beyond the ivory tower - rethinking translation pedagogy

BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER

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Beyond the Ivory TowerRethinking translation pedagogy

AMERICAN TRANSLATORS ASSOCIATIONSCHOLARLY MONOGRAPH SERIES

Volume XII 2003

EDITED BY

Brian James BaerGeoffrey S. Koby

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Table of contents

Introduction: Translation pedagogy: The other theory viiBrian James Baer and Georey S. Koby

1. Translation as process 1

From instruction to collaborative construction: A passing fad or thepromise of a paradigm shift in translator education? 3

Donald C. Kiraly

Towards an empirically-based translation pedagogy 33Sonia Colina

Think-alouds as a pedagogical tool 61Judy Wakabayashi

Teaching translation as a form of writing: Improving translator self-concept 83

Alexander Gross

2. Translation as product 95

Learning through portfolios in the translation classroom 97Julie E. Johnson

Assessing assessment: Translator training evaluation and the needs ofindustry quality assessment 117

Fanny Arango-Keeth and Georey S. Koby

Teaching text revision in a multilingual environment 135Jonathan T. Hine, Jr.

Gender, pedagogy, and literary translation: Three workshops and asuggestion 157

Carol S. Maier

After [Isaac] Babel: Teaching communicative competence fortranslation 173

Natalia Olshanskaya

vi Contents

3. Translation-related technologies 191

Towards a collaborative approach to corpus building in the translationclassroom 193

Lynne Bowker

Task-based instruction and the new technology: Training translators forthe modern language industry 211

Georey S. Koby and Brian James Baer

Building a curriculum for Japanese localization translators: Revisitingtranslation issues in the era of new technologies 229

Takashi Kosaka and Masaki Itagaki

Contributors 251Index 255

Introduction

Translation pedagogy: The other theory

Brian James Baer and Georey S. Koby

Much of the discussion of translation pedagogy today is drowned out by theendless debate over theory versus practice. Practitioners in the eld typically seelittle value in academic theorizing on translation that is often the product ofinuences emanating from the humanities and social sciences. As EmmaWagner put it: Translation theory? Spare us Thats the reaction to beexpected from most practicing translators. Messages from the ivory tower tendnot to penetrate as far as the wordface. (The wordface is the place where wetranslators work think of a miner at the coalface) (2002: 1). Translationtheory is typically criticized as at best irrelevant to the professional translatorand at worst distracting and misleading. It is time, Douglas Robinson statedin The Translators Turn, to oer translators tools, not rules (1991: xvi).

The prejudice against theory on the part of practitioners is understandable,for while translation may be the worlds second oldest profession, it has onlyrecently been institutionalized as a unique discipline within the academy. Itsposition outside or on the margins of scholarship has helped to foster a profoundskepticism toward translation theory, fueled by popular beliefs that translatorsare born, not made, or that translation is something that is learned on the job,not in the classroom. This view made its way into the academy in the concept ofnatural translation, proposed by Harris (1977) and Harris and Sherwood (1978),according to which translation was seen as a skill inherent in bilinguals. Thiseectively conated translation pedagogy with that of language acquisition.

While there have been many signicant attempts to think beyond theopposition of theory versus practice, the real loser in this debate which isessentially a debate about curricular content continues to be the wholequestion of how to teach translation. Is the challenge faced by translator trainers

viii Brian James Baer and Georey S. Koby

really just a choice between teaching tools or rules? We may hope to betterprepare students for the workplace by oering them appropriate tools, but ifour teaching methodology is of the traditional kind the performancemagistrale described by Jean-Ren Ladmiral (1977) in which the master passeson his/her knowledge to a passive apprentice we may fail to producetranslators who are capable of the exibility, teamwork and problem-solvingthat are essential for success in the contemporary language industry, not tomention the creativity and independent thinking that have always been thehallmark of the nest translators. It may be, in fact, that the how is as important,if not more so, than the what: If the translator has no formal training [intranslation pedagogy], writes Maria-Luisa Arias-Moreno, the experience ismore than chaotic and catastrophic for students (1999: 335). Moreover, thevery small number of doctoral programs in translation studies and the practicalorientation of masters programs means that many instructors of translationhave no formal training in pedagogy and must pick it up, if at all, on the job.

Throughout the 1990s, however, a growing number of translator trainershave addressed what Donald Kiraly has called the pedagogical gap in transla-tion skill instruction, reected in the lack of clear objectives, curricular mate-rials, and teaching methods (1995: 5). Translator trainers interested in issuesof pedagogy have looked to new methodologies developed for use in theteaching of foreign languages and various applied disciplines in order to chal-lenge traditional classroom practice that bears a strong resemblance to theantiquated grammar-translation method of foreign language teaching (7).

Developments in foreign language pedagogy over the last twenty-ve yearsthat were engendered by the shift from behavioralist models (Skinner) tocognitive models (Bloom, Piaget, Vygotsky) of language acquisition, oertranslator trainers a variety of new instructional methodologies.1 These modelsseek to engage the students higher-level cognitive processing as elaboratedin Blooms taxonomy involving the interpretation, expression and nego-tiation of meaning, both in and out of the classroom (Lee and Van Patten1995: 14). The attempt to bring the real world into the classroom (Krahnke1987: 57) is another common feature of these new pedagogical initiatives, as isthe creation of more learner-centered classrooms, in which teachers functionas facilitators, guiding learners in the completion of real-world tasks. In addi-tion to producing more motivated learners and more eective learning, con-textualization of language use in real-world situations also helps to develop avariety of extralinguistic skills in the learner, such as sensitivity to culture-specic issues and non-verbal means of communication (i.e., gestures, facialexpressions, images).

ixIntroduction

Inuenced by these trends in foreign language instruction and other ap-plied disciplines that have adopted cognitive rather than behavioralist modelsof instruction, Jean Delisle, Daniel Gile, Donald Kiraly, F. G. Knigs and PaulKussmaul, among others, have called for a more process-oriented, learner-centered approach to translation training. Their work articulates challengesfacing translator trainers that have little to do with the debate over theoryversus practice so often articulated in our professional literature, where aca-demics are unfairly pitted against practitioners.2 Those challenges suggested bycognitive models are essentially threefold:

(1) How to impart both declarative knowledge (facts, rules) and proceduralknowledge (conceptual understanding) often referred to as informa-tion and knowledge, respectively;

(2) How to engage higher-level cognitive processing to make teaching moreeective and learners more resourceful and exible;

(3) How to encourage professional conduct and the development of thestudents self-image as a translator.

These issues are especially relevant today as developments in various technol-ogy-related elds (i.e., telecommunications, the Internet, computer-assistedtranslation) are altering and expanding the skill sets that are expected of aprofessional translator, putting pressure on translator training programs toadd them to the curriculum without increasing the credit hours needed forcompletion.

The traditional tasks that professional translators perform have been in-tensively modied by the language engineering industry and the recent devel-opment of highly sophisticated and customized computerized programs andtools. Increasing numbers of translators are already working with computer-assisted translation software, and are expected to know desktop publishers andother presentation software. It is also becoming increasingly common fortranslators to interact with and revise the output of machine translation soft-ware. Consequently, translators are expected to acquire a growing number ofnew translation skills as they build their professional proles, such as techno-logical project management, production of translated texts using computer-assisted terminology databases, ability to use localization software, as well asmethodologies of corpus linguistics. Inherent in all these changes is the possi-bility that the language industry has modied the protocols for quality assur-ance and quality assessment, that is, the very process of translation evaluation.

