provide peer feedback to the relay booth after the conference, and in addition each booth receives feedback on their overall performance from the respective language trainer in attendance. Most of these elements are tried and tested and have changed little throughout the past nearly fifty years. Modern times, however, have brought new technologies and the increasing use of different types of media. Subject to the speaker’s consent, the Friday conference is live-streamed nowadays to allow other institutes to use it as teaching material. Speakers will routinely use video material and slide presentations, and preparatory material is simply forwarded by mouse click or deposited in a dedicated online folder, rather than having to be painstakingly photocopied. The same folder contains tips and useful information for first-timers assembled by their fellow students. Student interpreters are encouraged to use laptops in the booth, and recordings of the conferences are made available in a local database as additional self-study material.

1.2

Learning Benefits: Autonomy and Authenticity

The Friday conference brings together all of the experience students have amassed up to that point, not only in their interpreting classes, but also in professionalisation lectures and Interpreting Studies instruction. Building on this basic competence, it takes learners to a new level by adding secondary factors that require them to push beyond their comfort zone. The format of the Friday conference presents students with a variety of challenges: they must prepare independently and complement the materials provided with sufficient vocabulary and thematic research to allow for a full understanding of the speaker’s presentation. This not only trains their research skills, but also allows them to amass knowledge in a wide variety of topics as a basis for their professional lives (Andres 2012: 244). In addition, learners are exposed to a broad range of authentic, challenging conference situations – speakers may have unfamiliar accents or speak in dialect. They may be blindingly fast or painfully slow, or they may alternate between the two extremes. Their speeches may be dense and complex manuscripts read aloud, or they may be verbose, semicoherent stream-of-consciousness orations. There may be jokes and cultural misunderstandings, controversial opinions, and even heated discussions with insufficient microphone discipline, requiring students to quickly switch channels and closely monitor their d¦calage, the span of time they lag behind the original. If, for instance, the tongue-in-cheek remark of a Spanish speaker makes those in the room who understand him laugh out loud, it is not only important that the Spanish booth pick up on the joke, as the rest of the audience will be

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wondering what the hilarity is all about, but they must also do so quickly to give the other booths dependent on their relay sufficient time to handle this difficulty before the speaker has moved on completely. These challenges are realistic possibilities in authentic interpreting, and they each require the application of different interpreting strategies – distinct actions within the interpreting process that are performed consciously or subconsciously, and that allow the interpreter to adjust the allocation of the cognitive resources to the momentary needs of the interpreting process (Kader/Seubert 2015: 125): “As the students progress through the various learning levels, they are increasingly able to automatize their strategy usage and to combine these strategies ever more flexibly, whilst minimising the strain on their cognitive resources – over the whole of the interpreting process. […] The resources available to the interpreter during the whole of the interpreting assignment ideally ensure optimal handling of any challenges they may face […]” (Kader/ Seubert 2015: 142). Enabling students to master these challenges is the art and ultimate test of teaching interpreting (Kader/Seubert 2015: 142). The Friday conference provides students with a protected space in which to flex their metaphorical muscles, and to develop automatic and appropriate strategic responses to a variety of challenging interpreting situations. Dörte Andres (2013) identifies five factors that distinguish the Friday conference from a standard classroom situation. The first is the added stress for learners that stems not only from the built-in authentic communication bottleneck, but also from the presence of the teaching staff and a booth mate, which can heighten insecurities due to fear of public failure (Andres 2012: 248) – no one wants to confuse ‘pass on’ and ‘pass away’ with everybody and their brother listening. With regard to the consecutive, this apprehension is further exacerbated by the live-streaming of the conference, which makes it impossible to ‘hide’ in the booth. However, would-be interpreters must develop a certain imperviousness to the pressures of public speaking, and each successful performance lowers the anxiety threshold incrementally. Even if the student interpreters struggle with frustration or dissatisfaction during the conference, the mere fact of having pushed through – combined with the dawning awareness that there is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ interpretation – boosts learners’ coping skills and reduces the likelihood of later anxiety-related impediments. The second difference is the experience of teamwork in a booth (Andres 2012: 248), an option not necessarily provided in classroom sessions. This teamwork has its perks: student interpreters will appreciate having someone to share the burden with, as well as the very practical benefit of having a booth mate to use as a human resource, and for noting down numbers and names. However, working as a team also requires students to navigate the hazardous waters of turn-taking, booth communication, and etiquette: what do I do if my booth mate loses track

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of time and hogs the microphone? Is there a tactful yet efficient way to point out a mix-up? These are important soft skills for their later professional careers. As a third beneficial effect, the Friday conference presents learners with the opportunity to apply all of their theoretical knowledge to solve authentic tasks within a meaningful context. It thus provides learning experience and enhances cooperative problem-solving skills (Andres 2012: 248). As part of this learning experience, it allows students to test, question, and adjust their understanding of the interpreter’s role. Shifting between neutral reproduction, explanatory cultural mediation, and verbatim renderings, they can take more or fewer liberties with the original text, depending on the situation, without having to fear repercussions or dire consequences. A fourth aspect that sets the Friday conference apart is the feedback learners receive (Andres 2012: 249). Among other things, appropriate feedback can allow learners to maintain or increase their motivation and identify their own weaknesses (Behr 2015: 215). In this case, feedback comes not only from teachers but also from peers, so that pre-professional interpreters receive a more holistic, balanced view of their interpretation rather than the snapshot assessment of an in-class performance. In addition, the conference is the first time students truly experience immediate situational feedback: the audience will turn around to check whether the interpreter is still alive if she pauses too long; they will shake their heads in confusion when she muddles an explanation; or they will burst out laughing if she makes a funny slip of the tongue. This is an additional input channel for the interpreter to handle, which adds to the cognitive load in terms of capacity management and monitoring requirements, but may also have a reassuring effect when it becomes evident that communication has, in fact, been established. The fifth and final factor highlighted by Andres is the Friday conference as a learning environment that enhances motivation, endurance, and self-confidence (Andres 2012: 249). While it is true that no two students are alike in their study progress, there is a range of conditions that constitute a good learning environment, among them autonomous and self-directed learning and a self-confident learning approach (Gruber/Mandl 1996: 29). Anders Ericsson, Ralph Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer (1993), in addition, define deliberate practice as the basis for optimal learning. In order to improve, novices need achievable learning objectives and motivation; they need to receive immediate informative feedback on their performance; and they need multiple repetitions to become experts (Ericsson et al. 1993: 367). The Friday conference allows for the incorporation of many of these standards into the often artificial environment of an academic conference interpreting programme. The learning objective is clear : students are exposed to a real-life communication challenge in which others depend on their performance. This, then, also provides them with

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their main motivation – to be perceived as competent, professional, and reliable. Their preparation is entirely independent and thus maximises self-directed learning, and their interpreting performance flows from their effort as a team (both with their booth mate and with the other booths) without teacher intervention, allowing learners to grow in the most autonomous way possible. If their preparation was successful, the mastering of this challenge will enhance their self-confidence. Giving and receiving peer feedback will hone their analytical skills, while trainer feedback will allow them to assess more clearly their strengths and weaknesses. And finally, learners are integral, fully active participants (Andres 2012: 244) rather than passive recipients of imparted knowledge, with active participation stretching from preparation and organisation to implementation, booth collaboration, and performance evaluation. Obviously here, too, not everything is sunshine and roses. For instance, inherent in the Friday conference is a teaching asymmetry. Students in smaller departments benefit from participation in the conference on a weekly or biweekly basis, whereas booth usage is limited to a few times per semester for the larger groups. In addition, teachers must be careful to incorporate the realities of the conference and the competence levels of learners into their feedback lest students leave the booth frustrated and demotivated after a dense, fast, complex presentation due to misguided perfectionism. Nevertheless, the Friday conference takes learners out of an artificial learning situation and places them in an authentic conference setting where they can test and apply their knowledge and skills in a challenging but still protected environment. Thus, it has allowed the closing of the gap between non-authentic classroom teaching and the need for authentic learner experiences.

2.

Automation and Autonomy: Creating Autonomous Learning Options for Self-Study

2.1.

MOPSI as an Online Self-Study Tool: Premises

In addition to providing a unique learning environment, the Friday conference can also be something of a reality check if students find that their preparation or their skills were as yet inadequate to equip them for the challenges posed by the conference situation. If that happens, students are expected to alleviate such shortcomings through self-study – a prerequisite for interpreting success long before they sit in the Friday conference booth, but nevertheless not a matter of course in early or advanced stages of training. Despite a strong work ethic, students can be overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of available practice

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material. Some also find it difficult to turn theory-based classroom feedback into practical, effective, independent study sessions. A survey gauging students’ current self-study routines has indicated that while interpreting students are acutely aware of the importance of self-study, they are frustrated by the prospect of having to structure their independent work, measure their own progress, and motivate themselves (Dingfelder Stone 2015: 249–250). Over the past ten years, CAIT (Computer-Assisted Interpreter Training) tools have been developed in a variety of training institutions, notably by Annalisa Sandrelli at Hull, Angela Carabelli/Raffaela Merlini at Forl†, or Inge Gorm Hansen/Miriam Shlesinger at Copenhagen.1 Drawing on these experiences, a CAIT tool has recently been created for Germersheim students with the aim of increasing learner motivation, supporting peer collaboration, facilitating the selection of appropriate practice material, and providing a means for structuring self-study sessions, while respecting and enhancing learner autonomy. With the generous funding of the University of Mainz’s Gutenberg Teaching Council (GLK), MOPSI was developed over a one-year period and was put online in a pilot version in January 2015. Researchers and teachers alike seem to agree that self-study is indispensable for becoming an expert interpreter : “the acquisition of interpreting skills by trainees requires not only professional guidance during classes, but also extensive practice outside these hours” (Hartley et al. 2003: 2, see also GrossDinter 2011: 273, Heine 2000: 213, Sandrelli 2005: 15). At the FTSK in Germersheim, students’ self-study traditionally consists of (individual) class preparation and (collaborative) intra-language study groups. This self-study is focused largely on ‘learning by doing’, i. e. learning by practising the interpretation of speeches. Such an approach, however, does not necessarily meet the criterion of deliberate practice: “the mere repetition of an activity will not automatically lead to improvement in […] performance” (Ericsson et al., 1993: 367, see also Anderson 2001: 305). The emotional monotony of ‘yet another speech,’ the challenge of selecting appropriate study material (Gross-Dinter 2011: 273), and the absence of measurable progress can all combine to create an atmosphere of frustration and demotivation. Nevertheless, self-study, despite its crucial nature, has not always received the practical didactic attention it deserves (Dingfelder Stone 2015: 243–247). In developing MOPSI, a conscious choice was made to move beyond the more traditional CAIT approaches of providing practice speeches, recording student interpretations, and giving online teacher feedback akin to that given in class1 CAIT initiatives include Black Box (Sandrelli 2007), INterprIT (Merlini 1996), IRIS (Gran et al. 2002), and the EU’s ORCIT (www.orcit.eu) and Speech Repository projects (https://web gate.ec.europa.eu/sr). See also Ursula Gross-Dinter (2011), Sylvia Kalina (2011), Jarmilia Fictumov‚ (2004), Lily Lim (2013), Maria Tymczyn´ska (2009), Diana-Cristina Berber-Irabien (2010), and Maren Dingfelder Stone (2015: 12).

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rooms. In view of the abundant pre-screened speech material already available both at Germersheim and in external speech databases, such an approach seemed insufficient to tackle the more basic problems of independent interpreting study. Instead, MOPSI is designed to take learners back to the basics – rather than focussing on the intended end result (the accurate and appropriate interpretation of a source text), it focuses on the steps that lead to the production of such a target text, the processes this involves, and the skills it requires. In other words, it prioritises the sub-vortices that will ultimately be submerged in the super-vortex of interpreting competence [see Figure 3 on Page 82]. By reducing the complexity of co-occurring processes to the level of more manageable individual (sub-)skills, and by giving the learner the tools to improve these skills, MOPSI aims at benefitting the interpreting process as a whole. The choice of Moodle was a practical one – the infrastructure was already in place, the available modules allow for a wide variety of exercise types, and neither students nor institutes need invest in new software licenses. To attain maximum learner involvement, students’ input on design, content, and structure has been collected at several points in the process and has been incorporated into the platform features. The above-mentioned survey showed that interest in such an elearning tool was immense; students specifically asked for practice exercises, collaboration options, and useful tips (Dingfelder Stone 2015: 249–250). Daniel Gile (2009) describes interpreting essentially as a problem of allocating mental resources: processes such as listening, analysis, and production run simultaneously and compete for (finite) processing capacity. The less automatically these processes occur, the more time and attention capacity they require (Gile 2009: 158–59). With deliberate practice, however, non-automatic processes may become automatic: “initial performance is mediated by sequential processes, which, with additional practice, are transformed into a single direct (automatic) retrieval of the correct response from memory” (Ericsson et al. 1993: 396). In interpreting, such automation frees mental resources for other tasks, which means that “gradual automation of cognitive operations is important in interpreting skills acquisition” (Gile 2009: 159). The structure of MOPSI follows that premise. It is divided into seven sections delineating seven processes underlying interpretation – listening comprehension, analysis, memory, speech production, note-taking, concentration, and presentation. For each of these processes, failure triggers such as accent, figures, or speed of deliberation are identified, and MOPSI then suggests strategies to manage these difficulties, and provides purpose-designed exercises that help learners develop automatic, appropriate response mechanisms. As a caveat, it must be added that the connection between skill and exercise is neither linear nor exclusive – active listening, for instance, if done correctly, can train listening comprehension, language skills, analysis, and memory all at the same time. Acknowledging this

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interlocking of processes, each section provides pointers for further practice in the other sections, thus providing the learner with additional practice resources that train similar skills:

Figure 1: Interconnectivity of MOPSI Sections

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In addition to providing a practical benefit, this awareness of the interconnectivity of processes helps learners visualise skill-related interdependences in the interpreting process, especially in the context of resource allocation. The exercises are categorised based on language, level of difficulty (beginners, intermediate, advanced), and learner collaboration (individual, tandem, group). MOPSI was specifically not set up to link or synch with any one specific offline class, nor does it follow a semester- or term-based sequence. Instead, it is an independent resource to be drawn upon by Germersheim M.A. interpreting students at all levels and with all language combinations. As a rule, users of the platform are provided with a brief introduction to the skill they are looking to improve, and to the failure trigger they aim to manage. They are then given a range of options to choose from in order to improve and ultimately automate their responses to these failure triggers.

2.2

Learning Benefits: Autonomy and Automation

Traditional interpreting classes are based on the premise (if not the reality) of homogeneity, of all students starting from the same level and moving towards the same goal at a comparable speed (Gran et al. 2002: 280). Any interpreting teacher knows that premise to be a myth; instead, each student develops at a different pace, struggles with individual difficulties, and can build on unique previous knowledge. MOPSI embraces such individuality to allow students to implement individual classroom feedback in an appropriate, structured, and efficient manner, each according to his or her preferences and learning mechanisms. Learners can choose to follow the outlined instructional path; however, if they find tasks too challenging or too easy, they are at liberty to adjust the level of difficulty to fit their specific needs. This allows users to set their own tempo and choose their own focus. Thus, MOPSI utilises one of the great advantages of CAIT, which “allows for a modelling and adaptation of the contents, time and methods of study according to the characteristics and requirements shown by each individual student and group of students” (Gran et al. 2002: 277). As students make their own decisions about what and with whom they want to learn, and when they want to learn it, they can determine their own pace. This means that they can interrupt practice when they feel their attention slipping; they can repeat an exercise without hampering anyone else’s progress; and they can end the session whenever they deem it appropriate. Hence, MOPSI embraces the principles of autonomous learning: that the learners themselves control the intake and processing of information by choosing from a variety of learning objectives, managing their own time, planning and conducting their own

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learning sessions, and regularly assessing their own progress as a basis for adjusting their learning system (Konrad 2008: 16). The platform runs to a great extent independently of on-going teacher input. Where this was useful and possible, for instance when practicing summarisation, exercises have an answer key or reference file built into the system that allows students to rate their own success. Other tasks such as presentation exercises are set up as online tandems with students commenting on one another’s performances based on guidelines which structure and focus that feedback; these tandems can be formed spontaneously with anyone who happens to be logged on at the same time, and can also be continued offline. Yet other exercises involve a group effort resulting in databases that every user may contribute to and comment on. The inclusion of such cooperative learning approaches reflects a changing attitude in the design of CAIT tools: “While CAIT programs were previously conceived for single user practice, in recent projects there has been a shift to collaborative learning, once again reflecting constructivist theories of learning” (Sandrelli/Jerez 2007: 277, emphasis in the original). The autonomy-centred design has three potential advantages. The first is utterly practical: a teacher-independent platform does not add to the teaching load of the university staff, a factor that might significantly enhance its acceptance and continuing support on the other side of the desk. Second, it aims to allow students to evolve independent of individual teacher input, as the reality of heterogeneous teaching approaches within the same university departments can create difficulties for learners (Gorm Hansen/Shlesinger 2007: 109). And third, even though learning to realistically assess their own or a peer’s interpreting performance is considered crucial for budding interpreters (Sandrelli 2007: 4), Anthony Hartley et al. (2003) have found that such self- and peer evaluation skills cannot be taken for granted, but require guidance and specific practice (Hartley et al. 2003: 10). The necessity of giving meaningful feedback on someone else’s work based on very specific guidelines thus hopefully allows students to hone those skills and reflect on their own progress. This emphasis on peer assessment and group evaluation, and the diminished role of the teacher, encourages students to take control of their learning and emancipate themselves from the role of passive recipients of information. As such, students are to be stimulated and guided, in order to become “autonomous individuals, capable of acquiring information themselves, capable of judging the validity of such information and able to make, following on from this, logical, coherent inferences” (Gal‚n-Man˜as/Hurtado Albir 2010: 198). However, selfmotivation and self-organisation are more than mere side-effects: the need to quickly assimilate new concepts and vocabulary will accompany interpreters throughout their working life (Kalina 2000: 4), so it would seem crucial that self-

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management become a matter of course for interpreters even at a pre-professional level. The autonomous set-up, however, also represented the biggest challenge when designing MOPSI. The lack of direct teacher interaction and supervision means that instructions have to be much more explicit so as to ensure a smooth navigation, exercise selection, and practice process even for those not familiar with Moodle. Also, exercises cannot be adjusted on the fly to fit different learner needs or expectations; these have to be anticipated and incorporated into the design from the beginning by providing a host of options which allow learners to optimise their learning experience. Creating such a stable yet flexible structure, and basing it on student autonomy while not abandoning learners to the task, requires a well thought-out design and effective feedback structures. As the platform is still very young, it is not yet possible to report on any lasting effect. Preliminary observations and feedback are promising, but a survey to be conducted when MOPSI has been up and running for several semesters and students have, hopefully, begun to routinely incorporate it into their individual learning regime, will serve as a basis to assess the impact of MOPSI as an e-learning resource, and to adjust its focus where necessary. To conclude, it must be pointed out that this resource, on its own, is utterly inadequate for learning interpreting. For that purpose, regular classroom sessions providing qualified, sound feedback from experienced practitioners are indispensable, as are learning sessions in collaborative offline groups for the practice of speeches and peer evaluation. MOPSI does, however, provide a third pillar to complement these more established learning modes: autonomous, teacher-independent, skill-focused practice aimed at an automation of strategies to alleviate cognitive bottlenecks occurring throughout the interpreting process.

3.

Final Thoughts

The MOPSI self-study platform and the Friday conference are two examples of teaching options that can supplement traditional classroom instruction as well as traditional self-study routines in interpreter training. They complement each other in a cyclical way : the reality of the Friday conference indicates to students which of their sub-competences are as yet insufficiently robust and which of their strategies as yet insufficiently automated. MOPSI then provides options for targeting those weaknesses, improving automation and thus freeing up resources to handle the added strains of authentic interpreting. In reverse, MOPSI can also serve as preparation for the Friday conference: if students are aware that the upcoming speaker is known for her speed of delivery, or has a strong regional accent they are unfamiliar with, dedicated MOPSI exercises can help them get

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ready to master that challenge. MOPSI’s usefulness, however, stretches beyond the Friday conference and hopefully will accompany students throughout their entire M.A. training. The different components of interpreter training are positioned on a spectrum of authenticity and artificiality, of autonomy and assistance. Each of these components has its role to play : without traditional classroom sessions, students cannot receive the necessary input on their interpreting performances to improve through self-study. Without this self-study, the quantity of repetition is insufficient to achieve a partial automation of processes. This partial automation, however, is necessary in order to ensure that strategies can be adapted quickly enough in an authentic situation. Such authentic situations, finally, are indispensable for learners to test their pre-professional selves, bringing together their sub-competences into a super-vortex of interpreter competence, and they provide learning objectives for classroom and self-study sessions. New technologies multiply the possibilities for training institutes to ensure that learners have all of these options at their disposal, and that they interconnect in a meaningful way.

