Training and educating interpreter and translator trainers as practitioners-researchers-teachers

ABSTRACT

With a focus on the synergies between practice and research, and the way they can inform each other in the education and training of future interpreters and translators, this article discusses pedagogical approaches in T&I education and makes training-of-trainers recommendations to be followed when choosing T&I teachers in courses that match the needs of today’s markets and the new realities of contemporary higher education. Aiming to cross the divide between practitioners and researchers and between T&I training and education, the article proposes that higher education institutions promote the presence of both the vocational and the academic in the classroom by recognising the status of practitioner-researchers and valuing the experiential. To fulfil their pedagogical duties and roles, any practitioner, academic, or practisearcher involved in a T&I course should undertake teacher training and acquire the teaching expertise necessary to properly guide and advise future T&I professionals. Higher education institutions should ensure that their T&I trainers and educators acquire the didactic knowledge, at both micro and macro levels, needed to guide trainees along solid pedagogical lines.

KEYWORDS:

• Training of T&I trainers
• T&I expertise and teaching expertise
• teacher training
• vocational training and academic education
• T&I pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Examples include the course in Pedagogy of Translating and Interpreting at RMIT in Melbourne, the Master of Advanced Studies in Interpreter Training at the FTI/University of Geneva, and the Master of Interpreting and Translation Pedagogy at Macquarie University in Sydney. The pedagogical content they propose(d) is presented in section 4.3.

2. Ethics approval: Project ID 5755 awarded by MUHREC (Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee) on 2 December 2016.

3. Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, RMIT postgraduate course. Accessed 26 January 2019. http://www1.rmit.edu.au/courses/041236.

4. University of Geneva, Centre for continuing and remote education. Accessed 16 June 2018. https://www.unige.ch/formcont/cours/mas-interpreter-training-2019#t1 .

5. Macquarie University, Handbook. Accessed 16 June 2018. http://www.handbook.mq.edu.au/2011/Programs/PGProgram/TRAN35P/index.html.