Clearly, the greatest danger is that the pace of technological change willobscure important pedagogical considerations. First, training in technology

x Brian James Baer and Georey S. Koby

may occur at the expense of other fundamental translation skills such aslearning how to read a text closely, writing, editing, researching (Durban etal. 2003). Second, when introducing new technological skills, trainers may betempted to impart only declarative knowledge, showing students whichbuttons to press, rather than the procedural knowledge that will help themdeal with the inevitable modications and developments in that technology. Aresponsible translation studies program should not only teach technologicalskills, but should impart knowledge of the underlying principles in areas suchas terminology management and software localization.

As suggested by the foregoing discussion, the present volume focuses onthose pedagogical issues typically ignored within the theory vs. practice de-bate. All of the contributors are translator trainers working in various institu-tional settings in North America and Europe. Informed by both experienceand theories of pedagogy, they oer critical discussion of pedagogical meth-ods, together with sample lessons and exercises, conrming, we hope, MildredLarsons observation that as we look at the material that has been written ontranslation theory and practice, the books of particular signicance are oftenwritten by persons who, in addition to being translators themselves, are alsoteachers of translation (1991: 2). Moreover, it is our hope that such discus-sions of translation pedagogy can oer a way out of the impasse betweentheory and practice by suggesting dierent and perhaps ultimately more use-ful questions. Instead of How relevant is what Im teaching to the profes-sion? we might better ask, How eectively am I teaching students to thinkabout translation?

This volume is divided into three sections. The articles in the rst sectionexplore various pedagogical interventions that are focused on the performanceof translation, or translation as process. The articles in the second part discussapproaches to translator training that deal with nished translations, or transla-tion as product, raising questions of assessment, evaluation, and text revisionin both professional and academic settings. The articles in the third section ofthe volume address some of the pedagogical opportunities and challengesraised by developments in translation-related technologies. It should be noted,however, that the divisions here are provisional and the boundaries porous.For example, the approaches based on translation as product seek to inuencetranslation as process, making students more aware of the ways in which theygo about the translators task, while many of the pedagogical initiatives men-tioned in sections one and two are facilitated if not made possible by the adventof new technologies. And while Judy Wakabayashis article on Think-AloudProtocols has been placed in section one, we are aware that, using TAPs, it is

xiIntroduction

only products which are available, although products of a dierent kind andorder (Toury 1977: 65).

The volume opens with Donald Kiralys discussion of process-orientedpedagogy. In order to displace the traditional objectivist approach to translatortraining, which is basically teacher-centered, Kiraly proposes the incorpora-tion of an innovative social-constructivist approach that better reects themulti-faceted activity of the contemporary language professional. He alsoencourages translator trainers to redene translator competence in order toaddress the disparity between what is learned in the classroom and what ispracticed in the eld. After briey describing social-constructivist educationalepistemology, Kiraly asserts that fostering collaboration in the classroom is thekey to shifting from a teacher-centered approach to a learner-centered ap-proach. He argues that, by using a project workshop, students become morecompetent, reective, self-condent and professional.

Sonia Colina addresses similar concerns in her discussion of the applicabil-ity of communicative competence as developed in the eld of Second LanguageAcquisition to the translation classroom. The aim of communicative transla-tional competence, Colina argues, is to encourage a more sense-oriented ap-proach to translation that would address the traditional weaknesses of thebeginning translator, such as the tendency to ignore the global, textual, andpragmatic considerations used by professional translators. Colina then dem-onstrates how such translational competence can be fostered in the classroomby oering a well-structured lesson plan.

Sharing Colinas goal of encouraging more sense-oriented translation,Judy Wakabayashi explores the eectiveness of using Think-Aloud Protocols(TAP) in the classroom. TAPs can be used, Wakabayashi suggests, in order tohighlight the dierences between the processing performed by novices andthat of translation professionals. TAPs can be performed by students in orderto make them more aware of their general approach to translation. However,they can also be performed by the instructor in order to model professionaltranslator behavior.

Alex Grosss contribution also aims at improving the students self-imageas a translator. By teaching translation as a form of target-language writing,Gross suggests that translator trainers can help dismantle the enduring stereo-type of translation as an inevitably dim reection of an authentic original text.

Section twos focus on translation as product begins with Julie Johnsonsexploration of the ways in which portfolios can be used as an assessment tool inorder to make the translation classroom more learner-centered. The proper useof portfolios, Johnson argues, can contribute to the preparation of translators

xii Brian James Baer and Georey S. Koby

who are skilled, intuitive, and self-reective by fostering critical thinking andfacilitating process-oriented learning. Moreover, they not only teach transla-tors-in-training to evaluate their own work, they prepare them to present theirwork in a professional manner to potential employers. Johnson discusses twotypes of portfolio: the course portfolio, presented as a terminal project in a singlecourse, and the professional portfolio, prepared as an exit project at the end ofa course of study.

Fanny Arango-Keeth and Georey Koby address the disparity betweenstudent evaluation in translator training and quality assessment as practiced inthe translation industry. They report on a survey of such practices that theyconducted in early 2002 which highlights these disparities, and argue forgreater harmonization and coordination between the two.

Jonathan Hine discusses the challenges of teaching the importantbut often neglected skill of text revision within a multilingual environment,oering a case study of one such course. Born out of necessity, this coursemight serve as a model for meeting student needs when an insucient numberof students is working in a single language pair to meet minimum courseenrollments. Monolingual and bilingual components were broken into mod-ules and a protocol was developed for handling assignments outside the lan-guages of the instructor.

Carol Maier continues the discussion of translation as product in herexploration of various ways in which the comparative study of translations canhelp literary translators become self-aware, more sensitive to issues of class,gender, race, religion and ethnicity in their work. Maier evaluates the eective-ness of the approaches she has used in translation workshops to encourageself-reection and foster discussion among translators professionals andstudents alike concerning the general workings of ideology as reected inthe translation of gender.

Natalia Olshanskayas contribution also makes use of evaluation of worksof translation, but with the object of improving the students communicativeprociency. Making reference to various translations into English of the worksof Isaac Babel, a Ukrainian-born, Russian-speaking Jew, Olshanskaya isolatesthose moments in which the translations demonstrate communicative de-ciencies. Like Maier, Olshanskaya suggests an important role for translationcriticism in the teaching of translation competence.

Beginning section three, Lynn Bowker explores the pedagogical possibili-ties opened up by new technology, specically for the building of corpora.Recognizing the growing importance of corpus creation and analysis in lan-guage-related disciplines and the value of using textual corpora as a translation

xiiiIntroduction

resource, Bowker proposes an innovation to the pedagogical approach knownas corpora-based translation instruction. Bowker advocates a collaborativeapproach to corpora building that allows students to build a corpus in thetranslation classroom. In order to demonstrate the viability of this proposal,she describes several dierent experiments she conducted in the building oftargeted textual corpora related to the subject of computing. Bowkers learner-centered approach to corpus building encourages students to become inde-pendent learners and critical thinkers.

Georey Koby and Brian James Baer address some of the challenges posedto translation pedagogy by the development and proliferation of new tech-nologies. The urgent need for technical translators, localizers, and projectmanagers may result in a failure to address fundamental questions of teachingmethodology in an attempt to produce as many qualied professionals aspossible in the least amount of time. Koby and Baer suggest that Task-BasedInstruction (TBI) may be an appropriate methodology for teaching transla-tion-related technologies in that it increases student motivation, replicates realworld situations, engages higher-level cognitive processing, and addresses avariety of useful competences above and beyond technical prociency. Inorder to demonstrate the applications of TBI to the translation classroom, theauthors oer a number of tasks that can be used in the teaching of localization.

