Embracing transdisciplinarity to prepare for the future: revisiting the gap between the labour market and translator education

ABSTRACT

There has long been a disconnect between the labour market for translators and translator education. Most research on this disconnect focuses on either industry or education in isolation, leaving the problem unsolved. To address this gap, this study examines both industrial and educational perspectives on transdisciplinarity in translators’ domain competence through an epistemological lens. Three types of data are collected: translation-related job ads, curriculum plans of Master of Translation and Interpretation (MTI) programmes, and semi-structured interviews with teachers-cum-translators. The findings, derived from data mining and textometric analyses of targeted job ads together with content analyses of both curriculum plans and interviews, show a shared epistemological understanding in industry and education of new forms of knowledge pertaining to domain-specific translation tasks. Alongside this shared understanding, we highlight misalignment between market needs for and training on knowledge about cross-boundary collaborations, and we explore the transdisciplinary domain competence required to cope with a complex-market reality using a common language shared with stakeholders. The implications for a transdisciplinary approach to translator education are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Industry-education gap
• mixed-method approach
• transdisciplinarity
• translator education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. 51job, with an average of over 5 million job posts, has the largest number of registered members (over 100 million), the largest resume database (100 million) and the highest peak traffic (over 300 million average daily page views) in China. See more at: https://www.51job.com/.

2. See more about Octopus Data Extractor at: https://www.octoparse.com/product#.

3. The China National Committee for MTI Education (CNC) is an organisation affiliated with the Academic Degree Committee of the State Council and the Ministry of Education in China, aiming to guide and coordinate the reform and development of MTI education, promote partnership between MTI institutes and employers and enhance international exchange and cooperation in education. The guiding curriculum plan is issued by CNC as a guideline for MTI education, based on which MTI institutes design their own curriculum plans and make any necessary adjustments.

4. See more about Copyleaks at: https://copyleaks.com/about-copyleaks.

5. Data on average nationwide and provincewide salaries and on graduates from the top 100 universities as ranked by graduates’ salaries were collected from Xinchou.com, a third-party salary survey agency, using its intelligent analysis engine Alpha Monster™ to collect, organise, analyse, calculate and forecast salary data in the global human resources field.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Project no. 2020110912, 2020110892) and research projects funded by Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (Project no. 2020110925, 2021150005).