Works Cited Anderson, John R. (2001). Kognitive Psychologie. Heidelberg: Spektrum. Andres, Dörte (2012). “Das Konzept Freitagskonferenz: Expertiseentwicklung durch berufsorientierte Lehre”, in Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Donald Kiraly (eds.): Projekte und Projektionen in der translatorischen Kompetenzentwicklung. Frankfurt: Lang, 237–255. Behr, Martina (2015). “How to Back the Students – Quality, Assessment & Feedback”, in Dörte Andres / Martina Behr (eds.): To Know how to Suggest…: Approaches to Teaching Conference Interpreting. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 201–217. Berber-Irabien, Diana-Cristina (2010). “Information and Communication Technologies in Conference Interpreting: A Survey of the Usage in Professional and Educational Settings.” Doctoral Thesis at the Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Tarragona. http://www. tdx.cat/bitstream/handle/10803/8775/tesi.pdf ;jsessionid=F483F62C36029589CBBD9 B94BEDA127A. tdx2?sequence=1 [18. 11. 2014]. Chabasse, Catherine / Dingfelder Stone, Maren (2015). “Capacity Management in Interpretation: Efforts, Directionality, and Language Pair Considerations”, in Dörte Andres / Martina Behr (eds.): To Know how to Suggest…: Approaches to Teaching Conference Interpreting. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 75–102. Dingfelder Stone, Maren (2015). “(Self-)Study in Interpreting: Plea for a Third Pillar”, in Dörte Andres / Martina Behr (eds.): To Know how to Suggest…: Approaches to Teaching Conference Interpreting. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 243–255.

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Ericsson, Anders / Krampe, Ralph / Tesch-Romer, Clemens (1993). “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”, Psychological Review 100:3, 363–406. Fictumnov‚, Jarmila (2005). “E-learning for Translators and Interpreters: The Case of CMS Moodle”, in Jan Chovanec (ed.): Theory and Practice in English Studies 3: Proceedings from the 8th Conference of British, American and Canadian Studies. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 201–206. http://www.phil.muni.cz/plonedata/wkaa/Offprints %20THEPES%203/TPES%203%20%28201-206%29%20Fictumova.pdf [18. 11. 2014]. Gal‚n-MaÇas, Anabel / Amparo Hurtado Albir (2010). “Blended Learning in Translator Training. Methodology and Results of an Empiric Validation”, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 4.2, 197–231. Gile, Daniel (20092). Basic Concepts and Models for Translator and Interpreter Training. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Gorm Hansen, Inge / Shlesinger, Miriam (2007). “The Silver Lining: Technology and SelfStudy in the Interpreting Classroom”, Interpreting 9.1, 95–118. Gran, Laura / Carabelli, Angela / Merlini, Raffaela (2002). “Computer-Assisted Interpreter Training”, in Giulia Garzone / Maurizio Viezzi (eds): Interpreting in the 21st Century. Challenges and Opportunities. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 121–130. Gross-Dinter, Ursula (2011). “Zwischen Präsenzunterricht und Computerunterstützung, zwischen geführtem und selbstgesteuertem Lernen: Versuch eines integrierten didaktischen Konzepts für das Dolmetschstudium”, in Peter A. Schmitt / Susann Herold / Annette Weilandt (eds.): Translationsforschung. Tagungsberichte der LICTRA, IX. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 273–284. Gruber, Hans / Mandl, Heinz (1996). “Expertise und Erfahrung”, in Hans Gruber / Albert Ziegler (eds.): Expertiseforschung. Theoretische und methodische Grundlagen. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 18–34. Hartley, Anthony / Mason, Ian / Peng, Gracie / Perez, Isabelle (2003). Peer- and Self-Assessment in Conference Interpreter Training. York, UK: Subject Centre for Languages. www.llas.ac.uk/resourcedownloads/1454/hartley.rtf Heine, Manfred (2000). “Effektives Selbststudium – Schlüssel zum Erfolg in der Dolmetschausbildung”, in Sylvia Kalina et al. (eds.): Dolmetschen: Theorie – Praxis – Didaktik. St. Ingbert: Röhrig, 213–230. Ilg, G¦rard / Lambert, Sylvie (1996). “Teaching Consecutive Note-taking”, Interpreting 1:1, 69–99. Kader, Stephanie / Seubert, Sabine (2015). “Anticipation, Segmentation… Stalling? How to Teach Interpreting Strategies”, in Dörte Andres / Martina Behr (eds.): To Know how to Suggest…: Approaches to Teaching Conference Interpreting. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 125–142. Kalina, Sylvia (2000). “Interpreting Competences as a Basis and a Goal for Teaching”, The Interpreters’ Newsletter 10, 3–32. Kalina, Sylvia (2011). “Die Dolmetschlehre im elektronischen Zeitalter”, in Peter A. Schmitt et al. (eds.): Translationsforschung: Tagungsberichte der LICTRA IX. Frankfurt: Lang, 419–431. Konrad, Klaus (2008). Erfolgreich selbstgesteuert lernen. Theoretische Grundlagen, Forschungsergebnisse, Impulse für die Praxis. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt.

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Lim, Lily (2013). “Examining Students’ Perceptions of Computer-Assisted Interpreter Training”, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 7.1, 71–89. Merlini, Raffaella (1996). “InterprIT – Consecutive Interpretation Module”, The Interpreters’ Newsletter 7, 31–41. Sandrelli, Annalisa (2005). “Designing CAIT (Computer-Assisted Interpreter Training) Tools: Black Box”, in Heidrun Gerzymisch-Arbogast / Sandra Nauert (eds.): MuTra 2005 – Challenges of Multidi-mensional Translation: Conference Proceedings. http:// www.euroconferences.info/proceedings/2005_Proceedings/2005_Sandrelli_Annalisa. pdf. Sandrelli, Annalisa / Jerez, Jesffls de Manuel (2007). “The Impact of Information and Communication Technology on Interpreter Training”, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 1.2, 269–303. Tymczyn´ska, Maria (2009). “Integrating In-Class and Online Learning Activities in a Healthcare Interpreting Course Using Moodle”, Journal of Specialised Translation 12, 148–164. http://www.jostrans.org/issue12/art_tymczynska.php [18. 11. 2014].

Andrea Cnyrim (Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences)

Chapter 7: Developing Intercultural Competence through Authentic Projects in the Classroom

The purpose of intercultural competence is to enable successful interaction between individuals despite potential cultural differences. As professions tend to differ considerably, working in an intercultural environment affects each individual differently. International managers, for example, need a different range of knowledge and skills than soldiers who are to be sent abroad, or doctors and educators who work across cultures or in multicultural societies. The intercultural competence needed for translation-related tasks is no exception. It is crucial that we identify exactly what makes this particular type of intercultural competence unique so that it can be developed. This is particularly important if we consider “translation and interpreting special kinds of intercultural communication” (Witte 1995, 73). In 1995, Heidrun Witte highlighted the lack of concrete definitions of the concept of intercultural competence and proposed a working model for suitable teaching strategies. This was followed by her dissertation, published in the year 2000, on the translator’s cultural competence (Witte 2000). This is probably still the most detailed approach that deals with this question. Thirteen years later, in September 2013, a conference on “Promoting Intercultural Competence in Translators” was held in Paris by the PICT consortium (an EU-funded group of universities and associated organizations in seven EU countries) to demonstrate that the issue still remains unsolved. At the conference, the PICT group delivered its results on the current state of teaching intercultural competence in postgraduate translation courses collected during two years of research and designed a curriculum framework that included teaching and assessment materials.1 It is undeniable that intercultural competence is still often taken for granted in translator education as it is either understood to be a prerequisite for taking a class in the subject, or is simply not discussed at all. This chapter attempts to distinguish the specific intercultural competence needed to complete translational tasks from the skills required in other intercultural occupational contexts. 1 The results and materials can be found here: http://pict.icc-languages.eu/.

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As a result, a developmental model comprising six stages is suggested through which this particular competence evolves, and discusses how to best enhance its incorporation into our study programmes. Authentic classroom projects appear to be the most powerful and effective option, and some experiences with actual projects will be shared to reinforce this viewpoint.

1.

The Concept of the Translator’s Intercultural Competence

A brief review of the studies on the translator’s intercultural competence shows that the term is not always precisely defined or operationalized. Recently however, interest in translation competence (TC) research, including the development of TC from the novice to the expert2 stage, and in intercultural competence development for translators, seems to be increasing3. For the purpose of this chapter, viewing intercultural competence as a complex, situated cognitive phenomenon (comprising cognitive, meta-cognitive, behavioural and motivational levels) is essential in order to define it for the specific requirements of translational tasks and then apply it to the design of translator education curricula. Heinz Göhring, along with Hans Vermeer, recognized the importance of intercultural competence for translators in the early 1970s. Göhring proposed approaches to enable translators and interpreters to develop their intercultural competence, which in his view was achieved mainly through ethnographic methods and intercultural training. He quoted Goodenough as stating that “[… ] a society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves” (Goodenough 1964, 36 quoted in Göhring 2002, 85). Göhring also distinguished between active role competence and passive role competence as two separate, yet key, occupational requirements4. Additionally, both Vermeer and Göhring were instrumental in raising awareness of the importance of holistic instruction for interpreters and translators (Vermeer 1996, Göhring 2002). This was especially significant given that, at that early 2 Alves 2004; Cnyrim, Hagemann & Neu 2013; Göpferich 2009; Hurtado 2007; Kiraly 2000; Risku 1998; Shreve 2006; Whyatt 2012, to name but a few. 3 Besides many others e. g. the PICT project mentioned above, Katan 2004. Löwe 2002 and Fleischmann, Schmitt and Wotjak 2004 (especially part II “Interkulturelle Kompetenz” pp. 311–463). 4 Göhring 2002, 108. Passive role competence refers to the ability of an individual to evaluate whether the behaviour of members of a given culture are in line with social expectations. Active role competence refers to the ability of an individual to produce such behaviour that is acceptable to the members of a culture.

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stage of theorising about translation competence, the specific professional intercultural competence of translators and interpreters had not yet been delineated. The prevailing general ideas about the concept were applied from intercultural communication research. In her early publications, Witte stated that “Translators are regarded as experts in the field and their bicultural competence is deemed a necessary prerequisite for their work” (Witte 1995, p. 73). She later found that their bicultural competence played an even more imperative role when she demonstrated in her dissertation that it is actually a methodical competence, which enables them to act as translators by allowing transfer of messages across languages and cultures. She then defined the translator’s competence as the entirety of competences needed by translators and interpreters, of which language competence and cultural competence are considered separate and distinguishable components (Witte 2000, 161). The PICT results, however, reveal that many translator education programmes in institutions of higher education still base their curricula on a relatively narrow conceptualisation of the intercultural competence needed for translation purposes today. The survey shows a high degree of awareness regarding the importance of intercultural competence among teaching staff and students in postgraduate study programmes in the majority of countries that participated in the survey. However, when it comes to defining intercultural competence, the majority of respondents define it as consisting of knowledge of history, geography, and perhaps of a general awareness of cultural differences and diversity (Williams, Cranmer and Tomozeiu 2013:3). This understanding is also reflected in current models of translation competence, some of which do not mention intercultural competence at all, such as the TC models by PACTE (cf. Hurtado 2007) and Göpferich (2009). One prominent model that does mention intercultural competence explicitly (EMT), regrettably omits a definition of the holistic concept that Göhring, Vermeer and Witte had in mind. As depicted in the diagram below, the EMT TC model groups intercultural with other translator sub-competences, such as language, information mining, technological and thematic. However, the EMT description of the intercultural sub-competence is limited to its ‘sociolinguistic dimension’, which refers to the knowledge of language variations and interaction rules, including nonverbal elements and appropriate register. Furthermore, it also refers to its ‘textual’ relevance, which can be viewed in a broader understanding of the knowledge, skills, attitudes and awareness required for the holistic task of preparing, designing and initiating communication processes for the needs of others across cultures. To summarize, it appears that while the pioneers in the field have successfully advocated the importance of intercultural competence, the lack of a commonly

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Figure 1: The EMT model. (EMT Expert Group 2009:4)

shared definition and a comprehensive understanding of the concept that would allow us to better utilize or assess it have yet to be remedied.

2.

Which Approach to Intercultural Competence is Most Useful for Translators?

It seems puzzling that while there are many translation scholars who are convinced of the eminent role of intercultural competence for professional translators and interpreters, only few operational models exist. Defining intercultural competence as the ability to interact successfully with people from different cultural backgrounds does not tell us anything about the specific knowledge we should possess or how, specifically, we should behave. It also does not cover the attitudes, values and the degree of awareness that will give us a better understanding of intercultural situations. One possible problem with intercultural communication studies is that it has not yet developed a single or unique model that caters to the cross-cultural interaction needs of individuals from a diverse range of professions, such as managers, soldiers, medical staff or teachers5. Furthermore, within our increasingly multicultural societies, intercultural competence is not only a competence necessary for a job abroad. As a result, there has been a great increase in the number of models developed to accommodate specific professional situations, especially when they focus on different aspects of this holistic and

5 Research on intercultural competence originally began with very general models of personality traits (Gardner 1962, Furnham and Bochner 1986), and progressively included general situational features (Brislin 1981, Stahl 1998) to provide more and more sophisticated profiles today that take specific occupational requirements into account.

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complex concept. Terminology in this area is also just as disparate6 as the range of assessment tools7 and thus will not be discussed here due to space limitations. These efforts, however, show how strongly intercultural communication scholars feel about the need to differentiate between the criteria that result from the occupation, and the situation they apply to; this approach yields competence profiles with considerable variation. Cultural intelligence, a multidimensional concept that grew out of intelligence research and situated cognition, appears to be the most promising approach to date. It encompasses four dimensions: cognitive – knowledge and knowledge structures; meta-cognitive – the process of acquiring and understanding knowledge; behavioural – individual capabilities at the action level; and motivational (Ang & Van Dyne 4). Cultural intelligence acknowledges that these dimensions interact as part of a network and are able to accommodate hybridity. For these reasons it is retained as a model of intercultural competence that fits the purpose of this approach.

3.

What Are the Specific Characteristics of the Translator’s Intercultural Competence?

Following the assumption that a translator’s professional intercultural competence differs from the skills, knowledge, behaviour and awareness that other professionals need in intercultural situations, Witte described the difference in 1995 as: The ability to interpret and produce behaviour in a culturally and situationally adequate way for the (interaction) purposes and needs of (at least) two members of two different cultural communities. (73)

This means that when we are doing a translation or interpreting job, we are not communicating on our own behalf but instead are fulfilling the needs and purposes of all those involved in the interaction, in a broad sense also referred to as the clients. This distinction is extremely relevant as it led Witte to develop the idea of ‘competence-in-(one or several)-culture/s’, which is the first concept we will

6 E. g. cross-cultural, international, intercultural, or global are often used more or less synonymously in combination with adjustment, awareness, effectiveness, or sensitivity, to refer to competence in professional situations, such as staff relations, client delivery, team productivity, counselling or development projects. 7 The number of assessments, charts, checklists, indexes, instruments, inventories, profiles, questionnaires, scales, surveys and tests is extensive.

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examine. This concept refers to both our “own”8 cultural “starting points”9 and to that of other cultures. It is the basic intercultural competence for our own cultures, for every new culture in which we acquire intercultural everyday-life competence, and even for specific professional intercultural competence. For example, these starting points could include the competence to negotiate a deadline or a contract in both our own or a foreign culture, the competence to obtain information, to hold a meeting or to give a presentation in one or more cultural settings. Similar to our ability to learn one or more languages, we can also acquire specific cultural competence for more than one culture. In Goodenough’s words, intercultural competence is: “Whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members” (Goodenough 1964, 36 quoted in Göhring 2002, 85). This is where translation studies can reliably make use of the concepts of intercultural competence provided by intercultural communication scholars. The second concept Witte developed, ‘competence-between-cultures’, should be paid special attention. Since translators and interpreters deal with at least two culturally different interaction partners, they need to effectively judge clients’ knowledge of the other’s culture, and anticipate how this will influence their mutual perception(s) and their behaviours (Witte 1993 71–72). If they have poor knowledge of the other’s culture or inaccurate perceptions, the professional translator or interpreter may need to compensate for the clients’ perceptions or any non-conducive reactions that may result. Imagine you were asked to buy someone a sandwich for lunch. If you go to the shop to buy one for yourself, it is very easy since you can simply rely on your gut feeling and choose whichever one you want. If you need to buy one for someone else, it becomes more complicated as you might be faced with uncertainties over his or her diet, such as their allergies, personal preferences, etc. In a conscious effort, you will have to take the other person’s needs and habits into account. Quite clearly, this task requires a greater commitment and a different approach than buying lunch for yourself. Similarly, translation and interpreting are also more complex tasks than ‘merely’ interacting in a foreign environment (even though, for those who have experienced it, it is clearly not all that easy). These particular cognitive operations are based on multiple culture-contrasting comparisons in the course of which we create cultural specificities; they do not exist “per se” but are attributed to a culture from a certain perspective (cf. Robinson 1991, Arrojo 1993, Grosman 1994). The task of the professional 8 However we may define our own culture, which does not necessarily need to be homogeneous, stable over time, etc. 9 The term is used in LeBaron’s sense of preferences/orientations in an adaptational process of coordinated and cooperative establishment of meaning across cultural difference (= intercultural communication) (cf. LeBaron 2006 21, and 32–55 and LeBaron 2003 53–73).

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translator or interpreter then is not to merely juxtapose cultures, but to interrelate them for specific translational purposes. Students need to be made aware of the measuring sticks our own culture’s frames of references create and with which we necessarily measure cultural phenomena. This means that they need to become aware of their own culture-boundedness and its impact on their perceptions. When examining our classrooms, this is noticeably becoming an increasingly complex task as growing numbers of third-culture children (ones with multicultural or migration backgrounds or with hybrid cultural identities) are taking advantage of our educational offerings. One quality criterion in professional translation and interpreting is to make a conscious effort not to become a target of what Michelle LeBaron calls “automatic ethnocentricity” (LeBaron 2003 34–35). That is the trap of projecting our own cultural frames of references onto the element of the other culture perceived as different or foreign. Professional translators and interpreters therefore need to avoid subconscious projection as much as possible.

4.

A Developmental Model of the Specific Intercultural Competence of Translators and Interpreters

The following developmental model was inspired by Witte (1995, 2000), Bennett (1998 and 2001), Grosch and Leenen (2000), and Thomas (2003). It consists of 6 stages: Stages Development of translator’s intercultural competence Stage Develop an awareness of culture-specific differences 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

Accept these cultural differences (in the sense of cognitive tolerance)

Stage 4 Stage 5

Develop the ability to modify one’s own way to perceive the other culture (including interpretation and evaluation) Develop the ability to modify one’s own behaviour with regard to the other culture (consciously and purposefully)

Develop awareness of our own culture-boundedness

Developing an awareness of culture-specific differences (stage 1), accepting these cultural differences (in the sense of cognitive tolerance, stage 2), and developing awareness of our own culture-boundedness (stage 3), can be addressed fairly early in study programmes. Once this has been achieved, students can approach the question of how to handle the potential ignorance of the interaction partners (the future clients) they deal with in translation contexts.

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These interaction partners may not have a high level of intercultural knowledge or competence, but they will have formed a certain ‘image’ of the respective other culture. Translators and interpreters need to be knowledgeable about the perceptions of the partners involved in the process in order to adequately and professionally ensure successful communication between them. Stages 1 through 5 correspond with developmental models that can be found in other domains (cf. Bennett 1998, 2001 on how intercultural sensitivity develops, including an interesting correlation to language learning10 ; cf. Thomas 2003 on the development of intercultural competence). Since only stage 6 is specific to the profile of professional translators and interpreters, this stage is of the utmost importance to the question addressed in this paper. To sum up, the difference between a high level of intercultural competence and the specific intercultural competence of translators can be described as the professional, purposeful and skopos-oriented act of ensuring communication to fulfil the needs and purposes of others. Cnyrim, Hagemann and Neu have suggested a developmental model of translation competence from the level of lay competence through the stages of basic functional competence, conceptual and procedural competence, and multi-dimensional competence to level 5 – autonomous and progressive competence (2013). The developmental model of intercultural competence proposed in this paper could be integrated into the levels of translation competence described in that publication.

5.

Classroom Projects and the Development of Necessary Competences

In order to help students develop the required intercultural competences for their future professional tasks, translator training programmes should systematically assist them in acquiring the knowledge, skills and mind set necessary during the six stages. If developing intercultural competence is truly regarded as a crucial requirement for future translators and interpreters, then we should consider how best to acquire this skill. Fortunately, some of this learning (and probably the greater part) simply happens, whether we are there to encourage this process or not. The responsibility of instructors could be to ensure that it happens systematically and that the best possible conditions are provided to foster this development. The idea that simple exposure to cultural difference is 10 David Katan (2004) explores Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) with respect to the meta-position of translators and discusses how to use it in teaching.