Takashi Kosaka and Masaki Itagaki also address general pedagogical is-sues related to the teaching of software localization, as well as specic prob-lems involved with localization between English and Japanese. The authorsdispel a number of myths surrounding translation of English text into Japa-nese and recount their own experiences as teachers of localization. Finally,Kosaka and Itagaki suggest that the dearth of qualied localization instructorscan be remedied through a social-constructivist approach to teaching thatoers a collaborative structure through which students and instructors canshare knowledge and skills.

All of the phenomena discussed above the development and implemen-tation of new methods in foreign language pedagogy, pedagogical initiativesintroduced in various applied disciplines, changes in the rapidly-expandinglanguage industry, and the advent of new technologies for use in both theclassroom and the workplace are presently aecting the development oftranslation pedagogy, in both its content and its methods, leading it into newdirections. They challenge teachers of translation to respond with a pedagogythat addresses not only the acquisition of new practical capabilities, but also theability to re-conceptualize the translators task and the evolving role of theindividual translator. Moreover, it is our hope that this volume will further

xiv Brian James Baer and Georey S. Koby

discussion of pedagogical methods among translator trainers, lending newvisibility to the subject of translation pedagogy, which has been for too long theother, forgotten theory in translation studies.

Notes

1. While the theories of Bloom, Piaget and Vygotsky may all seem to be concerned withcognitive processes, there are fundamental epistemological dierences among them. ForBloom and Piaget, there are innate structures in the brain designed specically for languageacquisition, while for Vygotsky, these structures do not exist a priori. Rather, they areconstructed through the negotiation of meaning in language.

2. For a good discussion of the (often inaccurate) assumptions that structure the debateover theory versus practice, see Pym 2001.

References

Arias-Moreno, M.-L. 1999. What? Teach translation? In Proceedings of the 40th AnnualConference of the American Translators Association, A. G. Macfarlane (ed), 335342.Alexandria, Virginia: American Translators Association.

Durban C. et al. 2003. Translator training & the real world: Concrete suggestions forbridging the gap. Translation Journal 7 (1): accessed on February 3, 2003.

Harris, B. 1977. The importance of natural translation. Working Papers on Bilingualism 12:96114.

Harris, B., and Sherwood, B. 1978. Translating as an innate skill. In Language, Interpreta-tion, and Communication, D. Gerver and H. W. Sinaiko (eds), 15570. New York andLondon: Plenum.

Kiraly, D. G. 1995. Pathways to Translation. Pedagogy and Process. Kent, Ohio: Kent StateUniversity Press.

Krahnke, K. 1987. Approaches to Syllabus Design for Foreign Language Teaching. EnglewoodClis, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Ladmiral, J. R. 1977. La traduction dans le cadre de linstitution pedagogique. DieNeueren Sprachen 76: 489516.

Larson, M. L. 1991. Editors Note: The interdependence of theory and practice. In Trans-lation: Theory and Practice. Tension and Interdependence, M. L. Larson (ed), 14. Ameri-can Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series, Volume V. Binghamton, NewYork: State University of New York at Binghamton.

Lee, J. F., and Van Patten, B. 1995. Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen. NewYork: McGraw-Hill.

Pym, A. 2001. To localize and humanize On academics and translation. LanguageInternational 13 (4): 2628.

xvIntroduction

Robinson, D. 1991. The Translators Turn. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.Toury, G. 1974. The notion of native translator and translation teaching. In Die Theorie

des bersetzens und ihr Aufschluwert fr die bersetzungs- und Dolmetschdidaktik, W.Wilss and G. Thome (eds), 18695. Tbingen: Gunter Narr.

. 1977. Translation Norms and Literary Translation into Hebrew. Tel Aviv: PorterInstitute for Poetics and Semiotics.

Wagner, E., and Chesterman, A. 2002. Can Theory Help Translators? A Dialogue between theIvory Tower and the Wordface. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome.

1. Translation as process

From instruction to collaborativeconstruction

A passing fad or the promise of a paradigm shiftin translator education?

Donald C. Kiraly

Introduction

After some fty years of a shadowy existence at the periphery of the emergingeld of translation studies, translator education has reached a crossroads. Nowthat its parent eld has matured to become a full-edged area of study in itsown right, there is increasing concern that the development of methods foreducating professional translators has been neglected in favor of a hand-me-down principle, where each new generation of translators merely does untotheir students what was done unto them. Over the past decade there have beensome articles, a few books, and even some conferences on the teaching oftranslation, but so far there has been little concerted eort to either justifyexisting pedagogical models or create innovative ones for the education ofnon-literary translators.

This situation is nally beginning to change; witness the title of this vol-ume, Beyond the Ivory Tower: Rethinking Translation Pedagogy. The question Ihave posed in the title of this paper is one that we, the community of transla-tion teachers, need to answer for ourselves. There is a lively debate going on inother educational circles today that revolves around a family of conceptsincluding collaboration, radical constructivism, social constructivism,empowerment, and reective practice. At the same time, job announce-ments in the language mediation eld rarely fail to mention the ability to workas part of a team as a requirement for employment. The time is indeed ripe toask ourselves if collaboration represents no more than a passing fad in educa-tional jargon (and in job descriptions), or whether it might not serve as a key to

4 Donald C. Kiraly

innovation, allowing us to adapt our conventional hand-me-down approachin order to meet the exigencies of a much changed translation market and toaddress the challenges posed by contemporary views of the translators craft.

In making a case for considering collaboration as a particularly valuableelement in developing innovative methods for translator education, I particu-larly hope to demonstrate that the rst step in the process of creating anyeducational approach must be the specication of the underlying epistemology,that is, our understanding of what it means to know and to learn. Thesephilosophical underpinnings will form the essential conceptual foundationthat will inform, justify and link together all subsequent stages of teaching,from curriculum and syllabus design to the creation of classroom techniquesand methods of evaluation.

In this article, I will take the reader on a brief reective journey through myown process of selecting and interpreting sources of inspiration from theextensive literature on collaboration, and through the development of mypersonal approach to translator education. Of course I understand that there isnothing absolute about my choices, interpretations or conclusions. Eachteacher will draw on dierent sources and derive his or her own conclusionsfrom them. However, if we tackle the philosophical, pedagogical and didacticproblems of teaching as a community of practice, if we begin as a team toresearch and debate these issues, we can jointly develop collaborative ap-proaches that can inform teaching on a systematic level throughout the eld oftranslator education. My task here is to raise issues and incite debate that Ihope will lead us far beyond my exploratory deliberations.1

Objectivism: A commonsense epistemology

Every educational method must be based on an epistemology: a theory, under-standing or set of beliefs about what it means to know, and hence to learn. Ofcourse, the shades of gray in this matter are innite, but for the sake ofargument, I will be presenting conventional epistemology as if it were mono-lithic so that it can be contrasted with its theoretical antithesis: socialconstructivism. I have no pretense to being impartial or objective in myportrayals here. I can only present and explain my interpretations, let youreect on them, and encourage you to come up with your own.

