Project-based learning in teaching translation: students’ perceptions

Abstract

Along with the increasing interest in learning-centred constructivist approaches to translator education, there have been proposals to introduce project-based learning (PjBL), popular in education, to the teaching of translation. Typical of this approach is that students are usually invited to complete an authentic practical translation project either in small groups or as individuals. This article, however, presents another type of project in translator education and discusses how such a project was incorporated into the teaching of business translation in the Chinese context. Furthermore, it reports on an investigation of the students’ reception and perceptions of the PjBL project, which was carried out as part of the evaluation process of the project. It is hoped that the documenting of our experimentation with the project may serve as an easy reference for other teachers who may be interested in trying this methodology in their teaching, and that the findings regarding the students’ perceptions mainly investigated through qualitative methods can be further confirmed with future quantitative research designs.

Keywords:

• Project-based learning
• translation teaching
• students’ perceptions
• Macau

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express thanks to Donald Kiraly and another anonymous reviewer for their critical and insightful comments on an earlier version of the article.

Notes

1. PjBL is used here instead of PBL, which is often used to refer to problem-based learning.

2. ‘J’ stands for ‘journal’. ‘Kary’ is the pseudonym of the student who wrote the journal. ‘2’ indicates it is an extract from the second journal Kary submitted.

3. ‘f’ refers to ‘focus group interview’. ‘1’ indicates it is a comment made by a member of the first focus group. ‘28’ indicates the page number of the transcripts of the interview discussions.

4. All the returned questionnaires were randomly numbered. ‘q/No.15’ stands for Questionnaire No. 15.