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enough to become interculturally competent – known as the “contact hypothesis” (Allport 1954) – has, however, been disproved (e. g., Barlow et al. 2012 and Paolini et al. 2010). I would therefore advocate targeted competence development activities in translation programmes to allow this process to take place under the best conditions we can provide. If we consider intercultural competence to be a necessary and crucial job requirement for translators and interpreters, then it should no longer be acceptable to leave the development of these competences to chance. Additionally, this development should not be regarded as solely the individual responsibility of the students, even if we take into account that an important and valuable part of intercultural competence development takes place in a variety of courses designed for other purposes. These other learning arrangements also contribute substantially to the intercultural competence development of translators and interpreters as they include helping students to acquire awareness of culture-specific differences (Stage 1). Traditional teaching methods provide us with a number of appropriate and motivating exercises. Acceptance of cultural difference (Stage 2) in Milton Bennett’s sense is certainly much more difficult to evoke in students, but it is still part of what traditionally has been and can be triggered – if not achieved – through conventional instruction settings and formats such as through group work, group discussions, or fish bowl sessions. Formats that help students develop awareness of their own-culture-boundedness (Stage 3) can already be found in intercultural training as well as in progressive language teaching, such as through learning diaries and other self-reflection exercises. However when it comes to stages 4, 5 and 6, they appear to be competences that are more difficult to obtain through formal instruction settings unless they include simulations, role-play, or impromptu theatre and the like. Developing the ability to modify one’s own way of perceiving the other culture and to modify one’s own behaviour with regard to the other culture cannot be ‘learned’ in the same way as awareness and acceptance of cultural difference. Even the use of culture assimilator training, as recommended by some intercultural communication scholars, will still not guarantee the acquisition of these skills. Stage 6 is clearly the most complex and demanding of the six stages, especially because a number of integrated situational factors and processes of adaptation interfere with one another (cf. Casmir 1999, LeBaron 2003 and 2006, Bolten 2013 and 2014). The multifarious interplay of perceptions, interpretations and reactions of the communication partners in this process is precisely what students in translation programmes should learn to manage (for example, if relevant, they may need to anticipate reactions to communicative behaviour and/or make corrections for the participants in the situation, or they may need to know which factors or realities give rise to stereotypes and what adjustments, if any, must be made in the given situation). To this end, professional intercultural communi-

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cation situations should be integrated into the programmes as learning tools. This is because simulated or authentic intercultural situations create the most appropriate environment for effective and sustainable intercultural learning processes, capable of accommodating students at different levels of their intercultural competence development. Classroom projects provide ideal opportunities for this kind of learning, which will be shown in the following examples. Without a doubt, the Faculty of Translation Studies, Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the Germersheim Campus of the University of Mainz is privileged when it comes to authentic translation projects. Don Kiraly (Kiraly 2013, 2012, 2005, 2000, etc.) pioneered this concept with great success and not only won acceptance for the idea but also established a specific teaching approach based on it. Hansen-Schirra & Kiraly (2013) includes contributions on translation project work from no fewer than 20 lecturers and professors at the FTSK. Within this context, one example can be drawn from a three-semester project management course in the German Department. It was initially designed by Susanne Hagemann and Julia Neu as a truly collaborative teaching format. The students in the course were tasked with coordinating a number of collaborative translation projects to produce a variety of texts and translations that included: – A multilingual flyer and booklet for an association promoting the integration and education of children with immigrant backgrounds; the brochure’s aim was to recruit new members and raise funds, – Information packages informing visitors to the town of Germersheim about sights and attractions that was translated into the languages of partnership communities, and – A multilingual children’s fairy tale book that was translated into nine languages. All of these translations were printed and used for their intended purposes. The importance of these projects also showcased the tremendous impact they had on the overall motivation and competence development of the students who participated in the course. As the focus here is on the particular effects of classroom projects on developing the intercultural competence of future translators and interpreters, some more examples are taken from this context to demonstrate the tremendous impact that using an authentic project as a learning tool has on intercultural competence development. The role of the teacher in the project management course was not to work on the translations with the students; this task was performed by colleagues from the respective language departments. Instead, the aim of this particular class was to learn how to manage translation projects involving numerous languages. PRINCE2Ò was used as a project management method and the task of the stu-

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dents in the class was to learn to use this method and apply it to the projects they had signed up for, in order to complete them as professionally as possible.

5.1

Intercultural Teams

Throughout the groups and over the course of three semesters, it became evident that the cultures the participants were familiar with, in Goodenough’s sense (“whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to” [Goodenough 1964, 36 quoted in Göhring 2002, 85] the other team members), were extremely relevant for the way in which they organized teamwork. Students from the same or similar cultural backgrounds often worked together in a surprisingly smooth fashion. When problems arose, some students sought advice from the instructor, individually or in smaller groups. The students also had the opportunity to discuss different perceptions of compliance with the project, problem-solving and the possible impact of culture, and even more importantly, culture-sensitive ways to find solutions. All the groups had to negotiate team rules, rules for substituting for each other, and leadership responsibilities and report on them in class. When needed, intercultural issues were addressed during the class sessions.

5.2

Culture and Expectations towards Children

The children’s fairy tale book was a particularly interesting project that presented students with an engaging change of perspective. In general, any translational interaction requires the ability to change perspectives. However, since we are using a rather broad concept of culture (including age, gender, sexual orientation, social class, etc.), thinking about how fairy tales are perceived by children presented multiple perspective changes at various levels. What was special about this project was the form of reflection that students and lecturers became involved in because they performed these tasks for a real audience that they truly connected with. In order to illustrate the book, the students decided to read the tales to children at the university’s kindergarten and then asked them to draw pictures (some of these illustrations were actually used in the book). This was also helpful because during the reading sessions, when the students noticed that the children had difficulty understanding certain passages from the book, the texts were returned to the translation groups for discussion and revision. Additionally, all groups had to precisely define the translation briefs for the translation classes. The translation brief for the storybook is intended for children ranging approximately from ages three to eight. Since not all of the

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stories were originally written for children, this meant that expectations and assumptions about this age group needed to be addressed, especially when the lines of cultural boundaries were taken into consideration (for example: gender and social environment).

5.3

Focused Research Methods for the Specific Needs of the Task

In another project, a group of six students of Egyptian, Brazilian, German and mixed backgrounds completed the most explicit reflection on intercultural competence development among the examined projects. Their task was to help the Germersheim District Administration establish a more welcoming business culture in the local public administration system. This was also a collaborative project spanning three semesters with changing groups of students. The task of the first group (during the 2012/2013 winter semester) was to make a specific and thorough assessment of requirements that combined 29 expert interviews conducted at different office hierarchy levels, and ten participant observations. Even if this seems a bit far removed from the real time constraints under which professionals actually function, it is important that educational programmes teach appropriate methods that may become necessary for a variety of situations. In addition, the final group, while preparing a specific intercultural training workshop, decided to survey the actual clients of the Germersheim District Administration in order to get a better impression of the skills they would need to train them. One of the students’ underlying motives was to understand what their clients (the Germersheim District Administration staff) were dealing with on a daily basis. This group not only switched perspectives very successfully, but they also became more knowledgeable about a particular professional culture (the public administration sector). In doing so, the students learned how to design methods that not only anticipated their clients’ perceptions and reactions to cultural difference, but also helped them develop specific aspects of their own professional intercultural competence with methods they can use when they accompany future clients. According to Witte (2000: 163), cultural competence encompasses the ability to become aware of what is known subconsciously as well as the ability to consciously learn what you do not know about your own culture or other cultures. The students in this project demonstrated a highly professional attitude with respect to this learning objective and spared no effort in designing a theoretically and methodologically well-founded procedure to close the gaps in their knowledge about the target culture of the organisation they were dealing with. This behaviour is very much in line with the degrees of autonomy in

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information integration and research underlined in the higher levels of Cnyrim, Hagemann and Neu’s model of translation competence development (2013).

5.4

(Corporate) Social Responsibility

Another aspect of intercultural learning arose during the fundraising process for the story book. Similar to all of the groups in the described classroom projects, the fundraising team was also multicultural. At different times during the process, students expressed concern regarding the amount of money required to print the books and that they would not have been entrusted with comparable sums in their home countries. The fact that they were trusted to handle financial transactions in order to fulfil the assignment in a (culture-)specific context had a tremendous impact on their motivation for the project, their attitudes, identification with the task and product, commitment to the team and the assignment, and, last but not least, their pride in having overcome multiple critical moments within their intercultural team. The team that trained the staff at the Germersheim district administration bureau underwent a very similar process once they realized how much the organization relied on them and how seriously they took their offer of training. Upon realisation, the team discussed responsibility issues when they became aware of the expectations of management as well as the participants, who were investing valuable work hours to come to listen to them. The growing responsibility of translators in their development from the novice stage of translation competence to expertise is crucial in Cnyrim, Hagemann and Neu’s model (2013). Evidently, comparable elements of professional competence would not have been acquired in a simulated project. The authenticity of the project therefore made a substantial impact, as it involved real people, investing real time and entrusting the students with significant amounts of money.

6.

Conclusion

In conclusion, authentic experiential learning through project work appears to be the most effective and, as demonstrated in Section 5.4, sometimes the only way to develop professional intercultural competence in translators, when measured in terms of learning outcomes and individual progression. Not only do authentic projects assist the students in developing the skills required by the occupational market (such as working in international teams, project management in multicultural settings, etc.), they also provide a learning environment

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that allows them to reach the highest levels of professional commitment and gain awareness of their individual responsibility for translational tasks as well as the translator’s role in society. As a welcome side effect, the content of the classes (as described in the module handbooks) was acquired incidentally. The groups simply needed the knowledge and skills the courses aimed to impart to solve the assigned tasks. The students were motivated to seek these learning outcomes through the real-life nature of the project and the possible implementation of this knowledge and skill set on the occupational market. All of the students involved in these projects appeared to achieve major increases in their specific professional intercultural competence that would have been difficult to achieve through other learning arrangements. This is especially true when taking into consideration their degree of professionalism, their focus on the needs of the interaction partners, and the skopos-orientation of their conduct. Incorporating project work in the classroom enables us to make the learning environment for translation activities much more holistic, and to include complex aspects such as developing a sense of responsibility for people. It is also an effective way to sensitize students to the role of translators in society. Lastly, this approach enables us to provide active and systematic guidance throughout the developmental process. For more information on the projects: Fairy Tale Book-Project http://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/60646.php http://www.neugriechisch.fb06.uni-mainz.de/projekt-zum-maerchenuebersetzen/ Germersheim District Administration-Project http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/ikk/461.php http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/ikk/520.php http://www.uni-protokolle.de/nachrichten/id/281461/ PICT Intercultural Competence in EU Postgraduate Translation Programs, September 2012 http://www.pictllp.eu/download/PICT_SURVEY_REPORT.pdf

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Works Cited Allport, Gordon Willard (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. Alves, Fabio / GonÅalves, Jos¦ Luiz (2007). “Modelling Translator’s Competence. Relevance and Expertise under Scrutiny”, in Yves Gambier et al. (eds.): Doubts and Directions in Translation Studies. Selected Contributions from the EST Congress, Lisbon 2004. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ang, Soon / Van Dyne, Linn (2008). Handbook of Cultural Intelligence: Theory, Measurement, and Applications. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. Arrojo, Rosemary (1993). Tradużo, desconstrużo e psican‚lise. Rio de Janeiro: Imago. Barlow, Fiona Kate et al. (2012). “The Contact Caveat: Negative Contact Predicts Increased Prejudice more than Positive Contact Predicts Reduced Prejudice”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 38, 1629–1643. Bennett, Milton J. (1998). “Intercultural Communication: A Current Perspective”, in Milton J. Bennett (ed.): Basic Concepts of Intercultural Communication. Selected Readings. Yarmouth: Intercultural Press, 1–34. Bennett, Milton J. (2001). “Developing Intercultural Competence for Global Leadership”, in Rolf-Dieter Reineke / Christine Fussinger (eds.): Interkulturelles Management. Konzeption – Beratung – Training. Wiesbaden: Gabler, 205–226. Bolten, Jürgen (2013). “Fuzzy Cultures: Konsequenzen eines offenen und mehrwertigen Kulturbegriffs für Konzeptualisierungen interkultureller Personalentwicklung”, mondial. SIETAR Journal für interkulturelle Perspektiven 19, 4–13. Bolten, Jürgen (2014). “The Dune Model – or : How to Describe Cultures”, AFS Intercultural Link. 5.2, 4–6. Casmir, Fred L. (1999). “Foundations for the study of intercultural communication based on a third-culture building model”, International Journal of Intercultural Relations 23.1, 91–116. Cnyrim, Andrea / Hagemann, Susanne / Neu, Julia (2013). “Towards a Framework of Reference for Translation Competence”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Translationswissenschaft 10. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 9–34. EMT Expert Group (2009). Competences for Professional Translators, Experts in Multilingual and Multimedia Communication. Brussels: European Commission. http://ec. europa.eu/dgs/translation/programmes/emt/key_documents/emt_competences_ translators_en.pdf Fleischmann, Eberhard / Schmitt, Peter A. / Wotjak, Gerd (eds.) (2004). Translationskompetenz. Tagungsberichte der LICTRA (Leipzig International Conference on Translation Studies), 4.-6. 10. 2001. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Göhring, Heinz (2002) in Andreas F. Kelletat / Holger Siever (eds.): Interkulturelle Kommunikation. Anregungen für Sprach- und Kulturmittler. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Göpferich, Susanne (2009). “Towards a Model of Translation Competence and its Acquisition”, in Susanne Göpferich / Arnt Lykke Jakobsen / Inger M. Mees (eds.): Behind the Mind: Methods, Models and Results in Translation Process Research. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur, 11–37.

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Grosch, Harald / Leenen, Wolf Rainer (1998). “Bausteine zur Grundlegung interkulturellen Lernens”, in Grosch, Harald / Leenen, Wolf Rainer (eds.) Interkulturelles Lernen. Arbeitshilfen für die politische Bildung. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung: Bonn, 29–46. Grosman, Meta (1994). “Cross-Cultural Awareness: Focussing on Otherness”, in Cay Dollerup / Annette Lindgaard (eds.): Teaching Translation and Interpreting 2: Insights, Aims and Visions. Papers from the Second Language International Conference Elsinore. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 51–57. Hansen-Schirra, Silvia / Kiraly, Don (eds.) (2013). Projekte und Projektionen in der translatorischen Kompetenzentwicklung. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Hurtado Albir, Amparo (2007). “Competence-based Curriculum Desgin for Training Translators”, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 1.2, 163–195. Katan, David (2004). Translating Cultures. An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators. Manchester : St. Jerome. Kiraly, Don (2000). A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education. Manchester : St. Jerome. Kiraly, Don (2005). “Situating Praxis in Translator Education”, in Kristina K‚roly / Föris Ýgota (eds.): New Trends in Translation Studies – Festschrift für Kinga Klaudy. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 117–138. Kiraly, Don (2012). “Skopos Theory Goes to Paris”, in Hanna Risku / Christina Schäffner / Jürgen Schopp (eds.): Special Issue of mTm to commenmorate Hans J. Vermeer. (mTm A Translation Journal). Athens: Diavlos, 119–144. Kiraly, Don (2013). “Towards A View of Translator Competence as an Emergent Phenomenon: Thinking Outside the Box(es) in Translator Education”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Translationswissenschaft 10. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 197–224. LeBaron, Michelle (2003). Bridging Cultural Conflicts. A New Approach for a Changing World. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. LeBaron, Michelle / Pillay, Venashri (2006). Conflict Across Cultures. A Unique Experience of Bridging Differences. Boston: Intercultural Press. Löwe, Barbara (2002). “Translatorische Kulturkompetenz. Inhalte – Erwerb – Besonderheiten”, in Joanna Best / Sylvia Kalina (eds.): Übersetzen und Dolmetschen. Tübingen: Franke, 148–161. Paolini, Stefania / Harwood, Jake / Rubin, Mark (2010). “Negative Intergroup Contact Makes Group Memberships Salient: Explaining Why Intergroup Conflict Endures”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36, 1723–173. Risku, Hanna (1998). Translatorische Kompetenz: Kognitive Grundlagen des Übersetzens als Expertentätigkeit. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Robinson, Douglas (1991). The Translator’s Turn. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Shreve, Gregory M. (2006). “The Deliberate Practice: Translation and Expertise”, Journal of Translation Studies 9.1, 27–42. Thomas, Alexander (2003). “Interkulturelle Kompetenz – Grundlagen, Probleme und Konzepte”, Erwa¨ gen Wissen Ethik – Streitforum fu¨ r Erwa¨ gungskultur 14.1, 137–228.

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Vermeer, Hans J. (1996). “‘Sprache oder Kultur?’ Dolmetscher- und Übersetzerausbildung gestern, heute und morgen. Berliner Beiträge zur Translationswissenschaft.”, Akten des internationalen wissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums anläßlich des 100jährigen Jubiläums der Dolmetscher- und Übersetzerausbildung Russisch an der Berliner Universität (1894–1994), veranstaltet an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin am 12. und 13. Mai 1995. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 163–169. Whyatt, Bogusława (2012). Translation as a Human Skill. From Predisposition to Expertise. Poznan´ : Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Williams, Rob / Cranmer, Robin / Tomozeiu, Daniel (2013). PICT. Promoting Intercultural Competence in Translators. Selected Samples. Westminster : University of Westminster. Witte, Heidrun (1994). “Translation as a Means for Better Understanding Between Cultures”, in Cay Dollerup / Annette Lindgaard (eds.): Teaching Translation and Interpreting 2: Insights, aims and visions. Papers from the Second Language International Conference, Elsinore. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 69–73. Witte, Heidrun (1995). “Contrastive Culture Learning in Translator Training”, in Cay Dollerup / Vibeke Appel (eds.): Teaching Translation and Interpreting 3: New Horizons. Papers from the Third Language International Conference, Elsinore. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 73–79. Witte, Heidrun (2000). Die Kulturkompetenz des Translators. Begriffliche Grundlegung und Didaktisierung. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

Catherine Way (University of Granada)

Chapter 8: Intra-University Projects as a Solution to the Simulated/Authentic Dilemma

1.

Introduction

Despite the enormous pace of change surrounding universities today, relatively little has been done to transform the traditional pedagogical methods and classroom based structures used in many fields and faculties. Nevertheless, wide consensus has been reached in defining university education as “a holistic process of learning that places the student at the centre of the learning experience” or learning as “a comprehensive, holistic, transformative activity that integrates academic learning and student development, processes that have often been considered separate, and even independent of each other” (NASPA and ACPA 2004:1, 2). Lecturers are fully aware of the need to achieve learning outcomes and of the advantages of making the students’ experience at university a transformative process. This implies that besides academic learning, students should also experience personal development during their university education. Faced with this complex task, the economic crisis and financial constraints, introducing innovative practices is never an easy task when our goal is to achieve a transformative educational experience which will stimulate students’ reflective processes by requiring them to assimilate new information and apply what they have already learned in a different framework. Over the last twenty years, trainers have strived to achieve this and Caine and Caine (1994, 1997) introduced the interesting concept of brain-based learning, suggesting methodologies that create a basis for meaningful student learning: Their concepts have a neurobiological framework – the activation of neural processes that contribute to the deep transformation of cognition and patterning, or meaning making. For such transformative learning to occur, students must 1) enter a state of relaxed alertness, 2) participate in an orchestrated immersion in a complex experience that in some way illustrates phenomena that are connected to the subject and 3) engage in active processing or reflection on the experience. Traditional approaches to learning do not specifically address this integration of external information and internal reflection; new concepts of transformative learning attend closely to the receptivity of the

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student and the physical conditions in which the student learns. (NASPA and ACPA 2004:12).

Translation and Interpreting faculties have, I believe, been pioneers in introducing student centred learning, Competence Based Training (CBT) and assessment, and were therefore much better prepared for the changes brought about by the Bologna process. A sound body of research exists to demonstrate this preoccupation in Translation Studies (TS), where the AVANTI research group and the PACTE research group have been particularly active in researching not only the elements which constitute Translator Competence (TC), but also, more recently, how different subcompetences are acquired. Authors such as Kelly (2002, 2005, 2007), Göpferich (2009), Gregorio Cano (2014), Huertas Barros (2013), PACTE (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2008), Way (2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009) and Valderrey (2005) have added to the work of the original TC models (the latter two specifically in the field of legal translation). The TC models have also been used to research assessment, for example by Olivia Fox (2006), who has proposed a colour-coded marking system which highlights the competences that are lacking in the errors corrected in students’ work, and by Way (2008, 2009, forthcoming). As translator trainers, many of us have realized the need to use authentic translation projects during training to overcome the monotony of the simulation of authentic translation conditions (Nord 1991, Kiraly 2000) which have already been incorporated to varying degrees into many translation programmes. The inclusion of such practices, designed to simulate real life situations, with advice or practical sessions within their training in order to maximise their possibilities of success, have existed for many years now at our Faculty. During their undergraduate training, our students are constantly reminded of the importance of access to experts from other fields and of the need to prepare their consultations in such a way that they use their own time and that of their collaborator efficiently. Establishing rapport and giving a good, professional impression are vital if they wish to engage in a longstanding professional relationship. Experts from different fields have often visited our students in order to clarify their doubts or provide the information necessary for the successful completion of their translation briefs. Despite the generous participation of many colleagues from other professions in these activities, we are aware of the limitations of such exercises which include: – Imbalance in participants’ professional situation (expert-student) – Artificial client (translation lecturer) – Lack of motivation due to the artificiality of the situation

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We could, of course, accept real translation jobs for real clients within translation programmes. Whilst this may seem an ideal solution, it does raise some ethical questions about unfair competition by providing free or remunerated translation services that reduce an already crisis struck translation market. Work placements are another possibility. They are, however, difficult to find due to the enormous number of translation undergraduates and are not always carefully monitored. Whilst searching for solutions to these problems, we became aware of the students’ lack of confidence in their own position as (future) experts in legal translation. This lack of confidence is not exclusive to undergraduates, but widely felt by members of the profession, and more importantly, part of the image of the translator held by members of other professions, particularly in Spain, where Translation Studies is still a relatively new discipline. This situation, however, is not exclusive to Spain: “It is widely felt in many places that there is a lack of respect for translators.” (Schäffner 1998: 4), or as Hönig (1998: 22) put it: Power rests with those who produce “originals” – be they journalists, scientists or politicians. They have something, original or trivial, to say, and the fact that they have been asked to say or write something puts them in a position of power. They are the experts; translators, in their view, are not.