Until recently, few authors of educational publications claimed to repre-sent an objectivist viewpoint. The common sense view that teachers transmittruth about the world to their students has needed neither explication nor

5From instruction to collaborative construction

justication. It has been largely left to constructivists to dene and specify thefeatures and implications of this ubiquitous common sense epistemology.For example, in the words of the renowned linguist and cognitive scientistGeorge Lako:

Objectivism is a view of the nature of knowledge and what it means to knowsomething. In this view, the mind is an instantiation of a computer, manipulatingsymbols in the same way (or analogously, at least) as a computer [] Knowledge,therefore, is some entity existing independently of the mind, which is transferredinside the mind. Cognition is the rule-based manipulation of the symbols viaprocesses that will be ultimately describable through the language of mathematicsand/or logic. Thus, this school of thought believes that the external world is mindindependent (i.e., the same for everyone). (1987: 20)

From this viewpoint (also called positivism or foundationalism), meaningis believed to exist objectively in the real world independently of the observer,and the goal of learning is to come to know these objective meanings. In theobjectivist classroom then, the teacher is privy in some sense to the rightanswers, that is, to truth, and the learners are there to nd out what thoseanswers are. Social constructivists claim that conventional teacher-centeredinstruction, where the teachers knowledge is supposed to be passed on tostudents, is derived from the common sense positivist belief that:

Experience plays an insignicant role in the structuring of the world: meaning issomething that exists in the world quite aside from experience. Hence, the goal ofunderstanding is coming to know the entities, attributes, and relations that exist.(Duy and Jonassen 1992: 2)

Evidence for the prevalence of such beliefs about meaning, knowing andlearning within the teaching profession can be found in instructional practicein classrooms the world over, from the two Cambridges to Tokyo, from rstgrade to the Ph.D. (Bruee 1995: 66).2 Published accounts of anecdotal evi-dence3 and my own informal survey of translation teachers and students at anumber of translator education institutions in Europe over the past six yearssuggest that didacticism or knowledge transmission is the order of the day intranslator education programs as it is in many, if not most, other institutional-ized educational environments. A closer look at the classical didactic tech-nique used in translation practice classes, as described by Christiane Nord(1996), reveals an underlying objectivist epistemology:

The students have more or less thoroughly prepared the text to be translated athome, and then take turns reading their translation suggestions sentence bysentence. These suggestions are discussed by the class as a whole, with commentsbeing made by the instructor, until an optimal solution is reached that everyone

6 Donald C. Kiraly

can agree on. This solution is usually written down by the students. (320, mytranslation)

The chart in Figure 1 illustrates my interpretation of how learning is actuallysupposed to come about through such a classroom activity:

Here, the primary teaching activity in the classroom involves the verbal trans-mission of some of the teachers amassed knowledge to the minds of thelearners in the form of the comments on the students generally faulty sugges-tions. It is the learners task to absorb this transmitted knowledge and commitit to memory. If students say anything at all in class, it is usually to display theirlack of knowledge as they read o passages from their rough translations andask questions so that the teacher can correct their errors and provide them withthe right answers. Talk between students is generally considered disruptive tothe transmission process. In decrying the evils of the collaborative classroom, aprofessor of history and dean of humanities and social sciences at an Americancollege wrote recently:

The teachers role is to transmit [his or her] laboriously acquired assets to studentsand to open intellectual doors hitherto closed. The students role is to pay atten-tion, benet from superior knowledge and experience, study diligently, and par-ticipate fruitfully when the moment is ripe. (Stunkel 1998: A52)

This statement eloquently illustrates Donald Schns concept of technicalrationalism, the implication of the objectivist perspective that professionalaction is rational, rule-bound behavior predicated on the prior ingestion ofready-made cognitive tools. One question that comes to my mind immediately

Figure 1. Interaction in a typical translator education classroom

*

*

**

* *

**

**

***

**

**

********** I

.

Teacher**

*

**

*

*

= display of lack of knowledge= distribution of knowledge*

*

*

*

THE REAL WORLDTHE CLASSROOM

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*

********** I

knowledge


upon reading this statement is how does one know that the moment is ripefor fruitful participation, and when does the metamorphosis from being apassive recipient of knowledge to a competent professional occur? Is thereactually a progression toward autonomy built into our curricula and teachingmethods? Do we gradually wean students from dependence on our knowledge,as strongly recommended by Freiho (1998):

[] it is the teachers job to move to the background right from the beginning,and to eventually withdraw completely [] Learning and teaching can thus beseen as an interactive process, in which learners become increasingly independent[] (29, my translation)

Or, do we not in fact tend to treat students at all levels as if their main task wereto absorb our knowledge right down until the moment when expertise andprofessionalism are conferred along with the diploma at graduation?

There are, of course, innumerable variations on the objectivist theme, butin my view, the model depicted here illustrates the most basic underlyingassumption of the conventional approach to learning and teaching. In this typeof classroom, collaboration is reduced to merely playing by the rules of thememorization game, which serves a largely passive secondary role to the mainattraction, which is the instructors display and distribution of amassed knowl-edge and experience. Here, there can be no team spirit, no lively interaction,and none of the negotiation of meaning that is the hallmark of more naturalforms of discourse. Given the underlying understanding of what it means tolearn and know, collaboration in such a classroom is a red herring. As KennethStunkel has said:

Virtually by denition, students are incapable on their own of exploring the topicat the same level. The reason is simple: A good teacher is an authority. He or shehas more knowledge, experience, and insight into a subject than the student does.(1998: A52)

Decades ago, translation led but a shadow existence at the edge of the humani-ties, when translators were considered little more than bilingual scribes. Backthen, it might well have been a viable educational approach to adopt anobjectivist viewpoint and transmit the necessary knowledge about contrastinglinguistic structures to students. Then, before researchers in translation studieshad produced the wealth of research and literature on the cultural, social andprofessional aspects of interlingual mediation that is part of our communityself-concept today, translation was surely seen as an essentially rational, rule-based, highly structured linguistic activity. As our earliest translator trainingprograms were just emerging half a century ago, the teachers at that time had

8 Donald C. Kiraly

to come from other academic domains. They were not necessarily translatorsthemselves; instead, they were philologists or linguists, and some were expatri-ates of other countries who found themselves employed as translation teachersbecause they happened to be native speakers of other languages. (This was infact my own experience, although I was not hired to teach translation until1983). In the absence of practical translation experience, teachers have littlealternative but to deal with their subject matter as if it were primarily apedagogical linguistic exercise rather than a multi-faceted professional activity.

If we believe in the ecacy of a transmissionist teaching approach, there isno real need for a debate on how to improve teaching. If students can acquiretheir teachers expertise by listening to them talk about the subject at hand, sotoo can novice teachers learn from procient ones by sitting in on classes andmimicking their mentors behavior. In both cases, knowledge and experiencecan be distilled and communicated through verbal symbols and handed downfrom a better-stocked mind to less knowledgeable ones.

The training of translation teachers has in fact proceeded in a manneranalogous to the training of translators themselves. It is only now that the rstacademic programs for the education of translation teachers are beginning toemerge.4 I believe that this new interest is in part due to an increasing aware-ness that translation has become a full-edged craft and profession, that thereis far more to the translation teaching process than passing on acquired knowl-edge, and that direct transmission is certainly not the only (and perhaps not themost eective) way to help students acquire the wide range of skills andexpertise that translators must have to complement their knowledge of con-trastive linguistics.

