A collaborative multimodal working environment for the development of instrumental and professional competences of student translators: an innovative teaching experience

ABSTRACT

Situated learning is based on the premise that action is grounded in the concrete situation and the specific circumstances in which it occurs. Such situatedness involves translation students working with authentic projects and developing professional skills, as translation needs to be undertaken within a particular framework where translators interact with colleagues and use tools for problem-solving tasks. In profession-oriented approaches to translator education, situated learning encourages the construction of new knowledge upon real-life working environments, which have evolved towards multimodal collaborative work scenarios which, in turn, simulate real-life workplaces. In order to help trainee translators develop instrumental and professional competences, we present an experimental study aimed at measuring students’ academic performance in a project-based role play translation task. The study involves students using Web 2.0 tools for the translation of authentic texts on the basis of a realistic translation commission. The results point to a highly positive attitude of students towards Web 2.0 tools. Students found them very useful, interaction among team members was facilitated, and learning performance showed a significant improvement, with students feeling more confident, autonomous and encouraged by facing a realistic situation.

KEYWORDS:

• collaborative multimodal working environment
• translator education
• situated learning
• Web 2.0
• communities of practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Kelly (2005, 32–33) provides a detailed description of the components of translation or translator competence.

2. The surveys and the blogs generated as a result of projects can be accessed in Spanish at http://proyectosipt.blogspot.com.es/

3. RefWorks, recently renamed as Flow, is a web-based citation manager and social network for storing, organising, inserting, formatting, and sharing citations for research papers available online at https://www.refworks.com/

4. This role play is based on the professional model for translation teaching MPDT [Modelo profesional para la Didáctica de la Traducción] developed by the academics and researchers of the virtual translation classroom Aula.Int (http://www.aulaint.es).

5. Sobresaliente means an average performance of about 90–100%; Notable, about 70–89%; Aprobado, about 50–69%; Suspenso (fail), below 50%.

6. Although in most cases tight deadlines do not allow for professional translators to actually do this, we believe that keeping a blog is a very useful tool in situated learning approaches, as it allows students to express and share their progress, while gaining feedback from both the trainer and the rest of the participating students. It could also be an important source of motivation. In this sense, the use of blogs could be understood in the line of, for example, think-aloud-protocols, a conscious, deliberate reflection about the students’ work. Otherwise, it could be confused as some professional stage, which is not the case.