In an effort to find a solution to the limitations of simulating authentic translation projects and to the thorny issues of ethics and professional rejection of what is considered unfair competition by undergraduates working “for free”, we have successfully incorporated authentic intra-university translation projects into our programme. I will firstly describe one such authentic intra-university translation project undertaken as a pilot experience by drawing on clients from other departments who require, or would benefit from, translation services, but who are unable to finance them (for various reasons)1. Our “clients” are, then, mainly other undergraduates, although some postgraduate students may also participate, and therefore pose less of a “threat” to our undergraduates as experts in their fields. The first project took place when some of the more detailed Translator Competence (TC) models (PACTE 2000; Kelly 2002) were first emerging and little research existed on Competence Based Training (CBT). Secondly, we will describe a replication of the project which is planned for 2015–2016. Above all, by using the process that Caine and Caine (1994) call “immersion”, our intention with these projects is to thrust the students into a context in which 1 This project was reported on in detail in Way (2002, 2004) as was a similar intra-university project was conducted with the Science Faculty (C‚mara Aguilera 2003).

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they will be forced to draw upon all their competences simultaneously and systematically in a complex experience requiring a multiplicity of responses. Rather than compartmentalising their training into content knowledge of Terminology, IT, culture or Translation, all of their possible resources would be employed. The cooperation of staff members from other university departments and close monitoring of all phases of the process are vital to ensure the successful outcome of the projects.

2.

Translator Competence

In order to clarify objectives and design methodology to train our students by observing their difficulties (a situation which is constantly changing as their previous training and backgrounds vary), we use the TC model presented by Kelly (2002, 2005, 2007). Amongst the competences she describes2 the two which include the problems that we have observed and which resist traditional classroom practices, are psychophysiological competence and interpersonal competence. For this very reason we decided to take advantage of the University of Granada’s initiative to promote innovative teaching practices to embark upon a first, ambitious project which would combine the elements described above and allow us to observe the feasibility of such practices as part of our translator training programme. As stated above, we are interested primarily in improving our students’ ability to relate to their clients, text users, and experts from other fields by improving their questioning techniques, their ability to justify their translation decisions, and secondly, to improve their self-confidence as translation experts when interrelating with other professions (Hönig, 1998: 88).

3.

Designing an Intra-University Project: Translation and International Private Law

As a relatively new academic discipline, we do not always find ourselves on an equal footing with other older, more consolidated disciplines at universities. After negotiations with the Department of International Private Law of the Faculty of Law, we applied for permission to put into practice our pilot project integrating final year translation and law students in a realistic joint venture. The

2 Kelly (2002, 2005) describes Translation Competence, dividing it into the following subcompetences: Communicative and Textual; Cultural; Thematic; Professional Instrumental; Psychophysiological; Interpersonal and Strategic.

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law students were asked to resolve a case of International Private Law3, applying the knowledge acquired throughout their legal training, and the translation students to provide them with research materials, summaries and translations of material in languages other than Spanish. The application was accepted and the project was granted 6010 E to cover the costs of the materials necessary to put the project into practice4. In total 168 students participated, 62 final year law students, 16 Erasmus students studying at the Law Faculty and 90 final year translation students. The students were divided into 15 groups, one for each practical case to be resolved, with 4–5 law students, 1–2 Erasmus law students and 5–6 translation students in each group. During the first term of the academic year 2000–2001 the groups were organised and the practical cases selected5. The resolution of the practical case formed part of the law students’ final assessment and the texts translated into Spanish for the law students or the translation into their B language6 of the resolution of the case formed part of the translation students’ final assessment. This same structure will form the basis of the replication of the pilot project described below. The Department of International Private Law had outlined four major objectives for the project: – To improve their students’ specialized research techniques. – To clarify theoretical concepts of International Private Law through the practical cases. – To develop their students’ interpersonal competence (ability to work with experts from other fields). – To improve their students’ ability to summarise information. The final year law students had not studied Comparative Law, therefore, the possibility of learning about other legal systems, of learning to work closely with translators and producing a written resolution for their cases was a unique opportunity for them. The objectives the translation staff involved had established were: – To improve their students’ interpersonal competence. – To improve their students’ psychophysiological competence (by familiarizing 3 The practical cases covered areas such as Marriage; Divorce; Adoption; Succession and Contract Law. 4 This included reference materials, laptops, etc. 5 This required the coordination of the project by Sixto S‚nchez Lorenzo and directly by Ricardo Rueda Valdivia and Catherine Way, the coordination of the students in the Law Faculty by our colleagues Nuria Marchal Escalona, Carmen Ru†z Sutil, Fernando Esteban de la Rosa, and Mercedes Moya and in the Translation Faculty by Natividad Gallardo San Salvador, Marie Lucas, Silvia Parra, Marie Louise Nobs, Rafael Zambrana Khun and the collaboration of the research student Mar†a del Carmen Acuyo Verdejo. 6 The B languages (first foreign language) in this case were English, French and German.

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the students with a translator’s role in a real life situation and developing their self-confidence as experts in their own field). – To improve their thematic and instrumental competences (clarification of legal concepts and practising their research skills for a real translation brief). – To improve the image of translators amongst future members of the legal profession. Although, as we have already mentioned, these competences are addressed in the classroom, it is also true to say that in certain areas there are limitations which can rarely be resolved in the classroom situation. The translation students are accustomed to researching the fields and texts for their translation briefs, their main problems arise, however, when they need to access an expert in the field. Limitations of time, access, and often money severely hamper their efforts. The fact that they are students also hinders their progress, given the inequality in their professional situation when trying to access legal experts. One other factor, which we wanted to observe, was the introduction of new members into the already existing translation groups. Translation classes use groups of students for several reasons including the impossibility of working individually due to large class numbers or the need to introduce the students to collaborative teamwork7. These groups are formed voluntarily throughout their four-year training period. As a consequence, many of them have been together for some time and are not accustomed to working with anyone other than a peer and even less so someone who is from an entirely different discipline who may be unfamiliar with the work of professional translators specialised in their discipline.

3.1

Putting the Pilot Project into Practice

Having established the working groups and practical cases to be resolved during the first term, the groups were each allocated one week to work on their case in the Law Faculty assisted by at least one member of staff specialised in their particular case and the presence of a translation research student or lecturer to resolve any doubts in situ. This was complemented by group and individual tutorials with the Translation Faculty staff and further group meetings when necessary. Both individual and group tutorials concerning group work methodology and interpersonal skills were provided prior to the project and throughout its duration to resolve any of the multiple problems that arise when working in a group (Gibbs 1998). 7 See Way (2006, 2008).

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Following the week of intensive work in the Law Faculty the students were allowed a further two weeks to resolve the case and the translation students two more weeks for the translation of the resolution of the case. The project functioned satisfactorily, although not without hiccups, as the law students were not accustomed to working on practical cases in groups and the translation students were forced to adapt their modus operandi to clients who were not always sure of exactly what they required or were prone to ask for the translation of whole books, rather than select the information necessary for the resolution of their practical case, completely unaware of the amount of time such a task involves. The assessment of the law students’ resolutions was positive and as was the assessment of the translations provided by the translation students.

3.2

Pilot Project Evaluation and Results

In order to evaluate the project we designed two questionnaires8, one for the law students and another for the translation students. Using a Likert scale we assessed the degree of satisfaction with the project, whilst at the same time permitting additional comments to gauge any unexpected elements or omissions on our part. The questionnaires were distributed to the 78 law students and 90 translation students once they had all finalised their practical cases and presented their work for assessment. The questionnaires were completed anonymously, and were distributed in the month of June, which implied a lower rate of return than we would have liked. Nevertheless, the results that the questionnaires reflect are more than encouraging, motivating us to continue working in this vein. Of the questionnaires returned the subjects were mainly female and all in their early twenties, 100 % of the law students were studying for a Law degree exclusively, and of the translation students, although 95 % studied exclusively for a Translation degree, 5 % were also studying for a Law degree. Only 12.5 % of the law students had maintained professional contact with translators previously (between 3–10 times per year) and the remaining 87.5 % had never worked with a translator, whilst only 5 % of the translation students had maintained professional contact with members of the legal professions and 95 % had maintained no contact whatsoever. In general terms, 50 % of the law students considered their participation to have been very positive, whilst the remaining 50 % considered it to have been positive. Amongst the translation students, 10.5 % considered their participation to have had a very positive effect, 58 % a positive effect, and 31.5 % 8 Our thanks to Elisa Calvo Encinas for her help in designing the questionnaires.

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neither positive nor negative. When asked if the project had contributed to their training, 25 % of the law students found the project to have been very useful and 75 % useful. Amongst the translation students slightly lower figures reveal that 6 % found the project to have been very useful, 64 % useful, 15 % were indifferent and 15 % considered the Project to have been of little use in their training. Further discussion with the translation students revealed that they had found the project to be similar to the translation class simulations. In reply to questions about the improvement in the areas outlined in our objectives, 100 % of the law students considered that they had improved their specialised research skills and clarified theoretical legal concepts. The vast majority agreed that for the first time they had seen the practical use of the theoretical concepts they had studied. Interestingly, none of the law students considered that they had improved their interpersonal competence, due, perhaps, to the fact that this concept does not traditionally form a part of legal training at the Law Faculty. Improved report writing and summarising techniques were mentioned by 12.5 %. Another question confirmed this information where 37.5 % highlighted their improved report writing techniques, 75 % the importance of putting into practice their theoretical knowledge in a professional situation, 87.5 % their improved research skills and 25 % their improved ability to work with members of another profession, or their interpersonal competence. The translation students, whose training includes a greater amount of practical work and research techniques, provide different percentages. Only 31.5 % considered that they had improved their research techniques, whilst 63 % believed that they had improved their practical knowledge of Law, 26.5 % that they had learnt how to work in a professional situation, and 0 % that they had improved their report writing skills. Unlike the law students, and as they are actively aware of their interpersonal competence, 63 % believed that they had improved in this area and 31.5 % that they could better relate to members of other professions. The higher percentages in general amongst the law students may be due to the fact that the practical translation classes often simulate similar situations to that of the project, thereby lessening the project’s impact. These results confirm the fulfilment of our objectives concerning thematic, instrumental and interpersonal competence. The remaining objectives concerning the translation students’ psychophysiological competence and the opinion and image that the law students have of translators have produced quite impressive results. When asked for their opinion before the project about the image that the legal profession has of translators, 10 % considered that they had a positive image, 63 % that they had no definite image, and 21 % that they had a negative image and 6 % a very negative image. This is possibly due to the fact that the translation students are accustomed to the fact that they are considered

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as a “services” profession, secondary to other professions. After completing the project, 95 % believed that the image of the translation profession had improved, whilst 5 % believed that the project had not helped to improve the image of translators held by the legal profession. When asked to express their opinion concerning legal translators before starting the project, 75 % of the law students considered that the appropriate training would be a Law degree and knowledge of languages, the remaining 25 % preferred a graduate in Translation and Interpreting. Nevertheless, when asked what they would do if faced with a legal translation when practising as members of the legal profession after their experience in this project, 100 % stated that they would use the services of a legal translator, even if they spoke the language in question. Despite the apparent success of the project and the positive feedback from students and staff, it was obviously merely a first attempt at integrating such practices into our degree programmes. Fifteen years have now passed and CBT and research into how TC is acquired have progressed considerably. The experience gained in the pilot project and the fact that CBT has become more widespread in other faculties has prompted us to revisit our initial project and to undertake a more detailed study in the light of more recent developments. The question is whether the perception and self-image of translators has changed for the better. Rakefet (2011: 3) does not paint a pretty picture: Nevertheless, all the available evidence indicates that the professional status of translators and interpreters is, by and large, ambivalent and insecure. (…) This does not mean that they are actually submissive and lacking in occupational pride, or that they are at the bottom of the occupational prestige ladder. Nonetheless, their self-perception and dignity as an occupation are still vague and are constantly questioned, negotiated or fought for.

4.

The Translation and Comparative Law Project

We have recently applied for a new innovative teaching project with the International Private Law Department at our University. Our colleagues at the Law Faculty are very actively trying to transform the traditional teaching of Law to the Bologna Process by introducing CBT. This is not always an easy task as their methodologies are ingrained into the system and old habits die hard. Some progress has clearly been made as a result of our earlier project, as can be seen in the competences described by this Department in their programme which include the transversal competences of analysis, synthesis, research skills, organisational and collaborative skills. More interestingly, however, in the specific

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competences outlined in the programme9, beyond those directly concerned with knowledge of International Private Law, they have included the following attitudinal competences: – Recognition of diversity and multi-culturality – Understanding and respect for the culture and customs of other countries, within the limits of the principles of public order. – Recognition of the work of experts from other fields, such as translators. This seems to imply that our pilot project has had some effect on the perception of translators as we are referred to as “experts” by our colleagues in Law. This would have been unheard of fifteen years ago. Nevertheless, the negotiations for the project which is called “Implementing Comparative Law in the Classroom” have brought to the fore the subservient role of translators once more as initial discussions involved the translation students “helping” the law students to research Comparative Law and to solve cases. This seems to confirm Sela-Sheffy and Shlesinger’s affirmation (2008: 81): […] all evidence shows that translators are usually regarded as minor, auxiliary manpower in the industry of translated-text production and other interlingual communication practices […]

Fortunately, after further discussions, this discourse has been replaced by talk of students “collaborating” from their different fields of expertise. This new project will involve final year translation and law students once more with a similar structure to the pilot project described above with Arabic, English, French, German and Italian as the working languages and the corresponding legal systems using these languages. The experience of our pilot project, however, has taught us to outline the competences we hope to improve more clearly and to begin preparations already for the design of more detailed pre- and post project questionnaires for both groups of students. In this project our objective will be to create a truly transformative educational experience to stimulate students’ reflective processes by obligating them to assimilate new information and apply what they have already learned in their respective degree courses in an alien context and framework. The results, hopefully, will shed further light on our pilot project’s outcome and, perhaps, encourage further such projects to spread and become an integral part of intra-university training.

9 Availale at http://derechoweb.ugr.es/main/wp-content/uploads/DIPR-GRADO-DERECHO.pdf [accessed 30 April 2015].

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Conclusions

The questionnaires reflect a positive evaluation in general for the pilot project from the students, which, besides, was instrumental in achieving, to a great degree, the objectives that both the Law and Translation Faculty members had outlined. Our students were placed in a situation in which they had to draw on all their internal resources in a new framework, obliging them to reflect on how to use the training received in the Translation Faculty. This type of reflection leads to a more personal awareness of their knowledge and expertise, causing them to internalise it more deeply as they become truly aware of their capabilities in a real life situation. Perhaps more importantly, we allowed two groups of students, on the verge of becoming practising members of their respective professions, the opportunity to collaborate in a real life situation. Future members of a recognised, prestigious profession and future members of a profession which, despite its long history, has been a relatively recent newcomer to the formal academic world (particularly in Spain) have experienced the possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration, so necessary today. Besides providing a new experience for the students, the pilot project also created a more stable framework for the existing sporadic collaboration between the two disciplines. Other Departments, such as Procedural Law, expressed interest in repeating the experience, we have designed the new project in Translation and Comparative Law and, more recently, discussions have begun to establish a joint degree in Translation and Law. More importantly, it appears to have modified the perception of the translation profession held by some of the future members of the legal professions, thereby attempting to take a step towards educating our future clients as suggested some time ago by Hönig: […] scholarly investigations have so far had very little impact on the work of translators as it is practiced every day. Nor has it been able to change much in the way translations and translators’ work is being perceived and assessed by the public at large. Constructive translating will only be possible, however, if both sides are aware of the parts they have to play. Academic institutions training professional translators must not shrink from their responsibility to also educate users of translations – even if this does mean leaving the ivory tower (Hönig, 1998: 89)

Educating our prospective clients has always played an important part in our training and we believe that we have contributed in some small way to improving the situation described by Sela-Sheffy and Shlesinger (2008: 80): In spite of nascent attempts at institutional organization and academization of training in these domains, which point towards a move away from ad hoc practitioners, their recognition as full-fledged professionals has not yet been achieved.

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By, at least, transforming the perception of translators amongst our Law Faculty colleagues (as reflected above in their programme), we can hope that they will transmit this new perception to their many students and our future clients in the legal professions. We would like to think that we are not isolated in an ivory tower and that despite the fact that the limited size of our projects means that they are no more than a drop in the ocean, we plan to continue working in this direction to bring the theory behind our classes closer to the reality of professional practice, whilst furthering the recognition of our profession. Our projects hope to challenge Katan’s affirmation (2009: 149): For the moment, at least, it would appear that translators are anything but freed from the constraints of the conduit metaphor, are hardly empowered, and fail to see the relevance of translation theory. Professional translators, unlike Baker’s (2008: 22) Brave New World portrait, do not (yet) “belong to the same ‘world’ as their clients”.

The transformative process experienced in these projects by immersing the students in a complex experience, which forces them to draw on all the resources acquired during their training, will stimulate them to further reflect not only on Translation Studies theory and practice, but also on their status as translators in society.

Works Cited Baker, M. (2008). “Ethics of Renarration: Mona Baker is Interviewed by Andrew Chesterman”, Cultus 1, 10–33. Bush, P. (1998). “Even Horses Shall Have Their Day : A Response to Hans G. Hönig”, in C. Schäffner (ed.): Translation and Quality. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 64–69. Caine, G. / Caine, R. (1994). Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain. NY: Addison Wesley. Caine, R. / Caine, G. (1997). Education on the Edge of Possibility. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. C‚mara Aguilera, E. (2003). “Traducciûn especializada y direccionalidad: la traducciûn inversa (espaÇol-ingl¦s) como potencial mercado en los ‚mbitos de la ciencia y la tecnolog†a”, in D. Kelly et al. (eds.): La direccionalidad en traducciûn e interpretaciûn. Granada: Atrio, 207–223. Fox, O. (2006). “Criterion Referenced Assessment in a Process-oriented, Competencybased, Multilingual, Multicultural Translation Classroom”, in C. Way et al. (eds.): Enhancing the ERAMUS Experience: Papers on Student Mobility. Granada: Atrio, 211–221. Gibbs, G. (1998). Learning in Teams: A Student Guide. Oxford: Oxford Brookes University. Göpferich, S. (2009). “Towards a Model of Translation Competence and its Acquisition: The Longitudinal Study TransComp”, in S. Göpferich / A. L. Jakobsen / I. M. Mees (eds.): Behind the Mind: Methods, Models and Results in Translation Process Research. Copenhagen Studies in Language 37. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur, 12–37.