Since translator education programs have now been around for decades,more and more representatives of the younger generation of translation teach-ers actually have academic training as translators and professional translationexperience, which may encourage them to adopt a less ivory-tower and morepraxis-oriented approach. As I will attempt to show later in this chapter, afocus on the actual practice of translation outside the classroom naturally leadsaway from a teacher-centered, transmissionist approach and toward one thatputs the spotlight on students and (collaborative) learning instead. At thispoint I would like to introduce the social constructivist epistemology, which Ibelieve can serve as a strong theoretical cornerstone for the development ofstudent- and praxis-relevant teaching methods.


A family of alternative perspectives: The construction of reality

Constructivism is of course no more monolithic than the objectivist perspective.The two primary strains (around which are clustered numerous variants) areradical constructivism, which derives primarily from Piagets developmentalpsychology, and social constructivism, which draws considerable inspirationfrom the work of Lev Vygostky, but also from John Dewey (1938) and RichardRorty (1979). These two poles of the continuum share the fundamental idea thatpeople construct their understandings of the world rather than reect nature intheir minds. In the Piagetian tradition, perhaps most vociferously defended byErnst von Glasersfeld (1988), the radical variant focuses on the individualmind as the constructor of meaning and knowledge, whereas the social variantemphasizes the role of interaction between members of a community in comingto understand the world. My belief in a social constructivist perspective is apersonal one, based on my own experiences as a learner and teacher. There isnothing inherently wrong or right about it, but it is viable for me. I see the bestdegree of t between this viewpoint and my understanding of knowing andlearning. The selection of a particular perspective is clearly one that will have tobe made by each individual teacher. What is important, I think, is that the choicewe make at this level will clearly have a profound impact on the implications wedraw for our teaching practice, and specically on whether we see learning as anessentially individual or collaborative process.

At the heart of the social constructivist perspective is the belief that there isno meaning in the world until we human beings make it both individuallyand collectively. Learning and cognitive development the lifelong creationof the mind are seen to derive, rst and foremost, from the interplay ofcommunicative interaction and sense perception. In this view, while there is areality outside of subjective interpretation and belief, we cannot come to knowthat reality in any objective way. Instead, we construct dynamic, viable under-standings of the world on the basis of experience, the interpretation of oursense perceptions, and the resolution of conicts with our existing beliefs.

In this view, learning is a constructive process in which the learner is building aninternal representation of knowledge, a personal interpretation of experience.This representation is constantly open to change, its structure and linkages form-ing the foundation to which other knowledge structures are appended. Learning isan active process in which meaning is developed on the basis of experience.Conceptual growth comes from the sharing of multiple perspectives and thesimultaneous changing of our internal representations in response to those per-spectives as well as through cumulative experience. (Bednar et al. 1992: 21)

10 Donald C. Kiraly

An essential dierence between a conventional, objectivist viewpoint anda social constructivist one, particularly for translator education, lies in theawareness that from the latter perspective, the teachers experience and knowl-edge simply cannot be transferred to the learner. All input from the environ-ment, including a teachers utterances, will have to be interpreted, weighed andbalanced against each learners prior knowledge:

[] the argument is that meaning is imposed on the world by us, rather thanexisting in the world independently of us. There are many ways to structure theworld, and there are many meanings or perspectives for any event or concept.Thus there is not a correct meaning that we are striving for. (Duy and Jonassen1992: 3)

The way Duy and Jonassen have phrased the essence of constructivism pointsto a crucial realization for translator education: none of us, neither student norteacher, can possibly have the right answers. When faced with translationdecisions, we can come up with solutions that we believe are plausible andviable on the basis of our prior experience. But this experience has to be ourown, not the distillation of someone elses experience handed down in anabstract, verbal form.

Of particular interest here is the nding of expertise studies that what theexpert knows is neither separate nor separable from the professional activitiesin which that individual engages. In Donald Schns words:

I shall use knowing-in-action to refer to the sorts of know-how we reveal in ourintelligent action publicly observable, physical performances like riding abicycle and private operations like instant analysis of a balance sheet. In bothcases, the knowing is in the action. We reveal it by our spontaneous, skillfulexecution of the performance; and we are characteristically unable to make itverbally explicit. (Schn 1987: 25, my emphasis)

Schn sees the professional practice of lawyers, doctors, and engineers more asa matter of intuitive artistry in practice than of conscious, rule-bound deci-sion-making. His realization that experts generally cannot express in wordshow they do what they do suggests that the transmissionist approach cannotaccomplish what it purports to accomplish: the transfer of expertise from onemind to another. From a social constructivist viewpoint there is thus a need forextensive and intensive action (and interaction) on the part of each individualif learning is to be eective. Regardless of the domain involved, it entailsactually using the tools of a profession to fashion and re-fashion ones ownconcepts and translational artifacts, strategies and procedures in conjunctionwith peers and experienced professionals. Hence, the collaborative undertak-


ing of authentic tasks with the support of the teacher is at the heart of socialconstructivist teaching methods:

Perhaps, then, learning all forms of professional artistry depends, at least in part,on conditions similar to those created in the studios and conservatories: freedomto learn by doing in a setting relatively low in risk, with access to coaches whoinitiate students into the traditions of the calling and help them, by the rightkind of telling, to see on their own behalf and in their own way what they needmost to see. (Schn 1987: 17)

Over the past decade there has been a massive movement in many educationaldomains, from social studies to mathematics, from composition to distancelearning, and from elementary school to teacher education programs, to deviseand justify teaching methods on the basis of social constructivist principles.Nevertheless, while constructivism today is often portrayed as the dominantparadigm in contemporary educational philosophy and teacher training pro-grams, didactic practice reecting an objectivist viewpoint continues to persistin the classroom. The eld of translation studies is starting to question theviability of the hand-me-down approach to translation pedagogy and is look-ing to collaborative methods for inspiration. It is ironic that this developmentis occurring while constructivist collaboration is both at its zenith in theoryand under attack in practice in other educational domains. The main concernsseem to be that constructivist approaches are seen to fall short in the areas ofacademic rigor and classroom discipline, that they promote a chaotic, laissez-faire environment in the classroom where the teacher is no longer in control,and that they waste the teachers laboriously amassed knowledge:

[] in much of higher education, no interactive model can substitute for a well-organized lecture that structures a mass of information, illuminates basic con-cepts, suggests applications, reviews relevant literature and major interpretations,and displays what it means for someone to care about learning, inquiry andteaching. (Stunkel 1998: A52)

I would not say that Stunkel is wrong; he is merely drawing logical conclusionsfrom his underlying assumptions about the nature of knowing and learning.Interestingly, the article from which this quotation was taken is entitled, WeWant to See the Teacher: Constructivism and the Rage Against Expertise. Itassumes that in a classroom based on constructivist principles, teachers set uplearning environments and then withdraw to the sidelines, essentially leavingstudents to their own devices to make their way in the dark. This criticism mayindeed be justied in the case of several other alternative educational move-ments, like the discovery learning or autonomous learning methods.

12 Donald C. Kiraly

However, from a social constructivist perspective, the teacher in fact remains akey gure in the learning situation. One of the best-developed methods forteaching based on social constructivism is cognitive apprenticeship (Defalco1995, Bednar 1992, Collins, Brown, Newman 1989), where groups of learnerscreate pieces of work (rather than perform exercises) under the tutelage of andwith the collaborative support of an expert practitioner. And while there is sureto be considerable conversation and interaction in a social constructivist class-room, one of the teachers main jobs is to be attentive to those potentialmoments of developmental progress that Vygotsky called the zone of proxi-mal development in the course of students collaborative learning experi-ences. The teacher must also provide just enough assistance at those momentsto help the group move to a new level of understanding.

