Macao FIT 2010.ppt

Translation Competence - Training for the Real World Christina Sch?ffner Aston University, Birmingham, UK FIT 6th Asian Translators Forum Macao, 2010 Translation sector Worldwide growth The size of the language industry in the EU (2009) – estimates annual growth rate of 10% Diversity (website localisation, subtitling …) International market Fragmented and unregulated sector (fan-translation, crowd-sourcing, …) Professionalisation Qualified professional translators Aims of translator training Graduates who are qualified for the rapidly changing market Training for the needs of the diverse profession (How) successful are we? UK Workforce research Translation and Interpreting (2002 - 2004) Lack of transparency of qualifications, training provision and registers The sector needs a common and transparent framework of skills requirements on entry and exit to courses Workforce research report (2003) 14 out of 28 organisations (i.e. interpreting and translation companies/agencies) said their new recruits were job-ready, compared to 12 who said they were not but have immediate training needs. What does ‘job ready’ mean? “The new recruits are generally job-ready in that they have the skills as translators, but need to learn a specific specialism.” “They need familiarisation with in-house procedures.” “They need thorough training on quality control and traceability and in seeing themselves as part of a larger process.” “The new recruits are too academically or literature focused.” Problems identified by companies (2009) Graduates are usually below par in their technological competence (e.g. competence in working with translation memory systems) and in working with customers (interpersonal competence) Problem Who is recruited? (graduates from language programmes or from translation programmes?) Has university training been wrong? Is training too academic? Do we not prepare our graduates properly for the ‘real world’? Do universities not know what the (changing) i