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Gregorio Cano, A. (2014). “Estudio emp†rico-descriptivo del desarrollo de la competencia estrat¦gica en la formaciûn de traductores.” Universidad de Granada, unpublished Ph.D. Hönig, H. G. (1998). “Complexity, Contrastive Linguistics and Translator Training: Comments on Responses”, in C. Schäffner (ed.): Translation and Quality. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 83–89. Huertas Barros, E. (2013). “La competencia interpersonal en la formaciûn de traductores en EspaÇa: un estudio emp†rico-descriptivo del trabajo colaborativo durante la primera etapa de formaciûn en traducciûn e interpretaciûn.” Universidad de Granada, unpublished Ph.D. Katan, D. (2009). “Translation Theory and Professional Practice: A Global Survey of the Great Divide”, Hermes – Journal of Language and Communication 42, 111–153. Keeling, Richard P. (ed.) (2004). Learning Reconsidered: A Campus-wide Focus on the Student Experience. Washington, D.C.: National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and the American College of Personnel Association. Kelly, D. (2002). “Un modelo de competencia traductora: bases para el diseÇo curricular”, Puentes 1, 9–20. Kelly, D. (2005). A Handbook for Translator Trainers. A Guide to Reflective Practice. Manchester : St Jerome. Kelly, D. (2007). “Translator Competence Contextualized. Translator Training in the Framework of Higher Education Reform: In Search of Alignment in Curricular Design”, in D. Kenny / K. Ryou (eds.): Across Boundaries: International Perspectives on Translation Studies. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 128–142. King, P. / Kitchener, K. (1994). Developing Reflective Judgment. San Francisco: JosseyBass. Kiraly, D. (2000). A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education. Empowerment from Theory to Practice. Manchester: St. Jerome. Nord, C. (1991). Text Analysis in Translation. Theory, Methodology, and Didactic Application of a Model for Translation-Oriented Text Analysis. Amsterdam: Rodopi. PACTE (2000). “Acquiring Translation Competence: Hypotheses and Methodological Problems of a Research Project”, in A. Beeby / D. Ensinger / M. Presas (eds.): Investigating Translation: Selected Papers from the Fourth International Congress on Translation, Barcelona, 1998. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 99–106. PACTE (2002). “Exploratory Tests in a Study of Translation Competence”, Conference Interpretation and Translation 4.2, 41–69. PACTE (2003). “Building a translation competence model”, in F. Alves (ed.): Triangulating Translation: Perspectives in Process Oriented Research. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 43–66. PACTE (2005). “Investigating Translation Competence: Conceptual and Methodological Issues”, Meta, 50.2, 609–618. PACTE (2008). “First Results of a Translation Competence Experiment: Knowledge of Translation and Efficacy of the Translation Process”, in J. Kearns (ed.): Translation and Interpreter Training: Issues, Methods, Debates. London/New York: Continuum, 104–26. Schäffner, C. (ed.) (1998). Translation and Quality. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Valderrey ReÇones, C. (2005). “¿Cûmo ser un traductor jur†dico competente? De la competencia tem‚tica”, in M. E. Garc†a Garc†a et al. (eds.): Actas IV jornadas inter-

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nacionales sobre la formaciûn y la profesiûn del traductor e int¦rprete: calidad y traducciûn. Perspectivas acad¦micas y profesionales. Madrid: Universidad Europea de Madrid Ediciones: CD. Sela-Sheffy, R. / Shlesinger, M. (2008). “Strategies of Image-Making and Status Advancement of Translators and Interpreters as a Marginal Occupational Group”, in A. Pym / M. Shlesinger / D. Simeoni (eds.): Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in homage to Gideon Toury. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 79–90. Sela-Sheffy, R. (2011). “Introduction: Identity and Status in the Translational Professions”, in R. Sela-Sheffy / M. Shlesinger (eds.): Identity and Status in the Translational Professions. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: JohnBenjamins, 1–10. Way, C. (2002). “Traducciûn y derecho: iniciativas para desarrollar la colaboraciûn interdisciplinar”, Puentes 2, 15–26. Way, C. (2004). “Making Theory Reality : An Example of Interdisciplinary Cooperation”, in G. Androulakis (ed.): Proceedings of “Translating in the 21st Century : Trends and Prospects”. Aristotle University of Thessalonica, Greece, 27–30 September 2002, Faculty of Arts AUTH, Thessalonica, 584–592. Way, C. (2006). “Evaluaciûn efectiva: el talûn de Aquiles”, in S. Bravo Utrera / R. Garc†a Lûpez (eds.): Estudios de traducciûn: problemas y perspectivas. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: ULPGC, 755–762. Way, C. (2008). “Systematic Assessment of Translator Competence: In Search of Achilles’ Heel”, in J. Kearns (ed.): Translator and Interpreter Training. Issues, Methods and Debates. London: Continuum International, 88–103. Way, C. (2009). “Bringing Professional Practices into Translation Classrooms”, in I. Kemble (ed.): The Changing Face of Translation: Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Portsmouth Translation Conference. Portsmouth: University of Portsmouth, 131–142. Way, C. (2012). “Establishing a Framework for Decision Making in Legal Translator Training”, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Law, Translation and Culture. China/EEUU: American Scholars Press, 84–92. Way, C. (forthcoming). “Assessing Competence-Based Training though Project Management.”

Carmen Canfora (University of Mainz/Germersheim)

Chapter 9: Assessing Learning in Heterogeneous Learning Groups in Translator Training – A Role for Portfolios

1.

Introduction

This paper discusses a classroom project that was designed to investigate whether and if so how a highly heterogeneous learning group in a specialised technical translation course could be successfully run using a personalised, selfdirected learning method based on the concept of the learning portfolio. The project was carried out with students translating from Spanish into German at the School of Translation, Linguistics and Cultural Studies of the University of Mainz during a longitudinal study that was run for two and a half years beginning in the winter semester of 2011. Due to globalisation and changes within society, the increasing heterogeneity of learning groups poses a significant dilemma in European institutions of higher education in general and in translator training at European universities in particular (see Kelly 2005; Reich 2006). Heterogeneity is manifested in many different ways, including, for example, students’ age distribution, previous knowledge, prior experience, cultural background as well as personality types, for example in regard to a “certainty orientation” vs. an “uncertainty orientation” (see Sorrentino/Short 1986).1 The result is that learners develop different needs with regard to course contents, the pace of learning, and the relationship between instruction and knowledge construction. At the heart of the didactic deliberations on the increasing heterogeneity of learning groups is the 1 Sorrentino/Short note that it is likely that many people are of the “certainty-oriented type”. They explain that: “In terms of the first implication, we wish to draw the attention of many cognitive theorists (…) to the fact that there are many people who simply are not interested in finding out information about themselves and the world, who do not conduct causal searches, who could not care less about socially comparing themselves with others, and who ‘do not give a hoot’ for resolving discrepancies or inconsistencies about the self.” (Sorrentino/Short 1986: 379). It is fair to assume that a heterogeneous learning group will always include a certain proportion of certainty-oriented people who require a higher degree of instruction than uncertainty-oriented people (see Kempas 1994).

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question of how to integrate the learners’ diverse needs so that the greatest number of learners can increase their knowledge to the greatest possible extent (see Reich 2006:194). The didactic methods used must promote the compatibility of course contents with prior knowledge constructions. Various didactic methods compatible with constructivist learning theories can be used to solve these problems, in particular methods grounded in self-directed learning, which allow for considerable flexibility within courses and enable teachers to take into account the learners’ various interests and learning styles, and also make it possible to draw on the students’ varying amounts of prior knowledge (see Zhong 2008). Collaborative methods are especially suited to groups at either end of the scale (very small or very large) that exhibit medium heterogeneity as there is evidence suggesting that this constellation has no negative effect on the effectiveness of collaborative methods (see Czinki 2011): There is always a danger with extremely heterogeneous groups that too much time and energy will need to be expended on developing productive group dynamics, and that finding common ground will be too difficult (see Czinki 2011:16). Hence, when groups are extremely heterogeneous, it may well be advisable to opt for learning methods that focus on individual and self-directed learning instead. For this research project, a portfolio-based approach2 using samples of students’ work generated during semi-authentic translation projects was chosen in order to meet the requirements associated with individualised and self-directed learning. Semi-authentic projects in which authentic texts3 are translated in a simulated situation (i. e. the teacher functions as the simulated customer, and working conditions are organised so as to be as authentic as possible) can be extremely valuable for students, as they provide them with the opportunity to practise the standard procedures associated with specialised translation in a supervised setting (see Nord 2005:8218). The portfolio technique is not new to translation didactics as it allows for reflective learning and formative assessment (see Kiraly 2000 and Johnson 2003), as well as the development of autonomy, critical reflection and improved self-evaluation (see Rico 2010). Formative assessment is mentioned as a critical factor in the translation didactics literature due to the fact that it can be used to improve self-evaluation, increase the learners’ intrinsic motivation and promote self-regulation as well as a focus on the learner (see Hinton/Fischer 2010; Niguidula/Ring/Davies 2005). Con2 Kelly explains the compiling of portfolios as follows: “A portfolio is a collection of items which demonstrate, in the individual student’s view, the learning which has actually taken place. The items must, then, be related to the intended outcomes of the module or programme.” (Kelly 2005: 138) 3 In this chapter, ‘authentic texts’ are understood to be texts that were once translated within the context of actual translation commissions, or ones that could very plausibly be the textual material basis for real translation projects.

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structive feedback (provided by other learners or the teacher) also plays an important role in formative assessment (see ibid.). Portfolios may be well suited to use in translation didactics for two main reasons: they make it possible for learners to rather easily prepare a selection of suitable work samples in translation classes (see Kelly 2005; Schäffner 2004), and they give students a glimpse of the spectrum of possible text types that specialised translators are likely to be faced with (see Colina 2003). Moreover, the portfolio design can be process-oriented if the students are given the opportunity to improve their work samples with the help of corrections and comments made by other learners (see Johnson 2003:8104). Therefore, portfolios constitute a potentially valuable opportunity to increase autonomy and critical self-examination due to their flexibility and the wide range of possible work samples. The value of portfolios was assessed in the empirical study discussed here and during which the subjects’ learning was tracked over a period of six semesters. The focus of this chapter is on the following questions: – To what extent can portfolios help to integrate the various needs of learners within an extremely heterogeneous learning group with regard to the compatibility of previous knowledge, different paces of learning, and striking a balance between instruction and construction? – How will student’s translator competence develop within the extremely heterogeneous learning group employing the portfolio concept? – How would the portfolio concept work in a specialised Spanish-German technical translation class with a highly heterogeneous learning group?

2.

Implementation of the portfolio concept in translation didactics

The portfolio approach presented here was developed for the specialised Spanish-German technical translation class in the MA degree programme ‘Translation, Linguistics and Cultural Studies’ for students with Spanish as their first language (L1) and German as their second language (L2) at the FTSK (Faculty of Translation Studies, Linguistics and Cultural Studies) in Germersheim. The study was conducted during the period extending from the winter semester 2011/12 through the summer semester of 2014. As there was at that time no other specialised translation class for the language combination SpanishGerman at the FTSK, students from all complementary subjects (that is, areas of non-linguistic specialisation) took part in the translation class. The class was open to students in both the BA and MA degree programmes. In addition, thanks to the cooperation between the various departments, it was also possible to allow

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two MA students with L1 German and L2 or L3 Spanish to participate in the class. The result was that the learning group consisted of complete beginners from the BA programme as well as highly advanced MA students, with combinations of different complementary subjects and mother tongues. The learning group’s heterogeneity in terms of previous knowledge and prior experience was therefore extremely pronounced. The participants hailed from different Spanishspeaking countries, as well as from Germany, which resulted in their exhibiting a variety of cultural backgrounds. As was expected, both certainty-oriented as well as uncertainty-oriented individuals took part in the course. The size of the group varied from semester to semester but ranged from 5 to 15 participants. The portfolio concept was based on the translation competence model proposed by Kelly (2005).4 This is an application-oriented competence model that I believe corresponds to a high degree with the demands of professional practice (see the professional competencies listed in the DIN EN 15038 standard, Section 3.2.2) and is therefore suitable for use in a course on specialised translation. This competence model is practice-oriented and consistent with professional practice (see also the required professional skills in DIN EN 15038 section 3.2.2), making it perfectly suited for use in a specialised translation class. In order to make the individual sub-competences more intelligible for the students, they were renamed or modified as follows for this portfolio approach:5 A.) Language competence B.) Transfer competence C.) Technical, research and terminology competence D.) IT competence E.) Socio-professional competence F.) Cultural competence I agree with Kiraly (2013 and in this volume) that learning is not static, but a dynamic and highly complex process that focuses primarily on increasing links between the various competences. In order to do justice to this dynamic and complex process, the didactic approach used is dependent not only on a suitable model of translator competence but also on a model of translator competence acquisition. Based on complexity theory, Kiraly (2013; see also Kiraly in this volume) introduced a holistic translation competence acquisition model em4 This paper considers competence to be the „ability to apply integrated knowledge, skills and attitudes in such a way that the person acts responsible and adequately in a certain context“ (van der Blij 2002: 2). 5 In Kellys competence model, the sub-compences are: 1.) Language competence; 2.) Cultural and intercultural competence; 3.) Subject area competence; 4.) Professional and instrumental competence; 5. Attitudinal or psycho-physiological competence; 6.) Strategic competence (Kelly 2005: 32f.).

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phasising emergence as well as autopoiesis, non-linearity, and the irreversibility and unpredictability of the learning process. The goal of the portfolio approach presented here is to design a framework for these aspects in a personalised and self-directed learning environment so that, in principal, the learning paths and objectives can be developed individually for each learner. At the beginning of the semester, the students gauged their existing competence with the help of a questionnaire and then defined their learning objectives. Over the course of the semester, the students were able to choose freely three to five texts from a collection of 50 authentic technical texts with varying degrees of difficulty. The texts were selected because they were especially well suited to developing certain competencies and to achieving individual learning objectives. The work samples, which had to be submitted on three predetermined dates throughout the semester, were between approximately 400 and 600 words in length and were translated by the students with the help of authentic research tools. The work samples were done both during the weekly class sessions and at home. During the class sessions, the students could translate their texts autonomously, but the teacher was always available to provide immediate feedback on proposed translation solutions and advice concerning translation problems, allowing the learners to work at their own pace and to develop their skills according to their own desiderata. Prior to submitting their work, course participants were given the opportunity to have their work samples proof-read according to the ‘four eyes’ principle6 in order to provide them with an insight into the real working conditions of a specialised translator, and to ensure that the portfolio was process-oriented. The students checked the procedure’s efficacy with the help of a checklist and evaluated it by means of a written self-examination. After submission, all of the work samples, which also included a text analysis and a related glossary, were read, assessed and commented on by the teacher. The evaluation and comments were discussed with the students in the following sessions, and individual measures to improve various competencies were developed. Aside from portfolios, competency grids constitute another possible component of formative assessment (see Hinton/Fischer 2010) that have been successfully applied in translation didactics (see Angelelli 2009; Presas 2012). A competency grid for the assessment of the work samples was developed on the basis of the aforementioned translational sub-competences. Each translational sub-competence selected for evaluation (students themselves decided which sub-competence they would like to have assessed) was allocated points ranging 6 The four-eye principle refers to the revision of the completed translation by a second individual (see DIN EN 15038:2006 Section 5.4.3 Revision).

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from 0 (very poor) to 11 (very good). Ten or eleven points in a sub-competence meant that the student exhibited the skills, knowledge and attitudes expected of professional translators (see DIN EN 15038:2006; EMT Expert group 2009). The points earned in the sub-competences were tallied and then divided by the number of sub-competences, resulting in an average value for all of the evaluated sub-competences. The average value was also the student’s overall grade for the work sample. At the end of the semester, all work sample grades were added up and divided by the number of submitted work samples. The final result was the grade the student was given for the entire semester. The competency grid was competence-oriented rather than deficit-oriented (except for extremely low grades) and thus provided the students with a reference point on what they had achieved or what they should have achieved, if they wanted to fulfil the requirements placed on a professional translator (between ten and eleven points). Figure 1 depicts the competency grid for language competence.7 The competency grid can be used not only by teachers to asses students’ work samples but also by the learners to determine their current proficiency level. As the students were free to choose their own texts, beginners were able, for example, to work initially on ‘simple’ texts until they had achieved a satisfactory level in the selected sub-competence. Students were naturally at liberty to choose a text with a higher degree of difficulty. The personal feedback meeting after the work sample had been assessed was used to devise common strategies for the development of certain knowledge and skills. Knowledge balancing within the extremely heterogeneous learning group took place in the theoretical and practical translation mini workshops. The various elements of the portfolio concept made it possible for students to attend a personalised course with individual feedback, formative assessment and a high degree of autonomy while preparing the portfolio. They would also have a predefined frame of reference in the form of the clear assessment criteria in the competency grid. In addition, the constant guidance ensured that both certainty-oriented and uncertainty-oriented people, as well as beginners and advanced learners could benefit from this concept.

7 The competency grid for the remaining sub-competences used in this model can be consulted in Canfora (forthcoming).

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A.) Language competence Evaluation criteria

Very little comprehension of source text. There are considerable gaps in the grammar. A great number of spelling mistakes are made, some of which hinder comprehension. Punctuation rules are not adhered to. There are serious problems in the wording, such that the sense of the text is often miscommunicated. The syntax is false, even in simple sentence constructions. The translated text is mostly very difficult to read. Some comprehension of the source text, but many comprehension difficulties are apparent. Grammar is partly used properly, but many larger gaps are still obvious. Accuracy in spelling is basic, though there are still many spelling errors, some of which can hinder comprehension. Some basic punctuation rules are followed. A small active vocabulary is apparent, which leads to many difficulties in the wording (meaning, style). The syntax in simple sentence constructions is correct. Some passages in the translated text read smoothly. General comprehension of the source text. Grammar is generally used properly. Spelling is correct on the whole, but a few errors still occur, some of which could hinder comprehension. Punctuation rules are adhered to in principle. A fairly comprehensive active vocabulary is apparent, though some gaps still exist, which cause some difficulties in wording (meaning, style). The syntax is often correct, sometimes even in complicated sentence constructions. The translated text reads smoothly in many parts, several passages are however still clumsily formulated. Good comprehension of the source text. Good grammar skills, with only minor gaps. Isolated spelling errors which do not hinder comprehension. Punctuation rules are largely used properly. Wording is mostly appropriate, meaning and style are mostly communicated correctly. The syntax is correct in most cases, even in complicated sentence constructions. The translated text reads smoothly over long passages. Very good comprehension of the source text. Excellent grammar skills. Few or no spelling errors. Full mastery of punctuation rules. Appropriate wording consistent with original meaning. The syntax is correct, even in complicated sentence constructions. The translated text as a whole reads smoothly.

Points

0-1 point

2-3 points

4-6 points

7-9 points

10-11 points

Figure 1: Competency grid for language competence

3.

Assessment of the portfolio concept

Questionnaires and learning curves were used to evaluate the approach in regard to its suitability for extremely heterogeneous learning groups; they will be discussed in more detail in the following sections.

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Analysis of learning curves

In order to track the learning progress of the 23 participants (18 BA students and 5 MA students), a learning curve was created for each learner. The curves depict the results of an analysis of the chosen texts, their level of difficulty and the grades the students received on each text. As the grades alone do not provide sufficient information on the competence progress achieved, the factor associated with the respective level of text difficulty was multiplied by the grade awarded for the text. The results appear in the students’ personal learning curve diagrams in which the x-coordinate represents the work samples’ serial numbers and the y-coordinate represents the weighted mark. The learning curve diagram also depicts a linear trend line that represents the general tendency of learning progression (linear regression). The learning curves for all 18 BA students include their progress over a period of two to four semesters (depending on how long they participated in the course). All in all, the BA students made good, and in some cases great progress throughout the duration of the portfolio course. With the exception of two students, there was a markedly upward trend for the BA students. On the basis of this analysis of the data for this admittedly small group, I believe it is fair to assume that BA students can make good progress in a portfolio translation courses, especially if the participants exhibit large gaps in their previous knowledge. Test person 16 is an excellent example of this positive development among BA students. She initially had great difficulty working on even the simplest texts, especially in regard to transfer competence, but continuously improved and was finally able to achieve a very good result on a text classified as ‘somewhat challenging’. Furthermore, her text analysis revealed that she had also improved her transfer competence considerably (see Figure 2). Without exception, all of the BA students were able to produce good or very good work in the category of ‘somewhat challenging’ texts during the period in which they took part in the course. If we assume that the authentic texts in the collection classified as ‘somewhat challenging’ could be found in real-life translation jobs, then the portfolio concept can be used to prepare BA students for their professional careers, if they are given sufficient time and an appropriate setting. The BA students learning progress demonstrates that beginners can easily be integrated into this portfolio concept, which is in itself an indication of how appropriate this method is for heterogeneous learning groups. Figure 3 illustrates the high level of translational competence achieved by a BA student at the end of the course. The five MA students can be divided into two groups. Two of the students had previously completed licenciatura (essentially equivalent to a BA degree) in

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Weighted grade development of all porSolio parRcipants TP16 0 0,2 0,4 0,6

TP16 Linear (TP16)

0,8 1 1,2 1,4

Figure 2: Learning curve test person 16

Weighted grade development of all porSolio parRcipants TP17 0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1 1,2 1,4

Figure 3: Learning curve test person 17

TP17 Linear (TP17)

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Translation Studies in Spain and therefore already had extensive technical knowledge as well as experience of translation in general. These two students’ learning curves show that they immediately achieved very good results while translating ‘somewhat challenging’ texts. Consequently however, having started at a relatively high level, they logically made the least overall learning progress in the portfolio course. For example, Figure 4 illustrates the learning curve of test person 4.

Weighted grade development of all porSolio parRcipants TP4 0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8

TP4 Linear (TP4)

1 1,2 1,4

Figure 4: Learning curve test person 4

The other three MA students had previously earned a BA degree in Translation Studies. Moreover, two of them spoke German as their mother tongue and were studying Spanish as their L2 or L3 respectively. Both participants only attended the course for one semester and were initially very cautious in their choice of texts due to their very limited experience in specialised SpanishGerman translation. However, they were able to increase the level of textual difficulty to ‘somewhat challenging’ by the end of the semester, which indicates that they made good progress after all. For example, Figure 5 illustrates the learning curve of test person 23. The MA students’ learning curves illustrate that they also benefited from the portfolio concept, albeit not to the same extent as the BA students. A category with very challenging texts would need to be created for highly advanced participants in order to provide them with the opportunity to increase their knowledge as much as possible.