Another key concept for social constructivists is scaolding (see Fisher1994), representing a framework of support for learning created by the teacherat the beginning of a program of study, a course or a lesson. It is a supportiveintellectual framework that can be gradually dismantled as learners becomemore independent and assume more responsibility for their own learning. Asfor chaos, the social constructivist classroom may well be a less orderly placethan many conventional, teacher-centered classrooms; but it can be a learningenvironment that is more full of life, marked by mutual respect and true teamspirit among the learners as well as between the learners and their mentor. It isa place for authentic work and not just for exercises.

In educational circles in the English-speaking world, more and morevoices like the one quoted above are calling the constructivist paradigm intoquestion and plead for a return to traditional (i.e., teacher-centered and trans-mission-based) values in teaching. As the debate mounts in other applied elds,we in the eld of translator education are only just beginning to become awareof the innovative potential that constructivism might have for our learning/teaching environments.

Preparing for the translators craft: From translation competence totranslator competence

For me, perhaps the most compelling reasons for considering a radical changein the way we understand the acquisition of translation-related skills andknowledge and the way we instruct novice translators can be found both inchanges in the profession itself over the past half century and in recent ndingsof the extensive and multi-facetted academic work and research in translation


studies. Today, the work of the professional translator extends far beyondtranslation competence or the ability to create an equivalent target text inone language on the basis of a pre-existing text written in another language.When I started translating professionally in Germany in the mid-1980s, I hadno computer for word processing or terminology management, no e-mail, nomodem or even a fax machine to send or receive original texts or translations,and Internet access at home was still a distant desideratum. Because of con-straints on time and distance, translators often worked alone back then, pains-takingly searching for terminology in printed dictionaries and glossaries,typing their translations on electric typewriters; they focused above all on theirunderstanding of translation as a search for linguistic equivalence.

Of course, advances in technology have put a speedy computer with anInternet connection on the desk of most translators today. We have wordprocessors and spell-checkers, on- and o-line dictionaries and a panoply ofother software and resources to make the translation process more ecient. Atthe same time, however, the demands placed on us by the marketplace haveincreased exponentially. Turnaround time has been reduced to a minute frac-tion of what was once needed to complete a job. Any translator can now beexpected to coordinate the translation of large projects with the help of col-leagues in dierent cities, countries, or even on dierent continents. Now weare often expected to do extensive online research as the WWW places auniverse of knowledge at our ngertips. We may also have to know quite a bitabout things like desktop publishing, HTML editing, computer-assisted termi-nology management, and the intricacies of le conversion, compression, andtransmission, to name but a few of the myriad skills translators must havetoday but which were the arcane knowledge of technical specialists just a fewyears ago. Translators can no longer be seen merely as bilingual scribes; theyare multi-facetted inter-lingual mediators with a broad range of skills andcapabilities that are essential to ecient text production.

Then there is the evolution in the eld of translation studies, which, dis-seminated through a torrent of research and publications over the past 20years, has clearly moved far beyond its previously predominant focus onlinguistic equivalence. Today, most translation scholars would agree thatacts of translation involve an intricate interplay of social, cognitive and culturalas well as linguistic processes. Many of us now believe that the translators basictools include intuition, creativity, multi-cultural experience, and the aware-ness of his or her own mental problem-solving strategies, along with collabora-tive skills for negotiating with clients, coordinating and participating as a teammember in large-scale projects, and seeking out expert assistance as necessary.

14 Donald C. Kiraly

In short, both the study and the practice of translation have evolved from beingwell structured and narrowly dened domains (involving knowledge that manyconstructivists would agree can perhaps best be taught in a transmissionistmode), to being ill-structured domains encompassing an enormous range ofskills and knowledge.

Today, with respect to both expertise and professionalism, and in boththeoretical and practical terms, each act of translation can be seen as a uniqueevent, dependent on the translators dynamic ability to juggle prior knowledgewith the particular constellation of factors involved in the task at hand. These caninclude idiosyncrasies of the text, the clients expectations, time constraints, theamount of terminological and background information available, and theamount of experience the translator has with the particular text type and topicat hand. The frequently lamented poor quality of many source texts adds anadditional dimension to this complexity. In an ill-structured domain, there is nosingle way to reach a solution and no single correct solution to a particularproblem. There are no rules governing how to translate (Peter Newmarks listnotwithstanding) and there is no universal arbiter of right and wrong.

The authority that decides what makes a translation acceptable resides notin books of rules and regulations, not in the designated authority of translationteachers or any other higher instance, but within the norms of the communityof translators itself. Rather than passively receiving this authority from theirteachers, learners can be seen as active assimilators and co-constructors of theirown emerging authority and autonomy as they enter the community of prac-tice. Certainly there is a need in education to ensure that the next generation ofpractitioners continues time-honored traditions that will guarantee continuityin professional practice. At the same time, however, there is an equally greatneed for each new generation to redene itself and its norms. As I hope willbecome clearer in the remainder of this chapter, while only some aspects ofstandard practice could conceivably be transmitted to learners, both facets oflearning can be thoroughly addressed through collaboration.

Moving toward collaboration: Building expertise in communities ofpractice

At this point, I would like to turn back to the academic domain to look brieyat another potential source of support for collaboration in professional educa-tion: the eld of expertise studies, which, over the past two decades, has beeninvestigating the nature of expert behavior, skills and competence. It will, of


course, be necessary for a new line of research to emerge within translationstudies to investigate what constitutes expert behavior in the language media-tion eld, but the research already carried out on the nature of expertise in avariety of elds does provide initial arguments to help us propose viablepedagogies of translation.

The results of this research in fact tend, at least tentatively, to provide verystrong support for non-transmissionist, collaborative learning in the develop-ment of professional skills. Donald Schn and Bereiter & Scardamalia (1993),for example, building on the pioneering work of Dreyfus & Dreyfus (1986),have outlined compelling arguments for non-transmissionist professionaltraining based largely on their research into the nature of expertise and itsdevelopment. Quoting John Dewey, Schn states:

The student cannot be taught what he needs to know, but he can be coached; hehas to see on his own behalf and in his own way the relations between means andmethods employed and results achieved. Nobody else can see for him, and hecant see just by being told, although the right kind of telling may guide hisseeing and thus help him see what he needs to see. (1987: 17)

In studying the nature of expert behavior, Schn found, for example, thatprofessionals in a variety of domains frequently have to work creatively andintuitively to solve new problems:

Often, a problematic situation presents itself as a unique case [] Because theunique case falls outside categories of existing theory and technique, the practitio-ner cannot treat it as an instrumental problem to be solved by applying one of therules in her store of professional knowledge. The case is not in the book. If she isto deal with it competently, she must do so by a kind of improvisation, inventingand testing in the situation strategies of her own devising [] It is just theseindeterminate zones of practice [] that practitioners and critical observers of theprofessions have come to see with increasing clarity over the past two decades ascentral to professional practice. (ibid: 8)

The evidence suggests that professionals do not amass a body of facts and rulesthat they then apply consciously as rational problem-solvers as they go aboutthe business of professional practice. Instead, they seem to acquire an intuitiveexibility for dealing with the unique, unpredictable situations that seem tomake up the bulk of their professional activity:

