On the margins of the profession: the work placement as a site for the literary translator trainee’s legitimate peripheral participation

ABSTRACT

The concepts of situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) provide a theoretical framework for learning that is student-centred, based on collaboration and placed on the margins of a given community of practice, with a view to bringing the learner closer to that community. In translation pedagogy, these features converge most notably with the tenets of social constructivism, which insists on the importance of the publishable translation project in translator training methodology. This article aims to provide an account of a type of authentic translation project carried out at Universitat Jaume I (Castelló, Spain) as the final part of literary translator training at the institution, and to root it in learning theory and translation pedagogy. The translation project is conducted in the framework of the work placement that all students have to go through as a requirement for graduation. Actual practice in that context is for the most part in accordance with a socio-constructivist approach. But some relative departures from that approach are observed as regards the role assigned to the instructor, the notions of autonomy and empowerment, and identity formation.

KEYWORDS:

• literary translator training
• legitimate peripheral participation (LPP)
• work placement
• empowerment
• leadership

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It must be added, though, that in recent years Kiraly has moved beyond the limits of social constructivism to develop an eclectic approach to translation pedagogy dubbed holistic-experiential and rooted in several disciplines and models. In his ‘arborescent’ representation of such an approach (Kiraly 2012, 86), social constructivism is just one of the seven roots of the tree. It is impossible to summarise here the implications of this approach, but it may be worth mentioning one of the roots, namely, the concept of enaction. This notion is borrowed from the field of cognitive biology and rests on the assumption that the mind, like many other systems in nature, is self-creating and self-sustaining. In line with that assumption, learning, which in socio-constructivist theory was constructed, is now claimed to be an act of becoming – that is what enaction means.

2. For a discussion of the alleged incompatibilities between task-based and project-based methods, see Marco Borillo (2004).

3. For more details, please visit the following website: http://www.uji.es/UK/infoest/estudis/titols/e@/22891/?p_url=/UK/infoest/estudis/titols&p_item=22891&pTitulacionId=207.

4. What is understood by ‘publishable’ here is not substantially different from the way Kiraly uses the term, as far as I am aware. The basic ingredient is quality: The translated product is expected to meet the quality standards of professional practice as regards transfer and target language use, including typographical conventions. In the case of translated literature, transfer concerns not only propositional content but also form (style). Apart from that, the translation commission needs to be justified on social grounds, i.e. there must be a publisher who is interested in having a certain text translated in order to publish it for whatever reasons (financial or otherwise), and they ought to have acquired translation rights if necessary. But the latter ingredient is taken for granted, as it is the cornerstone on which the whole project rests. Needless to say, social relevance, in the sense just referred to, is also a pre-condition for non-literary translation projects, even if particular circumstances may be a bit different.

5. Technically referred to in the literature as direct corrective feedback. I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers of this article for suggesting this term.

6. The actual words in Spanish were: ‘el texto estaba francamente bien, y en el aspecto estilístico lo poco que he tocado ha sido para evitar repeticiones de palabras en la misma frase, algo que ocurría con cierta frecuencia’.

7. Although it might be argued that there are others, such as collaboration with the author (e.g. in a literary retreat) or with an editor at a publishing house. I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers of this article for this suggestion.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant FFI2012-35239; and Universitat Jaume I under Grant P1·1B2013-44.