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Weighted grade development of all porSolio parRcipants TP23 0 0,2 0,4 0,6

TP23 Linear (TP23)

0,8 1 1,2 1,4

Figure 5: Learning curve test person 23

3.2

Questionnaire analysis

A questionnaire on the commensurability of the portfolio method was distributed to course participants during the respective final sessions in the summer semester 2012, winter semester 2012/13 and summer semester 2013. In total, 23 participants completed and returned the questionnaires. Of the participants, 92 % were “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with the portfolio concept. The entire group, that is 100 % of participants, were very satisfied with the information material and support provided by the teacher. In total, 84 % of participants considered the competence-oriented assessment beneficial and 92 % stated that the guidance they received when creating the portfolio was helpful. The generally positive assessment of the portfolio concept indicates that both beginners and advanced learners or certainty-oriented and uncertaintyoriented participants can be successfully integrated into the course. Apparently, the structuring and supporting elements for integration of certainty- and uncertainty-oriented participants were successful. These results are supported by the responses in the qualitative section. Many comments focused on the diverse elements that enabled students to work independently. These included: free choice of texts for translation, the selection of texts itself, deciding which competences were to be assessed, the option to use

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tools and the opportunity to determine a personal focus. The positive feedback on competence-oriented formative assessments, and on feedback and guidance in general, shows that personal support and encouragement were highly appreciated by the students and helped them improve their translational competence. When asked what they least enjoyed about the portfolio concept, the students stated that the workload was very high, both for the entire project as well as for individual components, such as creating the glossary. However, not one student criticised the high degree of individualised and self-directed learning, nor were additional structuring or supporting elements requested. These results point to good integration of the heterogeneous learning group. In the evaluation of the portfolio concept, 92 % of participants said that they had found the translation course with a portfolio “extremely” or “very” beneficial while only 7.1 % of the control group (n=14) responded that the translation course was merely beneficial. This difference could also be established as statistically significant in regard to both mean averages in the control group.8 The participants in the control group therefore considered the translation course significantly less beneficial than the portfolio translation course. We need to keep in mind, however, that we are dealing with a very small sample and that the statement should not and cannot be generalised. It is within the realm of possibility that other aspects, such as, for example, the choice of text topics or an aversion to the teacher, played a role in the control group’s poorer assessment. Nonetheless, the portfolio group’s positive assessment indicates that certaintyoriented and uncertainty-oriented people and/or beginners and advanced students benefited from the portfolio translation course. Aside from the opportunity to autonomously construct a personalised learning path, the practice-orientation in the translation class may also have played a role in the additional benefit experienced by the portfolio group. Numerous comments in the qualitative section praised the practical orientation of the class as well as the fact that realistic procedures were rehearsed. Participant satisfaction with a didactic method can also be deduced from a desire to take the class again, which all participants unanimously stated in the questionnaire. Not a single participant rejected the idea of taking a portfolio class again so that the replies to this question correspond to the general level of satisfaction with the concept.

8 This was based on a t-test with two independent samples at assumed similarities in variation, significance level a = 0.05. The portfolio group’s mean was 1.44 and the control group’s mean is 4.29. The p-value is .000.

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Discussion of findings

The goal of developing a didactic method for learning groups with an extremely high degree of heterogeneity was achieved with the portfolio concept. Using Kelly’s competence-oriented model (2005) to assess the translations was a success, as all the competences found in her model were able to be integrated into the portfolio competency grid. With only a few exceptions, all participants benefited from the personalised approach. The learning progress that was exhibited, above all, by the very inexperienced BA students and that was documented in the learning curves shows clearly that even beginners were able to achieve high standards of performance during the course of the semester, and develop an improved awareness for professionalism. The embedding of the approach in semi-authentic projects, as well as providing a collection of authentic texts, was well received by the students and made the course even more practice-oriented. The generally high level of satisfaction with the method as well as the structuring and supporting elements, as well as the desire to take the class again indicate that both certainty- and uncertainty-oriented participants benefited from the portfolio concept. The certainty-oriented participants’ need for instruction was obviously met sufficiently as no student expressed a desire for more structure or stricter guidelines. As the study results have shown, the free choice of texts from a larger selection, an aspect that was highlighted by many participants in the comments section, was an important factor for the successful integration of the portfolio approach in this heterogeneous learning group. The free choice of texts allowed the learners to progress at their own speed and to be responsible for their own thematic focus. This benefited the BA students in particular as they were able to achieve good results while translating challenging texts and increase their knowledge significantly. The overall positive trends in the learning curves are an indication of the fact that the relatively high degree of autonomy that the students enjoy when choosing their sub-competences for assessment led to significant learning progress by the end of the study. In agreement with Kiraly (2000, 2013), we can sum up by saying it is oftentimes more expedient to concede students greater liberties than to force them into strict constraints or to try to constantly control them. In the same vein, the more responsibility students have in creating their own learning, the more they seem to improve their competences. As this concept demonstrates, portfolios provide numerous possibilities with which to lead students towards independent action, and to appropriately combine instruction and construction according to the composition of the learning group. I would like to suggest that portfolios are likely to work just as well in authentic projects as in the semi-authentic ones used in this project. Furthermore, it is also conceivable to create work samples from collaborative

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translation projects so that the area of application is not just limited to learning groups that focus on personalised learning. From my experience, whether a heterogeneous learning group can be successfully instructed depends on the number of participants, as the higher the number the less individual guidance the teacher can provide. For this reason, I believe that the portfolio concept is not suited to larger learning groups (in excess of 15 learners) with a high degree of heterogeneity. It would, however, be interesting to examine whether the portfolio concept can be applied to larger learning groups with low or medium degrees of heterogeneity. However, it is important to keep in mind that the teacher’s workload should not be rampantly excessive no matter how homogenous or heterogeneous the learning group. In accordance with the advantage highlighted in translation studies literature, namely the large selection of possible work samples (see Kelly 2005, Schäffner 2004), the portfolio students were able to translate a plethora of different text types relevant to the domain of professional technical translation. A similar portfolio concept could also be developed for other complementary subjects so that the portfolio concept could be of interest to other practice-oriented translation courses. At the same time, formative elements, which, according to the some authors, can be an advantage of the portfolio concept (see Niguidula/Ring/Davies 2005), could be introduced to the translation classroom. In particular, the continuous personal guidance provided by the teacher during class hours as well as the opportunity to receive constructive feedback from other learners prior to submission of the work samples obviously improved the learners’ satisfaction with the approach and led to the positive development of the various competences. The increased introduction of formative elements in translation courses is desirable in this context. The portfolio concept presented in this contribution demonstrates that competence as well as the integration of the various participants’ needs within an extremely heterogeneous learning group is possible if the learning group is not too large and if an even balance between self-directed, supporting and guiding elements can be established.

Works Cited Angelelli, Claudia V. (2009). “Using a Rubric to Assess Translation Ability”, in Claudia V. Angelelli / Holly E. Jacobson (eds.): Testing and Assessment in Translation and Interpretation Studies. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: Benjamins, 13–47.

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Canfora, Carmen (in press). Aktivierende Lehrmethoden in der Übersetzerausbildung – Erfahrungen mit ausgewählten Methoden in heterogenen Lerngruppen. Dissertation, University of Mainz. Colina, Sonia (2003). Translation Teaching. From Research to the Classroom. A Handbook for Teachers. New York/San Francisco: McGraw-Hill. Czinki, Alexander (2011). “Einsatz von Kreativitätstechniken in der Lehre”, DiNa Didaktiknachrichten DiZ 1, 4–28. https://www.diz-bayern.de/images/documents/84/ DiNa%2001-2011.pdf [25.05. 2015]. DIN EN 15038:2006. Übersetzungs-Dienstleistungen – Dienstleistungsanforderungen. Berlin: Beuth. EMT expert group (2009). Competences for Professional Translators, Experts in Multilingual and Multimedia Communication. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/pro grammes/emt/key_documents/emt_competences_translators_en.pdf [16. 02. 2015]. Hinton, Christina / Fischer, Kurt W. (2010). “Learning from the Developmental and Biological Perspective”, in Hanna Dumont / David Istance / Francisco Benavides (eds.): The Nature of Learning. Using Research to Inspire Practice. Paris: OECD (Educational Research and Innovation), 113–134. Johnson, Julie E. (2003). “Learning through Portfolios in the Translation Classroom”, in Brian J. Baer J. / Geoffrey S. Koby (eds.): Beyond the Ivory Tower: Rethinking Translation Pedagogy. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 97–116. Kelly, Dorothy (2005). A Handbook for Translator Trainers. Manchester : St. Jerome. Kempas, Gabriele (1994). “Lehren lernen. Auswirkungen interpersoneller Differenzen auf die Lernprozesse Lehrender.” Dissertation. Universität Tübingen. Kiraly, Don (2000). A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education. Empowerment from Theory to Practice. Manchester : St. Jerome. Kiraly, Don (2013). “Towards A View of Translator Competence as an Emergent Phenomenon: Thinking Outside the Box(es) in Translator Education”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Translationswissenschaft 10. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 197–224. Niguidula, David / Ring, Gail / Davies, Hilarie (2005). Digital Portfolios: A Dozen Lessons in a Dozen Years. Philadelphia: NECC. http://www.techforlearning.org/dozenyears.html. [16. 02. 2015]. Nord, Christiane (2005). “Training Functional Translators”, in Martha Tennent (ed.): Training for the New Millennium. Pedagogies for Translation and Interpreting. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 209–223. Presas, Marisa (2012). “Training Translators in the European Higher Education Area. A Model for Evaluating Learning Outcomes”, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 6.2, 138–169. Reich, Kersten (2006). Konstruktivistische Didaktik. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz. Rico, Celia (2010). “Translator Training in the European Higher Education Area: Curriculum Design for the Bologna Process. A Case Study”, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 4.1, 89–114. Schäffner, Christina (2004). “Developing Competence in LSP-Translation”, in Eberhard Fleischmann / Peter A. Schmitt / Gerd Wotjak (eds.): Translationskompetenz. Ta-

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gungsberichte der LICTRA (Leipzig International Conference on Translation Studies), 4.-6. 10. 2001. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 679–689. Sorrentino, Richard M. / Short, Judith-Ann C. (1986). “Uncertainty Orientation, Motivation, and Cognition”, in Richard M. Sorrentino / E. Tory Higgins (eds.): Handbook of Motivation and Cognition: Foundations of Social Behavior 1, 379–403. van der Blij, Maria (2002). Van Competenties naar Proeven van Bekwaamheid, een OriÚntatie. University of Twente, Enschede. Zhong, Yong (2008). “Teaching Translation through Self-Directed Learning: Documenting the Implementation of and Perceptions about Self-directed Learning in a Translation Course”, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 2.2, 203–220.

Gary Massey and Barbara Brändli (Zurich University of Applied Sciences/Winterthur)

Chapter 10: Collaborative feedback flows and how we can learn from them: investigating a synergetic learning experience in translator education

1.

Introduction

For some years, our institute has been actively promoting small-scale action research projects to investigate various pedagogical aspects of translation courses taught on its programmes, in line with Kiraly’s (2013: 222) conviction that qualitative case studies are a viable tool to help us understand better how translator competence grows. The principal aim of these projects is to determine the strengths and weaknesses of our approaches and to improve the structure and content of offerings at different levels of implementation, from overall course design to face-to-face tasking, independent study and online delivery. With its ability to combine action and reflection, action research has long enjoyed widespread advocacy in translation studies and pedagogy (e. g. Kiraly 2000; Cravo and Neves 2007; Hubscher-Davison 2008) as a way of bridging the divide between theory and practice and of producing relevant and practicable hands-on results. Its main advantage lies in its practical and participative nature, involving researchers directly with the beneficiaries of their research (Reason and Bradbury 2006: 1; Cravo and Neves 2007: 97). In the context of translator education, this means not only students and teachers but also any other players involved in what Chesterman (2013: 155–157) has referred to as the “event” of translation encompassing the translational “act”: clients, source-text writers, revisers, terminologists, technologists and so on – depending on the focus of the study and the type of course, unit or assignment in question. This chapter reports on one such action research study recently undertaken at our institute, centred on learning effects and feedback flows during a collaborative translation assignment completed by students in their second semester of our MA Specialisation in Professional Translation. The use of experiential collaborative projects in translator education is designed to expose students to the practices, actors and factors of the situated translation event, fostering learner autonomy and empowerment (cf. Kiraly 2000, 2005, 2012). As Kiraly (2012: 83) observes, projects of this sort have now become part of the Zeitgeist in translator

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education. Yet despite this fact, there have been few empirical studies in translation pedagogy to date addressing how the learning takes place, and precisely who learns what from whom; and even less attention has been devoted to the nature and effects of the feedback1 offered and received in the course of collaborative translation projects. This is rather surprising, given the acknowledged importance of feedback in the development of translation competence and expertise (e. g. Bergen 2009; Göpferich 2013: 72; Risku 2009: 77, 79; Shreve 2006: 29). While in no way suggesting that the study’s results can immediately be generalised, this chapter sets out to show how action research can be effectively deployed both as an investigative approach to gain insights into specific aspects of pedagogical practice within a particular institutional setting and as a means of promoting reflective practice amongst those partaking in the co-emergent learning event of collaborative translation. Before proceeding, we should pause for a moment to clarify some of the terminological and conceptual issues surrounding the development, or emergence, of professional competence. Central to this is what a number of publications on translation didactics over the past fifteen years have variously referred to as authentic and/or collaborative and/or situated (classroom) projects and/or project-based learning and/or project work (e. g. Gonz‚lez-Davies 2004; Kelly 2005; Kiraly 2000, 2005, 2012, 2013; Massey 2005; Varney 2009). Hagemann (in this volume) provides a thought-provoking critique of the terminology and definitions associated with these issues, to which the reader is referred for an in-depth treatment of the subject. Notwithstanding the acuity of Hagemann’s discerning analysis, the project-related terms used in this chapter are based on three rather straightforward premises. First, translation projects undertaken by students within the context of their education cannot be “classroom” projects in anything but an indexical sense, since the work and learning demonstrably does not take place exclusively within that actual or virtual space, as we shall also see below; for this reason, we prefer to use the term “project” alone. Second, a “collaborative project” constitutes a “holistic piece of work undertaken by a team of students” (Kiraly 2012: 84). Third, such a project can be termed “authentic” when carried out “in the service of a real-world client or user” (Kiraly 2012: 84), whether contracts, billing, payment or any other incentives are involved or not, although the target-text product should be one that is made available, by publication or other forms of dissemination, inside or outside a

1 For this study, we adopted Merriam-Webster’s broad definition of feedback: “Helpful information or criticism that is given to someone to say what can be done to improve a performance, product, etc.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feedback.

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client body or organisation, for the benefit of one or several users, some or all of whom can be part of the client body or organisation itself. Moving on to the terminological issues connected with professionalism and its development or emergence, the present chapter takes Kiraly’s lead in applying the term “pre-professional” (in this volume: Page 9) to the learners taking part in the study on which we report, agreeing with Hagemann (in this volume: Page 37) that “it de-emphasises the notion of automatic progression” during translator education and, at the same time, foregrounds the explicit goal of the programme they have joined, namely to prepare them for a job market in which they are likely find gainful employment in the core activity of translation or in closely related fields.2 It is for the same reason that we are reluctant to apply Washbourne’s term “experts-in-training” (2013; see also Hagemann in this volume: Page 39), which presupposes an automatic progression towards expertise. After all, if we accept findings of research in the field (e. g. Ericsson et al. 1993; Shreve 2006), the acquisition, development or emergence of expertise depends decisively on practitioners’ long-term willingness and capacity to engage in continuous deliberate practice after graduation (see section 2 below), which no education programme is in a position to guarantee. In terms of Hoffmann’s (1998) five-point progression, adopted initially by Kiraly (2000: 58–59) and which deliberately applies terminology associated with the crafts, the student pre-professionals in our study may be likened to “apprentices”: having successfully passed through the “novice” and “initiate” stages, which approximate to beginner and BA-level competence, they are seeking to enter the community of practice as “journeymen” prior to acquiring “expert” status. Kiraly (e. g. 2012, 2013) has since moved away from this model towards an emergentist perspective on grounds that the simple master-apprentice model of observation, transmission and replication cannot describe or explain the complex interactions by which learners evolve into competent practitioners, and potentially also experts. However, the adoption of such a position, which the present authors wholeheartedly embrace, does not fundamentally invalidate the notion that translator education, if conceived along the lines proposed in following section, can indeed serve the objectives it is designed to achieve through a process of progression. Regardless of the model applied in this particular case, we can therefore hypothesise that more advanced MA students should be able to provide feedback which, potentially at least, comes close to that provided by other actors in the 2 Since the introduction of an MA programme in Professional Translation at our university some five years ago, our graduate survey indicate that over 90 % of respondents find employment in an area closely related to their studies within eight months of graduation.

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pedagogical translation event. It is this, among other things, that our study sets out to explore by asking how collaboration in a socio-constructivist framework, and feedback in particular, can facilitate the emergence of professional translation competence and help lay the groundwork for the development of expertise.

2.

Background: the emergence of expertise in the situated event of translation Translation is done not solely by the mind, but by complex systems. These systems include people, their specific social and physical environments and all their cultural artefacts. (Risku 2010: 103)

The authors of this chapter share with Risku the premise that translation represents an instance of situated cognition. Professional translators interface and interact with all kinds of partners involved in the translation event. Their work is also likely to be affected by a variety of environmental factors in terms of physical, cognitive and organisational ergonomics, including the design of their workplaces, the tools and systems they use and the workflows and processes in which they are involved (cf. Ehrenberger-Dow and Massey 2014). It therefore seems wholly appropriate that preparing student pre-professionals for such a reality should at least to some degree be based around situated experiential learning in the form of authentic collaborative project work. The typical design and components have been described exhaustively elsewhere (e. g. Gonz‚lez-Davies 2004: 216–224; Kelly 2005: 115–122; Kiraly 2000, 2005, 2012; Mackenzie 2004; Varney 2009) and are therefore only briefly summarised here: authentic translation assignments with real-world clients, briefs, deadlines, incentives and, often, publication or dissemination of the target documents, completed by means of collaborative student teamwork with optimally, or minimally, invasive teacher intervention and guidance. The forms of intervention described in the literature are diverse and situation-dependent, but all appear to share, either explicitly or implicitly, the notion that the teachers’ role should be that of “partners in learning rather than distributors of knowledge”, with learners becoming “proactive seekers of knowledge” (Kiraly 2013: 214–215). The underlying pedagogical epistemology is one which regards cognition as “embodied enaction” (cf. Kiraly 2013: 207, 214), driving a “holistic experiential” pedagogy (Kiraly 2012) predicated on the assumption that translator education is an emergent phenomenon (Kiraly 2013): “[…] translators are not trained, they emerge. In fact, they co-emerge with their fellow learners, their

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teachers, the institutions they attend and the entire community of translation practice with which and whom they interact” (Kiraly 2012: 87). Whereas fifteen years ago such an authentic experiential approach may have been the exception, it now appears to have gained widespread credence in translator education, although uncertainty remains about teachers’ clarity on the educational philosophies behind it (Kiraly 2012: 83). The outcomes of authentic project-based learning, reported in various qualitative studies (e. g. Kiraly 2000: 101–122, 2005: 1106–1109, 2013: 215–222; Varney 2009), include increases in student responsibility, autonomy, critical reflection, metacognitive self-regulation, motivation and confidence. Of these, it is the metacognitive self-regulatory capacities that contribute most to the emergence and maintenance of expertise (cf. Shreve 2006: 38–39). According to Shreve’s (2006: 31) succinct definition, a translation expert is one who “makes superior choices consistently […]”. As the “product of […] maximal efforts to improve performance in a domain through an optimal distribution of deliberate practice” (Ericsson et al. 1993: 363), expertise in general, and translation expertise in particular, appears to be achieved largely through a combination of proceduralisation and metacognitive self-regulation, emerging over time under conditions of deliberate practice involving well-defined tasks of appropriate difficulty together with opportunities for repetition and correction on the basis of adequate, informative feedback (Shreve 2006: 29). It is above all the frequency and the quality of the practice and feedback that are key. They must not only be structured and task-relevant (Shreve 2006), which sits well with conscious or unconscious proponents of systematic, scaffolded didactic interventions such as Gonz‚lez Davies (e. g. 2004), but also appropriate in order to avoid over-routinisation and to be able to develop the adaptive expertise needed to cope with the idiosyncratic, ill-defined problems that are the norm in translation (MuÇoz Mart†n 2014: 9). Authentic experiential project-based learning, and the collaborative feedback flows it entails would therefore seem to provide an ideal pedagogical context in which to sow the seeds of expertise emergence amongst pre-professional students. Yet, the multiple and variable roles required of the participants in such social-constructivist scenarios indicate the complex relationship that exists between pre-professionalism and, for instance, the professional expertise of translation teachers and other actors. In the co-emergent setting of collaborative experiential learning, role distinctions between experts, teaching professionals and pre-professional learners are likely to blur, and the feedback flows among them are largely unclear. In particular, the various focal points, modes, sources and (perceived) usefulness of feedback remain under-explored in translation pedagogy research. In the following, we present the design and findings of our small-scale de-

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scriptive study on an authentic collaborative translation project. While primarily intended to gain deeper insights into experiential collaborative learning as a means of preparing pre-professionals for professional translation, it pursued the additional institutional goals of increasing participants’ reflective practice and enhancing their awareness of the potential of research in furthering translation pedagogy, and thus of narrowing the divide between theory and practice frequently discussed in literature and, to judge by contributions to this long-standing and on-going debate, still manifestly present in many translator training institutes, including our own (e. g. Anderman and Rogers 2000; Chesterman and Wagner 2002; Drugan 2013; Gile 2010; Kearns 2008; Kelly 2005: 23, 114–115; Pezza Cintr¼o 2010). After discussing the results of the investigation, we therefore briefly consider the study’s broader implications for teaching and follow-up research.