[] as we have come to see with increasing clarity over the last 20 or so years, theproblems of real-world practice do not present themselves to practitioners as well-formed structures. Indeed, they tend not to present themselves as problems at allbut as messy, indeterminate situations. (ibid: 4)

16 Donald C. Kiraly

A collaborative learning environment, where students work together withpeers, more advanced students, and teacher-facilitators to resolve complex,authentic problems, would seem to oer an ideal setting for developing thetype of cognitive exibility and self-concept as a creative problem-solver thatSchn depicts:

When a practitioner sets problems, he chooses and names the things he will notice[] Through complementary acts of meaning and framing, the practitionerselects things for attention and organizes them, guided by an appreciation of thesituation that gives it coherence and sets a direction for action. So problem-solving is an ontological process, in Nelson Goodmans (1978) memorable word,a form of world making. (ibid: 36)

From this perspective, translators do not merely discover translation problemsthat exist objectively in texts. Instead, they construct them on the basis of thespecic situational factors they select and on norms extracted from their expe-rience with both determinate and indeterminate zones of practice that theychoose to apply to the situation. They work creatively and intuitively to decidewhat to focus on, which of the myriad potential factors impinge on what theysee as a problem, and what weight to give these factors in coming up with aplausible solution.

Collaborative learning from a social constructivist perspective

Dovetailing with social constructivist ideology and the ndings of expertisestudies is the collaborative learning perspective that sees the development ofprofessional skills in terms of enculturation into a community of practice(Bruee 1995). Bruee also draws on social constructivist ideas to illustratehow learners can best become competent members of a professional commu-nity by interacting with that community, by performing the actual work of thatcommunity, and by constructing understandings of behavioral norms andconventions that imply community membership. As Bruee has put it:

Non-foundational social construction understands knowledge in Richard Rortysterms, as socially justied belief. It assumes that each authoritative community,each community of interdependent knowledgeable peers, each academic andprofessional discipline, constructs knowledge in the distinctive, local language orparalinguistic symbolic system that constitutes the community. (1995: 139)

From this collaborative learning perspective, learners become a communityof knowledge builders (Bereiter & Scardamalia 1993: 21011). In helping


them enter and maintain the conversation that will lead them into theprofessions inner circle, the teachers role will change from attempting topackage reality into neat, easily digested chunks for consumption and laterregurgitation by learners, and into that of a member of a community who canhelp novices nd and make their way into the community of practice. It is byworking with peers who are also to become the next generation of the profes-sional community, by engaging in world making with them and with mem-bers of the community of practice, that learners can gradually becomefull-edged members of that community themselves. From this perspective,both expertise and professionalism emerge through praxis and conversation,not as the result of transmissionist interaction with a teacher, but throughhypothesis developing and testing, through discussion and debate, and as aresult of concerted eort exerted within a team of present and future membersof the community in question.

Schn has taken a major step further with the idea of action and interactionas the basis for learning in proposing the concept of reective action, whichsuggests that learners must not simply perform authentic tasks if they are to learnfrom them, but that they must reect on those actions to come to a higher levelof awareness and abstraction. Law et al (1998: 6) lists four primary characteris-tics that can be ascribed to reection as a tool for learning: consciousness, acontextualized problem, relevant experience, and action. In addition to theinformal, impressionistic and self-regulatory types of knowledge that expertsuse to undertake professional tasks, learners must also reect on what they aredoing as they acquire expertise. There must be an awareness of problematicfeatures of the task at hand; tasks must be contextualized rather than amputatedfrom genuine experience; the experiences in which learning activities are em-bedded must be relevant to the learners past, present and future scope ofinterests and knowledge; and learning tasks must entail active personal involve-ment. From this perspective then, having learners engage in learning activitiesgoes far beyond rote exercises, drills and lectures, which essentially entail thecommitting to memory of pre-determined rules, patterns and facts.

Reective action is thinking coupled with the undertaking of authentictasks (that is, the normal activities of a professional community) within alearning domain. It can serve a variety of functions in the performance of suchtasks, including the planning, implementation, and revision of actions taken.Reection can lead to learning by providing a mental space in which the means,goals and implications of intelligent action can be consciously contemplated,revised and integrated into prior knowledge, ideally resulting in increasedexpertise. From a social constructivist perspective, reective action also has a

18 Donald C. Kiraly

social dimension, not only because it enhances collaboration and communica-tion, but also because it is the very act of collective reective action thatcharacterizes a professional community.

Putting constructivism and collaboration to work

I would like to move to another level of discussion at this point to discuss just afew of the implications I have drawn from the collaborative-constructivistparadigm for my own approach to translator education. In developing viableand useful teaching techniques, I have had to consider how I see the role ofeach individual course within the context of the overall curriculum. Keeping inmind the kinds of outcomes I am seeking to enhance over the course of mystudents program of studies, I have found it most useful to move from themost abstract level to the most concrete, focusing rst on the goals of thecurriculum as a whole, and then moving step by step through course designdown to the development of facilitative techniques to promote learning inindividual lessons. Here I would like to illustrate how a social constructivistepistemology can inform each stage in the educational planning process.

Curricular goals

Borrowing the political concept of empowerment from Paolo Freire, I believethat the term professional empowerment can serve to depict a viable globalobjective of a modern translator education program that is designed to pro-duce the kind of graduates that other professional translators would welcomeas colleagues. By professional empowerment, I mean that graduates can beexpected to have acquired enough self-reliance, authentic experience, andexpertise to enable them to leave our institutions and make the nal transitionsmoothly to full membership in the community of translation practice.

The political overtones of Freires empowerment are implied in my use ofthe term as well. I see a primary goal of the institution as one of weaning learnersfrom their initial dependence on it. We empower our students not by conferringupon them a diploma that states that they are authorized by the university to callthemselves graduate translators, but by providing them with opportunities toparticipate in the activities of the profession, by helping them develop self-reliance and self-condence, and by making them less dependent on our help asthey move into the circle of the professional translators community.


Figure 2 is my tentative depiction of how a principled approach to au-tonomy, authenticity and expertise can be interwoven to form a blueprint forcurriculum design. Looking at the rst pillar, that of autonomy, we can say thatlearners begin our programs as uninitiated individuals who are, in most cases,completely outside the community of professional translation practice. Byencouraging them to work in pairs and then teams to jointly construct theirunderstandings of the translators profession, we can help them to break out ofthe deeply engrained habits of learning in isolation that they have acquired inschool. By interacting with peers in discussing, debating, and world making,together they can better understand the concept of a community of practiceand actually participate in one.

The dimension of authenticity, the second pillar, refers to the need to havelearners increasingly do real work that is situated within activities very muchlike those they can expect to encounter once they complete their program ofstudies. I have divided the curricular focus into two parts: consciousnessraising at the beginning of the program of studies so that learners as a groupcan dene the community they are trying to join, followed by real work andcollaborative reection on the meanings they make as they progress.

We know from expertise studies that it takes years of professional practicefor a person to become an expert and that in fact, many people do not make itbeyond the journeyman stage.5 Nevertheless, if we keep the idea of emerging,and then dynamically evolving, expertise in mind as a primary goal of ourcurricula, we can help ensure that graduates will have made considerable

Figure 2. Dimensions of development toward translator competence

Self-reliance Experience Expertise

Collaborativegroups

Interactivedyads

Scaffoldedreflective

action

Uninitiatedindividuals

Consciousness-raising

Autonomy Authenticity

Professional Empowerment

Journeyman

Apprentice

Novice

Expertise

20 Donald C. Kiraly

progress on the path towards expertise by the time they leave the educationalinstitution.

