Ivory tower vs. workplace reality

ABSTRACT

These days employability has not only become a veritable buzzword, but also one of the key indicators in the quality framework of Higher Education (HE) in so far as universities and degrees are regularly measured against the employability rates of their graduates and employers’ satisfaction. Accordingly, HE seems to be torn between two conflicting priorities: legitimate academic freedom and teaching autonomy on the one side and the necessary adjustment to constantly changing professional demands and job requirements on the other. Drawing on the Spanish higher education context, the article touches on issues relating to the tense balance between academic and professional practice knowledge in curricular development and the embedding of employability enhancing contents and activities into the T&I curriculum. The main purpose of the present contribution is to take into consideration the TSP employers’ view on T&I graduates' employability assets and to promote further discussion by trying to bridge the theory-practice gap and to advocate a curricular approach which allows for balancing academic subject matter and workplace skills in a way that they complement each other in a relevant and beneficial manner.

KEYWORDS:

• Employability
• curricular development
• curricular design in translation and interpreting
• skills
• competences
• professional practice knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For a critical discussion of the notion translation competence see Lesznyák (2007), Rothe-Neves (2007) and Pym (2003).

2. In line with Pym’s (2003, 489) minimalist approach to reach a specific goal means here to carry out successfully a translation assignment and to be able to generate as series of viable target texts and to select the one that best fits the assignment.

3. The term disciplinary content knowledge refers here to the declarative knowledge of theoretical-translatological nature and by specific competencies and skills we understand the procedural knowledge including the translational-practical competencies (terminology management, project management, proofreading and editing, etc.).

4. We are very grateful for this support and our thanks go especially to J.J. Arevalillo Doval (President of ASPROSET) and Dr. Marcos Aranda (Secretary of ASPROSET) for their valuable comments and help in disseminating the survey.

5. We wish to express our sincere gratitude to Dr. José Antonio López-Ruiz, Director of the Research and Social Studies Unit, for his advice and technical support.

6. The great discrepancy between access rate and the final response rate is mainly due to the intrinsic characteristics of online surveys. Concerning the limitations of self-administered online surveys, see also Wright (2005). The access to the web-based questionnaire via a link to the website was anonymous, so that a survey participant could easily skip through the questionnaire without completing it or abandon and re-access it at any time.

7. As for the advantages of project-based learning see Biel (2011).