3.

Study design

3.1.

Context and infrastructure

The present study took place in the second half of 2013. It investigated a collaborative translation project forming part of a module in English-German translation, anchored in a weekly two-hour contact lesson but involving a considerable degree of independent study outside the classroom. The students were required to use a translation-memory system for the project, SDLTRADOS Studio 2011, in which all had received training. There was no pre-existing memory for them to use, so they had to create a database of their own. The project itself was nothing out of the ordinary : the majority of our translation modules at MA and advanced BA level include similar collaborative project work of three to six weeks’ duration. Most students are therefore familiar with this learning format.

3.2.

Participants

The participants comprised sixteen pre-professional translation students in the second semester of our MA programme, all of them working from English, their L2 or L3, into German, their L1. Their teacher, herself a professional freelance translator, a client, a researcher and a research assistant were involved in the study. Technical issues were handled by a language-technology specialist.

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Translation assignment and client

The students were required to translate a best-practice guideline on clientcentred care within a period of four weeks. The source text was approximately 150,000 characters in length. The students’ client was the Swiss Association for Nursing Science’s Academic Society for Vascular Nursing, which would publish and circulate the guideline, though without the names of the translators. The client organisation was represented by a contact person, who provided a detailed brief and came to our institute to present the project to the students (see below). The client organisation was also continuously available for questions and feedback throughout the project. The translation was neither paid for nor graded, but the students would receive a signed statement from the client organisation confirming their participation in the project.

3.4.

Structure and roles

The research study was initiated by a face-to-face information session lasting approximately one forty-five minute lesson, at which the design, objectives and logistical details of the study were presented to the students by the researcher, teacher and assistant. The strict observance of anonymity in the treatment of the data that would be collected was stressed throughout. The students were given ample time to ask questions, and each had the opportunity to opt out of the study, although none actually did. Immediately after the researcher and assistant had left the room, the client’s representative presented the translation project in detail and answered the questions of the students and teacher. The teacher then moderated a brainstorming session on how the project could be managed. It was during this session that roles were defined and sub-groups formed. The students decided to have one project manager and a deputy to oversee the project as a whole, one chief terminologist to coordinate project-wide terminology and to be the single point of contact with the client, one person to act as the translation-memory trouble-shooter and single point of contact with the language-technology specialist, one student to be responsible for quality assurance during the final revision phase and one to take care of the target-text layout at the end of the project. The latter was also charged with creating a project style-guide, and for delivering the final text to the teacher (who then passed it on to the client). The students decided amongst themselves who would take on these various roles – the teacher had to take a lead only to help occupy the position of deputy project manager, for which no-one could initially be found. The students decided further to divide themselves up into four sub-groups of

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four students each to work on the assignment, and, by a process of negotiation, assigned separate sections of the source text to each sub-group. The sub-group members were responsible for organising their own schedules, work plans, meetings, online sessions and roles. It was also up to them to exchange texts and information with the other sub-groups. From the beginning of the project until final submission of the target text, their teacher consciously adopted the role of what she perceived as that of a minimally invasive facilitator. She was available to answer queries by e-mail, via our e-learning platform and during the weekly contact hours set aside for translation project, at which she was constantly present.

3.5.

Interactional spaces

The students received input and feedback from the teacher solely at their instigation and request, with the exception of the initial plenary session at which the project was introduced, a mid-project plenary session to track the progress of the work being done and, in the last week of the semester some four weeks after submission of the target text, a plenary session to discuss the teacher’s corrections and the client organisation’s revisions of the translation product. Attendance of these sessions and of the contact hours reserved for the project was optional, though strongly recommended3. The students responsible for the project-wide processes above sub-group level were themselves left to organise any face-to-face meetings they thought necessary, as were the sub-groups themselves. Each project-wide process coordinator and each sub-group also had access to their own online forum via our e-learning platform, set up by the teacher especially for the project.

3.6.

Data collection for the research study

Various instruments were used to gather data for the research study. These are described below. 3.6.1. Peer and self-assessment questionnaires Just before the project began (i. e. immediately after the introductory session described above), the students were asked to assess their own skills using an online questionnaire, the link to which was sent to the participants by the as3 Our BA and MA programmes have no attendance requirement.

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sistant, together with the codes they had been assigned to preserve their anonymity. The questionnaire contained categories based on the competence profile of the European Master’s in Translation (EMT Expert Group 2009). The profile was used because, as an accredited member of the EMT network, our programme aims to cover the full range of competences and skills it lists. The nine competence categories surveyed were the interpersonal and production dimensions of translation service provision (TSP) competence, source-language and target-language competence, the sociolinguistic and textual dimensions of intercultural competence, information-mining competence, thematic competence and technological competence. Responses were made on a 10-point scale, with 10 being the highest possible score for each category. To ensure that the participants fully understood these categories, they were supplied with the original EMT table containing detailed descriptions of each. Once the four-week project was over, the participants were requested to complete the same online questionnaire again. In this case, they first had to assess themselves, and then to evaluate, using the same questionnaire, each of the other members of their subgroup. Fifteen of the sixteen students took part in the post-project self-assessment survey, while all sixteen completed the peer assessment. The entire datagathering process was independently managed by the assistant so that only she knew who had assessed whom and how.

3.6.2. Learning journals In the course of the project, the participants were also required to submit three weekly learning journals each to the research assistant. The journal took the form of an online template in which they were specifically asked to report on feedback flows and effects. In each and every case, the students were asked to record every instance of feedback requested and given by listing for what reason or purpose the feedback was sought (i. e. the area or interest or focus of the request for feedback), how the feedback was elicited (i. e. the mode of elicitation, e. g. orally in group discussions, orally in bilateral discussions, by written email, via a written forum entry, etc.), from whom or what (e. g. interactive online instructions or tutorials) the feedback came and how useful the feedback proved on a four-point Likert scale of “very useful”, “useful”, “less useful” or “not useful”. The definition of feedback applied was that contained in Footnote 1. The individual journal entries were then analysed for propositional content and coded according to the focus (or area of interest), mode, source and usefulness of every instance of feedback interaction. Because feedback instances were reported in the first, second or third week of the translation assignment, it was possible to identify in which phase of the project they occurred.

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3.6.3. Concluding plenary discussion and questionnaire After completion of the project and the session discussing the assessment of the final translation product by the teacher and the client, ten of the student participants took part in a voluntary concluding plenary discussion of the research study itself. This was moderated and minuted by the research assistant, with no other person present. The participants discussed their experiences during the project as both learners and participants in a research study ; they also completed a questionnaire about the feedback they had received on the translation product. Throughout the project, anonymity was scrupulously observed, the individual sources of responses being known only to the assistant. No information on the source of the comments or assessments was divulged to the researcher, teacher, technology specialist or client organisation. 3.6.4. Client and teacher statements The client organisation was requested to submit its own short written report assessing the outcome of the project after the target text had been received. There was no template or prescribed form in which this was to be delivered. In the event, the client organisation provided a statement of approximately one page in length, which took the form of a signed testimonial reproduced for each student involved in the project. Finally, the teacher was asked to compile and submit her own observations of the translation project in the form of a short report of approximately one page in length, freely written (i. e. without a template) and submitted directly to the researcher after the project had been completed. This comprised her general comments not only on student involvement but also on her own role and individual development during the project.

4.

Results

In this section, we present separately the participants’ comments, the quantitative results of the students’ peer and self-assessments and the quantitative analyses of the students’ journal entries.

4.1.

Client, teacher and student comments

In the client’s view, the translation assignment was carried out to its complete satisfaction. The MA students “supported the professional translation [of the

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source text] by bringing their linguistic expertise to bear and completing a functional translation”.4 The translation had been submitted within the deadline and the students had taken account of the context-specific features of nursing science by communicating regularly with the Academic Society for Vascular Nursing and making use of the expertise of its members during the translation process. In a further unsolicited e-mail, the client organisation expressed special praise and remarked on how surprised it had been at the high quality of the work done. The teacher’s observations echo the client’s praise for the product, which she judged to be of very high quality. Regarding the process, she observed divergences in intrinsic motivation among the students, with above-average commitment shown by the more mature participants. This suggested to her that a greater extrinsic incentive would have been welcome, with grading expressly preferred by some of the younger participants. Equally interesting are the teacher’s comments on her own role. The minimally invasive approach she adopted appears to have created a role conflict, in that she directly expresses concern over the inefficiency of her decision to help solve problems only when explicitly requested to do so. She writes that “in retrospect I would no longer do it that way, but instead try and ‘unobtrusively’ get the students to identify problems more quickly and to request help when needed. I do not yet have an exact idea of how to manage to do so without interrupting the process”. She also refers to the increased risk factors that such an approach entails: “Because I did not give the students any instructions, I let them take risks and make mistakes […]”. Indeed, in a number of subsequent spoken exchanges with the researcher, she considered this increased awareness of her role to be one of the major pedagogical learning effects she herself experienced in the course of the project, with a further written comment indicating that the technical challenges of the project had also honed her technological skills: “I, too, learned quite a lot from the students, e. g. that one can handle a large PDF file with TRADOS. I would never have dared do so for fear of not being able to generate a target text. But it worked and saved both the students and the client a great deal of time”. When completing the online questionnaires, students had the possibility of entering additional comments on the survey and project. These, combined with results of the plenary discussion at the end of the project, reveal that the participants felt a generally positive learning effect during project. Interestingly, a number of participants mentioned involvement in the research study itself as a strong motivational factor. In the plenary discussion, collaboration and cooperation within all the sub-groups was uniformly judged to be good. Peer assessment was felt to be very difficult by many members of the group, because they felt that 4 The statements quoted here and below are the authors’ translation of the original German.

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they had insufficient insight into the working processes of their peers to offer anything but superficial judgements in a project of such relatively short duration. Two participants stated additionally that they found it almost as difficult to assess themselves consistently across the pre- and post-project surveys. However, the applicability of the EMT criteria and categories was not questioned in either the survey comments or the concluding plenary discussion. Indeed, several participants mentioned that the self- and peer assessment had prompted more selfreflection than even the learning journals had. Although all the participants reported that the research instruments deployed did not impinge on their work, one did additionally mention the pressure felt to construct certain entries. Regarding the roles of the client and teacher, both the minimally invasive teaching and the client’s readiness to cooperate were very positively received.

4.2.

Student peer assessment

The sixteen participants in the study each produced post-project peer assessments of the three other members of their sub-groups, making a total of 48 individual assessments across the four sub-groups taking part. For every individual assessment, grades were awarded in nine separate categories (see section 3.6.1. above). On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), 32 of the participants assessed received individual grades across all nine categories ranging between 7 and 9, five received grades ranging from 8 to 10, four ranging from 6 to 8, three ranging from 7 to 10 and one each ranging from 6 to 7, 5 to 8, 4 to 8 and 2 to 7. This suggests that either the groups were very homogenous or that the student co-assessors tended to play safe when judging their peers. One striking result of the peer assessments concerns the distribution of competences among peers with results well below the average in certain individual competences: wherever language skills and the productive dimension of TSP are judged weak, the individual’s interpersonal TSP skills, involving such aspects as social-role awareness, self-responsibility, communicative competence, negotiation skills, teamwork and project management, are deemed strong.

4.3.

Student self-assessment

Unlike the single survey of perceived peer competences, the results of the selfassessment questionnaires allow a pre- and post-project comparison to be made. This is presented in Table 1 below. One of the sixteen participants failed to complete the questionnaire for this part of the study, so the results are based on fifteen responses in total.

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A simple comparison of the mean values reveals slight average improvements for intercultural textual competence and for TSP production, source-language and information-mining competence, a larger mean increase for technological competence and a considerable jump in the mean values for the interpersonal dimension of TSP. The latter is noteworthy because both the median and mean values for this category remain constant at 7 each, a point we shall return to later in the discussion section. Slightly lower than in the first assessment are the mean post-project results for target-language competence and thematic competence, which may be linked to a heightened student awareness of domain-specific language and knowledge limitations during the project. EMT competences TSP competence: interpersonal dimension TSP competence: production dimension Language competence: source language (English) Language competence: target language (German)

Pre-project self-assessment (n=16) Mean Median Mode 6.2 7 7

Post-project self-assessment (n=15) Mean Median Mode 7.6 7 7

7.4

7.5

8

7.7

7

8

7.4

8

8

7.7

8

8

8.6

9

9

8.4

9

9

Intercultural competence: sociolinguistic competence Intercultural competence: textual competence

7.5

7.5

6/7

7.5

7

7

7.2

7

7/8

7.4

8

8

Information mining competence Thematic competence

7.4

8

8

7.7

8

7

7.4

7

7

7.1

7

7

Technological 7.2 7 7/8 7.9 8 8 competence Table 1: Results of the pre- and post-project self-assessments: mean, median and mode values.

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Student learning journals

Informative results were also provided by the learning-journal entries, in which the participants reported a total of 77 individual instances of feedback interaction: 24 in the first week, 25 in the second and 28 in the third. Although the above-mentioned caveat of constructed responses must be taken seriously, we can assume that the general tendencies are sufficiently clear to exclude major distortions in the data. A case in point is provided by an analysis of the particular foci of the feedback (i. e. the particular topic or interest of an interaction) reported in the three weekly journals. The results, presented in Figure 1, show a perfectly feasible percentage distribution of foci across the three project phases, with informationtechnology and translation-memory issues making up 58 % of the total feedback interactions in the first journal, 40 % in the second journal and only 4 % in the third. A decline is also seen in project management issues, representing 29 % of overall feedback instances in the first journal, 12 % in the second and 4 % in the third. In contrast, quality assurance issues were slight in the first two journals, at 8 % each, but – unsurprisingly – predominated in the third journal, with 54 % of total feedback interactions. Wholly understandably, translation problems per se formed a negligible proportion of concerns in the first phase of the project, at 4 %, but remained more or less constant in journals 2 and 3 at 40 % and 39 % of total feedback instances respectively. The phasing reported in the study therefore seems to be congruent with common intuitions and consistent with general professional and pedagogical experience of how translation projects develop: the initial phase is dominated by technical and management issues, the final one by quality assurance, while feedback on translation problems is evenly distributed over the major transfer phases.5 Of the total number of feedback instances over all three phases, 32 % focused on the technical aspects of the project (i. e. information-technology and translation-memory applications), 30 % on translation problems, such as source-text comprehension, lexical and terminological issues and target-text conventions, 5 It is tempting to reflect that an entire syllabus or curriculum might be structured according to such phases, which are strongly reminiscent of the three-phase orientation-drafting-revision model already proposed, with various designations for each phase, by some cognitive process researchers (e. g. Krings 1986; Jakobsen 2002; Englund Dimitrova 2005). However, more recent results from professional processes are calling the cognitive model into question, especially with regard to the orientation or planning phase (cf. Alves and Liparini Campos 2009: 208; Massey and Ehrensberger-Dow 2011: 207). This suggests that more research into both the collaborative and cognitive aspects of translation competence development will be needed before the preponderantly holistic approach to current translation syllabus and curriculum design could give way to a phase-based structure. It lies beyond the scope of the present chapter to pursue this point further.

191

Collaborative feedback flows and how we can learn from them Phases of feedback by focus 60%

IT & TM

50%

Project Management

Quality assurance

Translation problems

40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

IT+TM

PM

learning journal 1

QS

learning journal 2

UeP

learning journal 3

Figure 1: Student learning journals: feedback phases by focus (IT = information technology ; TM = translation memory).

24 % on quality assurance issues and 14 % on project management. Tellingly, only about a third of the feedback sought and given concerned translation in the classic sense of the interlingual transfer of meaning from a source to a target text, with other components of the situated translation event, such a technologyrelated, project-management, quality-assurance or text-formatting issues, making up the other two thirds of feedback interactions. The participants were also asked to rate the usefulness of the feedback they were given. When this is analysed by focus (see Figure 2), 28 % of the total feedback received was judged very useful or useful for the project’s technical aspects, 23 % for quality assurance, 22 % for translation problems and 13 % for project management. The figures for less useful or not useful feedback by focus were 4 % for technical aspects, 1 % for project management and 3 % for translation problems, while 6 % of the feedback received no rating at all. In other words, the feedback given was overwhelmingly deemed effective, irrespective of the focal point. In those cases where the feedback was considered less useful or not useful, three major reasons come to the fore in the commentaries: mediation by other participants, such as the overall project manager or translationmemory trouble-shooter (leading to unclear and delayed responses), untimeliness (due in part to mediated channels of communication) and a lack of concrete task relevance (again partly due to vague mediated feedback).6 When broken down by mode of feedback elicitation and delivery (Figure 3), 31 % of the overall feedback deemed very useful or useful occurred in written

6 A coding of these responses did not lie within the scope of the current study.

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Gary Massey and Barbara Brändli Usefulness of feedback by focus

20%

10%

0% IT+TM

PM very useful

useful

QS less useful

not useful

UeP

not applicable

Figure 2: Student learning journals: usefulness of feedback by focus (IT = information technology ; TM = translation memory).

forum interactions, 23 % in oral face-to-face interactions, 16 % in e-mail exchanges, 9 % in oral classroom interactions, 6 % in oral sub-group exchanges and 1 % each in telephone conversations and face-to-face observations of others at work. It is interesting to note here the relatively even distribution across oral and written feedback and its reported usefulness, and the relatively low reported incidence of useful or very useful feedback in the group meetings and classroom interactions. Unfortunately, there were no additional comments by the students to elucidate why this should be so. Usefulness of feedback by mode 20%

Oral F2F bilateral

Oral telephone bilateral

10%

0%

Oral F2F bilateral observation

MF

MT

very useful

Oral classroom

Written forum Written e-mail

Oral project group

MB

useful

MG

less useful

MK

not useful

SF

SM

not applicable

Figure 3: Student learning journals: usefulness of feedback by mode (F2F = face-to-face).

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An analysis of the feedback by source proves equally revealing. As much as 69 % of the total feedback reported as very useful or useful in the course of the project came from peers, whereas the teacher and client only accounted for 13 % and 4 % respectively. The remaining 14 % of the feedback instances were either considered less useful or not useful, or else not rated at all. Usefulness of feedback by source 40%

Peers

Teacher

Client

30%

20%

10%

0%

P

D

very useful

useful

less useful

AG

not useful

not applicable

Figure 4: Student learning journals: usefulness of feedback by source.

These process-related results provide an interesting counterpoint to the perception of the feedback on the final product. When the students participating in the concluding plenary discussion were asked to rate the usefulness of product-based feedback on the target text, 100 % of teacher and client feedback was assessed as useful or very useful, but only 60 % of peer feedback, with 20 % of the latter being judged less useful (20 % of the respondents did not rate the peer feedback). If we look at the feedback deemed very useful alone, however, a higher percentage of client feedback (70 %) and peer feedback (60 %) fell into this category than did teacher feedback, of which only 50 % was considered very useful. To sum up the above results, feedback was reported as most useful when it was peer-sourced during the process, teacher- and client-sourced on the product, bilateral (not group-moderated), dialogical and interactive (rather than monodirectional), direct (as opposed to mediated), timely (not delayed) and concrete (or task-relevant).

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Discussion

As the client and teacher assessments of the students’ target text demonstrates, assignments performed by pre-professionals can, and in this project did, lead to professional-standard products. Yet, the question remains as to whether and how participation in the project promoted actual learning. The students’ questionnaire assessment of their own development suggests that learning did indeed take place. The results show a perceived improvement in individual competences in many of the EMT profile categories, but especially in technological and interpersonal TSP competence. While the reported increase in technological skills can be quickly explained by the prolonged exposure to the translation-memory system and other CAT tools used in the project, the substantial mean increase in the assessment of interpersonal TSP competence is more interesting, in part because the median and mode values between the preand post-project self-assessment remain constant (see Table 1). This indicates that those who saw themselves as especially weak in the interpersonal skill cluster, and who thus pulled down the pre-project average value, feel that working in a collaborative project has really helped them improve in this particular respect. A similar awareness of the emergence of interpersonal competence can be seen in the peer assessments, where, as we have seen, those judged weakest in language and production skills were deemed strong in the interpersonal sphere. A possible interpretation of this phenomenon is that every member of the group appears to have a role to play, and is also seen to fulfil that role by the others in the group (we recall that all those present in the plenary discussion confirmed that group collaboration and cooperation was good). It is, of course, precisely this interpersonal aspect that is a key feature of Kiraly’s (2013) situated model of co-emergent translation competence: “from an emergent perspective, all of the participants in a situation and in fact the environment itself emerge as a function of collaborative being-in-the-world” (Kiraly 2013: 213). Moreover, while the EMT profile makes no overt mention of confidence in any of its categories, the interpersonal dimension of TSP does list many indicators of selfconfidence, such as awareness of the social role of the translator, self-responsibility and negotiating skills. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the peer and self-assessment results suggest that a number of participants could well have gained confidence from their involvement in the translation project, despite none of them explicitly commenting on this. In addition to providing differentiated insights into the emergence of student competence, our results indicate some complementary experiential learning effects on other actors in the collaborative project. The nature of the client’s comments demonstrates advanced awareness of key features of the translation

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event, in which language plays only a part: stakeholder involvement and interests, distributed cognition, functionalism and deadlines are all explicitly or implicitly touched on. Although representatives of the client organisation did not participate in the pre- or post-project self-assessments, and no other structured form of assessing the degree or extent of client learning took place, the content of the client statement begs the question whether the client could have been as differentiated before becoming involved in this project, and that this stakeholder may itself have been learning from the various and prolonged interactions with other actors in the project. The teacher, too, explicitly refers to having learned from the project, both technologically and pedagogically. Moreover, her implicit realisation of the role conflict created by a minimally invasive approach, apparently appreciated by the pre-professional students, may equally be considered an emergent learning effect – with the potential for the further development of optimum scaffolding strategies in her own future pedagogical practice. Her metacognitive reflections on her role have revealed an incompatibility with her own pedagogical epistemology, which may well provide a trigger for the “cognitive conflict” needed to induce conceptual change (cf. Bergen 2009: 238–239). At all events, her insights would seem to constitute at least one step towards lending greater “credibility to a project-based pedagogical approach” and establishing “its consistency, coherence and cogency” (Kiraly 2012: 83). The results of the study also cast light on general and specific aspects of the feedback flows during the translation project. Overall, the students considered the feedback predominantly useful or very useful. Yet, important distinctions exist between the different foci, modes and sources of the feedback received at various stages of the project. As the project progresses, the focus of feedback reported in the learning journals shifts, quite predictably, from technological and project-management concerns to translation problems and quality assurance issues. By contrast, an analysis of the modes of feedback renders results that are less self-evident, with classroom and group interactions deemed not especially effective in the context of experiential collaborative project work. Useful feedback, and presumably learning, seems to be happening elsewhere – in online forums and bilateral written and oral exchanges rather than ‘classic’ multilateral or teacher-moderated learning settings. Regarding the sources identified in the journals, over two-thirds of the useful or very useful feedback was reported as coming from peers, and less than one fifth from the teacher and client combined. This picture changes significantly when feedback on the finished product is judged (i. e. after completion of the project’s process-oriented phases), with the usefulness of teacher and client feedback scoring highest. It seems that, while peer feedback offers very clear opportunities for learning throughout a project, due in no small part to the role

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deliberately adopted by the teacher and, presumably, also to the physical remoteness of the client, more ‘traditional’ authority and power relations are asserted when summative assessment is involved. It is nevertheless interesting that peer feedback is still rated comparatively highly at this summative stage, in many respects confirming Johnson and Johnson’s (2004: 120–124) assertions on the acceptability and desirability of peer feedback of this sort. As noted above, the results of our study show feedback to have worked best when it was bilateral, dialogical, interactive, unmediated, timely and task-relevant. These findings not only echo many of the insights gained from general pedagogical research on effective feedback (cf. Wiliam 2010), they also provide our institution with clear-cut indicators of practical corrective measures which can easily be implemented to facilitate more effective feedback flows in future collaborative projects. Finally, the study also furnishes some noteworthy qualitative data on motivation, a key factor in learning often cited as a major justification for the authentic project-based approach (e. g. Kiraly 2000: 115–116; Mackenzie 2004: 37–38). The teacher observations of higher intrinsic motivation amongst more mature pre-professionals, and a possible concomitant need for additional extrinsic incentives among some younger students, are not necessarily borne out by the students’ own written comments; nevertheless, this aspect should be explored further. Of more immediate significance are the students’ declarations that participation in our research study was itself a strong motivational factor, suggesting that a more active future role for them in data analysis and interpretation may well reinforce the autonomy, empowerment and metacognition needed to grow translation expertise.

6.

Conclusion

The present study pursued two principal pedagogical objectives. The first was to increase our understanding of co-emergent learning effects and feedback flows in an authentic collaborative translation project at our institute, with a view to justifying our authentic experiential approach to translator education and to optimising future implementations. The second was to use the research project to promote reflective practice among those involved in the learning event, particularly teaching professionals and pre-professional learners. The implicit hypothesis was that studies of this kind present a feasible means of doing both (cf. Kiraly 2013: 222), capable of narrowing the gap between theory and research on the one side, and translational or pedagogical professional practice on the other. This inevitably leads to a second level of enquiry, namely the adequacy of the research design and its potential for improvement.

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The findings contain reasonably strong indications that both pedagogical objectives have been achieved, which in turn suggests that initiatives of this sort can be fruitfully deployed to advance curriculum, course and also staff development. Our institute is committed to refining our teaching and research methodology by promoting such studies on an increasingly wide scale; immediate measures already taken range from greater research staff availability to forums fostering a systematic exchange between researchers, teachers and other stakeholders. Finally, although our results show that the study did indeed prove to be a catalyst for reflection among the various participants, there is room for improving its design. In an attempt to gain as full a picture as possible of the ways in which co-emergence functions in such collaborative settings, we intend to develop methods to assess client learning in the course of such authentic projects. And by assigning the pre-professionals a more active future role in the research itself, we expect to reinforce their metacognitive awareness and intrinsic motivation, lending further impetus to the emergence of translation competence.

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of Translation Competence. Theories and Methodologies from Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 58–86. EMT Expert Group (2009). Competences for Professional Translators, Experts in Multilingual and Multimedia Communication. Brussels: Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/programmes/emt/ key_documents/emt_competences_translators_en.pdf [31.10. 2013]. Ericsson, K. Anders / Krampe, Ralph T / Tesch-Römer, Clemens (1993). “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”, Psychological Review 100.3, 363–406. Gile, Daniel (2010). “Why Translation Studies Matters: A Pragmatist’s Viewpoint”, in Daniel Gile / Gyde Hansen / Nike K. Pokorn (eds.): Why Translation Studies Matters. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 251–261. Gonz‚lez Davies, Maria (2004). Multiple Voices in the Translation Classroom. Activities, Tasks and Projects. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Göpferich, Susanne (2013). “Translation Competence: Explaining Development and Stagnation from a Dynamic Systems Perspective”, Target 25.1, 61–76. Hagemann, Susanne (2015). “(Non-)Professional, Authentic Projects? Why Terminology Matters.” In this volume. Hoffman, Robert R. (1998). “How can Expertise be Defined? Implications of Research from Cognitive Psychology”, in Robin Williams / Wendy Faulkner / James Fleck (eds.): Exploring Expertise: Issues and Perspectives. New York: Macmillan, 81–100. Hubscher-Davidson, S¦verine (2008). “A Reflection on Action Research Processes in Translator Training”; The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 2:1, 75–92. Jakobsen, Arnt Lykke (2002). “Translation Drafting by Professional Translators and by Translation Students”, in Gyde Hansen (ed.): Empirical Translation Studies: Process and Product. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur, 191–204. Kearns, John (2008). “The Academic and the Vocational in Translator Education”, in John Kearns (ed.): Translator and Interpreter Training: Issues, Methods and Debates. London/New York: Continuum, 184–214. Kelly, Dorothy (2005). A Handbook for Translator Trainers. Manchester : St. Jerome. Kiraly, Don (2000). A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education – Empowerment from Theory to Practice. Manchester: St. Jerome. Kiraly, Don (2005). “Project-based Learning: A Case for Situated Translation”; Meta 50.4, 1098–1111. Kiraly, Don (2012). “Growing a Project-based Translation Pedagogy : A Fractal Perspective”, Meta 57.1, 82–95. Kiraly, Don (2013). “Towards a View of Translator Competence as an Emergent Phenomenon: Thinking Outside the Box(es) in Translator Education”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 197–224. Kiraly, Don (2016). “Preface.” In this volume. Krings, Hans Peter (1986). Was in den Köpfen von Übersetzern vorgeht. Eine empirische Untersuchung zur Struktur des Übersetzungsprozesses an fortgeschrittenen Französischlernern. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Johnson, David W. / Johnson, Roger T. (2004). Assessing Students in Groups: Promoting Group Responsibility and Individual Accountability. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

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Mackenzie, Rosemary (2004). “The Competencies Required by the Translator’s Role as a Professional”, in Kirsten Malmkjær (ed.): Translation in Undergraduate Degree Programmes. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 31–38. Massey, Gary (2005). “Process-oriented Translator Training and the Challenge for Elearning”, Meta 50.2, 626–633. Massey, Gary / Ehrensberger-Dow, Maureen (2011). “Investigating Information Literacy : A Growing Priority in Translation Studies”, Across Languages and Cultures 12.2, 193–211. MuÇoz Mart†n, Ricardo (2014). “Situating Translation Expertise: A Review with a Sketch of a Construct”, in John W. Schwieter / Aline Ferreira (eds.): The Development of Translation Competence: Theories and Methodologies from Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2–56. Pezza Cintr¼o, Helo†sa (2010). “Magnifying Glasses Modifying Maps: A Role for Theory in Introductory Courses”, in Daniel Gile / Gyde Hansen / Nike K. Pokorn (eds.): Why Translation Studies Matters. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 167–181. Reason, Peter / Bradbury, Hilary (2006). The Handbook of Action Research. London: SAGE. Risku, Hanna (20092). Translationsmanagement. Interkulturelle Fachkommunikation im Informationszeitalter. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Risku, Hanna (2010). “A Cognitive Scientific View on Technical Communication and Translation: Do Embodiment and Situatedness Really Make a Difference?”, Target 22.1, 94–111. Shreve, Gregory M. (2006). “The Deliberate Practice: Translation and Expertise”, Journal of Translation Studies 9:1, 27–42. Varney, Jennifer (2009). “From Hermeneutics to the Translation Classroom: A Social Constructivist Approach to Effective Learning”, International Journal for Translation and Interpreting Research 1.1, 27–43. Washbourne, Kelly (2013). “Ethical Experts-in-training: Connected Learners and the Moral Imagination”, in Don Kiraly / Silvia Hansen-Schirra / Karin Maksymski (eds.): New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Tu¨ bingen: Gunter Narr, 35–52. Wiliam, Dylan (2010). “The Role of Formative Assessment in Effective Learning Environments”, in Hanna Dumont / David Istance / Francisco Benavides (eds.): The Nature of Learning. Using Research to Inspire Practice. OECD (Educational Research and Innovation), 135–160.

Epilogue

In principle, there is presumably always a strong link between the learning activities undertaken in institutionalised training or education and practice – the exercising of one’s profession in the world of work. Real professional work is by definition authentic in that it involves the use of specialised acquired skills knowledge to meet actual (e. g. authentic) needs of customers or clients. It is in fact difficult to imagine aspects of authentic professional activity as being contrived, but education and training often if not usually have a significant contrived quality to them. The design, creation and principled didactic utilisation of lessons, lectures, exercises, textbooks, learning activities, teaching techniques, lesson plans, tests, etc.. has long been the very essence of the teacher’s profession. But one of the key intended final outcomes has surely almost always been: superior domain competence and hence performance in the real world of work. The contributions to this volume are all focused on reasons for – and ways and means of – adjusting the relationship between the largely contrived methods and techniques used in translator education on the one hand, and the target competencies needed for authentic work in the workplace on the other. At no point in this volume will the reader have found the suggestion that conventional contrived teaching activities be discarded in favor of truly authentic work experiences in the sense of what professionals do for a living. The very fact that all of the project work discussed in this volume has taken place within at least the social, if not also physical, confines of educational institutions suggests that there are differences between ‘authentic’ project work within the curriculum and ‘authentic’ project work in the workplace. For the former, learning is clearly a – if not the – primary goal, while for the latter, consistent superior performance that meets the needs of stakeholders in the process of work is in the focus of attention. Instead of proposing to do away with conventional institutionalised instruction and replacing it with actual work on the workplace, the common thread throughout this volume is on establishing sen-

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sible and cogent links between what goes on in our translator (and interpreter) education classrooms and what goes on in the language mediation workplace. Of particular interest in this context is Hagemann’s discussion of the term ‘authentic’ when referring to real translation projects carried out for educational purposes (Page 46). As she rightly points out, ‘authentic’ suggests that an activity is pure or identical to an original activity. But when project work is done in a (virtual or presential) classroom setting, it is not pure or just like the work done on the translation market. The educational institution and presumably a lecturer/instructor/facilitator are involved in the project, assuming roles that do not correspond well to roles assumed during the undertaking of the translator’s professional work. Students’ motivation is sure to be different as well, and the educational focus of the work undertaken also contributes to making projects done within the educational institution different in various ways from those completed in a professional, non-educational setting. As Hagemann suggests, perhaps educational translation projects are in some sense always hybrid – involving both the objective of learning and that of meeting a client’s needs. Perhaps rather than ‘authentic’ translation projects in an educational setting, it would be preferable to speak of ‘hybrid’ projects. In an attempt to contribute to seeing translator education as a sub-field of education per se, considerable space has been devoted to discussions (primarly in the chapters by Raquel Pacheco Aguilar and by Sascha Hofmann and myself) related to educational philosophy and to the modeling of educational processes – topics that I believe have often been given short shrift to date in the brief history of translator education. While the who-will-take-the-next-sentence teaching technique may still be a mainstay of translator training, I believe that it is by carefully considering the worldviews underlying teaching practice that we can best understand why it is that we teachers do what we do in the classroom. And in so doing, I believe we can reflect on our own beliefs about learning and hence teaching in an increasingly post-positivist world, and modify or expand our pedagogical toolkits accordingly. The reader will also have been introduced to a number of experimental classrooms in which highly authentic (very similar to work in the workplace) or at least simulated projects have been undertaken. These innovative projects created by individual teachers or teams of teachers represent a mere sample of the plethora of projects and project types that could be created to suit virtually any translator education setting. Authentic work that can be incorporated into classroom projects abounds; finding it requires a different kind of effort on the part of teachers who see themselves as facilitators. Instead of carefully constructing learning activities, the work of the facilitator involves the identification and acquisition of authentic work that his or her students can undertake and learn from, and the adaptation of the work flows to both meet the constraints of

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the educational institution and of the real-world client. As the examples in this volume suggest, not-for-profit organizations can provide any number of projects for groups of students to undertake within the scope of ‘service learning’, or performing a valuable (authentic) service to society while learning professional skills. Catherine Way’s example of intra-university projects offers a valuable model that could easily be adapted for a wide variety of fields in virtually any university setting. These types of projects can easily allay concerns of competition with professional translators as the work being undertaken would not be done by translators on the professional market due to the lack of funding. There are examples here, too, of suitable ways of observing learning processes that can be replicated and borrowed for related research by translation teachers almost anywhere. Action research is particularly well suited to qualitative educational research and, as demonstrated in the chapters by Gary Massey & Barbara Brändli and Carmen Canfora, could be applied very effectively to furthering our understanding of the impact of working with authentic projects in the classroom. The e-learning experiment carried out by Marcus Wiedmann, Lisa Rüth and myself also suggests the value of using e-learning to go beyond the displacement of a conventional teacher-centred class to the Web, and demonstrates how this new technology can both complement conventional instruction and enhance authentic situated learning in translator education programmes. We hope that interest in authentic (or shall we say hybrid) project work on the part of translation teachers who have never tried it will have been piqued by our modest efforts here to share our experiences in this domain. And we hope that experienced project facilitators will have found here fresh food for thought and stimulation for innovative pedagogical action. Don Kiraly

Contributors

Raquel Pacheco Aguilar is a doctoral student in the Research Training Group ‘Politics of Translation’ at the Faculty of Translation Studies, Linguistics and Culture Studies of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. She is also a lecturer in Spanish at the same university. Her research interests include: translator education, educational philosophy, deconstruction, performance studies, and the politics of translation. She was co-editor of Umaimute. Echos aus dem Dschungel – Ecos de la selva (2013). Barbara Brändli is a senior lecturer in translation on the BA programme in Translation and the MA programme in Applied Linguistics at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. She has broad experience as a freelance translator and conference interpreter and has implemented a number of authentic collaborative and process-oriented approaches in her courses. Carmen Canfora is a freelance translator and adjunct lecturer in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Intercultural Communication (FTSK, University of Mainz, Germersheim). In her doctoral dissertation, which she is presently completing, she has focused on active learning methods in translator education. Her research interests are: translator education, active learning, educational neuroscience, employability, terminology, technical translation, and risk managed processes for translations. Andrea Cnyrim is a professor of Intercultural Communication at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences. Until 2014, she was a faculty member in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Intercultural Communication (FTSK, University of Mainz, Germersheim) where she trained translators and interpreters in the specific intercultural competence needed to complete translational tasks. Her special interests, research and publications focus on intercultural competence, conflict management negotiation, and on communication and

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learning styles. Andrea is a member of SIETAR Deutschland and co-editor of the SIETAR Deutschland series on Intercultural Competence and Co-operation. Maren Dingfelder Stone is a conference interpreter and lecturer in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Intercultural Communication (FTSK, University of Mainz, Germersheim) and programme coordinator for the MA in Conference Interpreting. Her research interests include: self-study and autonomous learning; note-taking in consecutive interpreting; training trainers of conference interpreting; identity formation. She is the Author of Boer, Burgher, Businessman: Dutch-American Images in the United States (Ph.D. dissertation, 2006), and co-editor of Dolmetschmodelle - erfasst, erläutert, erweitert (2013), contributor to To Know How to Suggest…: Approaches to Teaching Conference Interpreting (2015). Susanne Hagemann has carried out translation project work with student groups ever since she joined the German Department of FTSK in 2006. Clients have ranged from INESAP (International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation) to the World University Service. She has also published widely on translator education. Together with Julia Neu, she has developed an approach to networked translation teaching that involves multilingual projects carried out and managed collaboratively by students in a number of different courses. Her publications on translation teaching include a monograph entitled Translationswissenschaft und der Bologna-Prozess: BA/MA-Studiengänge für Übersetzen und Dolmetschen im internationalen Vergleich (2005), as well as contributions to periodicals such as Lebende Sprachen and The Interpreter and Translator Trainer. Sascha Hofmann is an Associate Professor in the Division of English Linguistics and Translation Studies (DELT) at the School of Translation, Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. His research interests, in addition to general applied translation studies and translation process research, include all aspects of translator education and especially translation competence development. Until recently, he was employed as the Managing Director of the School, which gave him considerable insight into the administrative side of the University. Together with Silvia Hansen-Schirra and Don Kiraly he has been conducting research on curriculum development in Translator Education for the past several years. Don Kiraly has been teaching and doing research on translator education and foreign language learning at the FTSK of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz since 1984. His dissertation, published in 1995 as Pathways to Translation,

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was one of the first monographs to survey the academic landscape for suitable foundations for a systematic, learning-centred approach to translator education as well as one of the first book-length studies on the cognitive processes involved in translation. His second book, A Social-Constructivist Approach to Translator Education (2000), introduced his own theory- and praxis-based approach to fomenting translator competence on the basis of authentic project work. Having recently co-edited two volumes on innovative approaches to translator education, Projekte und Projektionen in der translatorischen Kompetenzentwicklung (2013), and New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators (2013), he is bringing out the present collected work to focus specifically on authentic project work in translator education. Gary Massey is the head of the Zurich University of Applied Science’s Institute of Translation and Interpreting, head of its MA programme in Professional Translation and past head of its undergraduate degree programme. He has been co-investigator of two nationally funded research projects on translation workplace processes and the cognitive and physical ergonomics of translation, his other research interests focus on translation and e-learning pedagogy and on translators’ information literacy. Lisa Rüth was a research assistant at the School of Translation, Linguistics and Cultural Studies of the University of Mainz from 2013 until 2014. She now works as a financial translator. Her research interests include translator education, translation studies, e-learning. Catherine Way is a Senior Lecturer in Translation at the University of Granada and a member of the AVANTI research group. Her research interests include legal translation and translator training. She is a member of the Editorial Boards of Puentes and The Interpreter and Translator Trainer (previously the Editor) and of the Advisory Board of Fachsprache, and IJLLD, amongst others. She co-edited the Proceedings of the 6th EST Conference and has participated as an expert on legal translator training for the EU in the TRAFUT (Training for the Future) programme. Marcus Wiedmann is a lecturer in Translation Studies in the Division of English Linguistics and Translation Studies at the School of Translation, Linguistics and Cultural Studies of the University of Mainz and is an experienced professional technical translator and project manager. His research interests include translation of information technology texts, software localization, translation and localization software, and translator education.