Project-based learning: From practice to praxis

I hope to have demonstrated that there are numerous potential sources ofinspiration and justication for moving away from a transmissionist, objectiv-ist-based teaching approach towards a collaborative approach to learning. Eachteam of teachers as well as each individual within a team will naturally interpretand weigh the various sources of inspiration dierently. And of course, manymore sources of inspiration will become available as constructivist-orientedteachers begin to bring new sources of input to the topic, and as we beginto share our emerging understandings of and experience with collaborativeteaching practice.

For my own teaching practice, I have found that the idea of the collabora-tive learning project can serve as a useful metaphor for course design based ona belief in social construction and the value of collaborative interaction inthe classroom. Figure 3 illustrates a basic approach to undertaking authentictranslation projects that I have used in a number of translation practice classes,which might better be described as translation praxis classes.

Figure 3. The project workshop: A collaborative framework for learning thetranslators craft

An authentic-collaborative translation practice classroom

the interactive, socio-cognitiveconstruction of meaning inauthentic, purposefulproblem-solving situations.

Here, learning & teaching involve ...THE WORLD OUTSIDE

THE CLASSROOM

CLIENT

FINALREADER(S)

EXTERNALRESOURCES Expert Advice Reference Materials WWW

INSIDE THE CLASSROOM AUTHOR

FACILITATOR


The concrete objective of this class is for the entire group, with theassistance and participation of the teacher, to undertake and complete a real(rather than a simulated) translation project. The organization of the project isbased on the principles underlying cognitive apprenticeship: authentic tasks,scaolded teacher support, and learner responsibility for completing a piece ofwork that is acceptable to the client as an adequate translation. It is alsocompatible with Schns idea of the reective practicum (1987: 21). Theteachers roles in the undertaking of such projects can vary widely, largelydepending on each teachers personal stance with respect to the objectivism-constructivism dichotomy. It is important to note that the mere selection ofproject work as a global vehicle of classroom interaction need not be predi-cated on a social or radical constructivist view of learning. As Schn points out:

If we see professional knowledge in terms of facts, rules, and procedures appliednon-problematically to instrumental problems, we will see the practicum in itsentirety as a form of technical training. It will be the business of the instructor tocommunicate and demonstrate the application of rules and operations to the factsof practice. (ibid: 39)

Pedagogical technique in the translation practice classroom

As a strong believer in social constructivism, I personally place great emphasison working as a privileged member of the group along with the students,assuming a role much like that of a project coordinator working with a team oftranslators. My tasks may include: overall responsibility for project manage-ment; serving as a native speaker informant (as my students always translateout of their mother tongue into English); functioning as a mediator to facilitatenegotiations between the students and the client; and also reecting in actionto model my own professional translation behavior as I work with small groupswithin the class to deal with translation problems as they arise. Rather thanbeing a guide on the side (the controversial role often adopted by andattributed to constructivist teachers), I see myself more as a traveling assistant,moving from one nucleus of action and potential learning to another withinthe group to provide guidance, support and encouragement. Outside of class, Irevise numerous rough drafts of the students evolving work, providing pro-leptic feedback, that is, drawing attention to potential problems and hinting atways to solve problems rather than distributing my ready-made solutions on asilver platter.

22 Donald C. Kiraly

Learning in such a classroom environment is much more of a three-dimensional process than it can be in a teacher-centered classroom, becausethe learners are busy negotiating translation problems and solutions with eachother and focusing on any number of other constraints and potential problemsthat may emerge from an authentic situation. These problems might includestylistic infelicities, grammatical and typographical errors in the source text,and uncertainty about the intended audience of the translation and what thosereaders can be expected to know which might impinge, for example, onwhether and how to make ideas that are implicit in a source text explicit in atarget one. Working as they do in small groups, questions related to thestandardization of style and terminology in the translation inevitably arise.While I sometimes take on the role of mediator between the students and theclient, I let the students identify the need for such mediation themselves andencourage them to formulate the questions they wish to ask.

Language-related exercises can also play a major role within the globalframework of our translation projects as students come to the realization thatthey lack an understanding of certain linguistic structures or translation strate-gies. Christiane Nords (1996) list of instructional techniques (Figure 4) pro-vides a panoply of tools that can be used against the background of situatedprojects to carry out the micro-instruction that is a major part of every class:

Figure 4. Embedding micro-instructional strategies in project work

PR

OJ E CT-E M B E DDE D A

CTIV

ITIE

S

editing &proofreading

analysis ofassignment small-group

translation

paraphrasetranslation

for gist

library & internetresearch

using paralleltexts

AuthenticCollaborative

TranslationProjects

Paralleltranslation

GuidedTranslation

Partialtranslation

Translation withoutan assignment

De-sit rcises

uated xeE

Testtranslation

Multiple-choicetranslation


In this manner, the project provides the context and justication forlearning. Rather than having students engage in exercises to make sure that theyamass the generic knowledge about translation that I feel they ought to know, Iinstead try to help them acquire competence in solving what they perceive as newtranslation problems that they cannot handle without assistance. Here, studentssee why we are focusing on pedagogical activities so that they can proceedwith their authentic project and accomplish it with competence and newawareness (learning!) that can serve them in their later work.

The variations on the project theme are innite, of course. In one course,students lamented the need for more native speaker support than I could giveduring class, so I arranged to have other students, all native speakers of English,participate in a number of sessions to provide the necessary assistance. Inanother case, we asked an English speaker to come to class to do a think-aloudprotocol while reading the students all-but-completed translation. The stu-dents had agreed to discuss the problems the English speaker found in the text,and then go back to make nal changes on the basis of those comments. Insome cases, where money was being paid for the translation, I encouraged theclass to hire outside proofreaders to check their work so that they could see themonetary value of doing a more careful job themselves.6 While some teachersmight balk at the task of nding suitable authentic work for students to carryout, the responsibility for project selection can also be shared with students andcolleagues. Whereas most of the projects my students have worked on wereoriginally oered to me on a freelance basis, in three cases so far, students haveobtained commissions for projects that their entire class has completed. Inother cases, projects have seemed to take on a life of their own. For example,the group decided to donate the proceeds from a book they had translated as aclass project to a small charitable organization that has established a school inthe highlands of Guatemala. When the organizers thanked us for our contribu-tion, they also asked us if we were interested in translating the text for aperpetual calendar that would be sent out to contributors. That translation wasthe project for another semester-long course. A few months after that transla-tion was submitted, the organizers appealed to us again, asking if we couldarrange to have our English version translated into Italian and Spanish. Fol-lowing a few inquiries via e-mail, willing colleagues and students at translatoreducation programs in Italy and Spain were found to undertake those projectsas well. Collaboration clearly need not stop at the classroom door.

24 Donald C. Kiraly

In my experience, unfortunately, I have found that, as Schn has also noted:

A reective practicum is unlikely to ourish as a second-class activity. The profes-sional school must give it high status and legitimacy or fall prey to the dilemma[] where students are forced to choose between low status relevance or high-status rigor. (Schn 1987: 171)

While I do get a solid core of highly motivated students in my project classes,only a handful of instructors oer such classes at my home institution. As aresult, students often choose a parallel section that is run in a more conven-tional fashion precisely because project work is such an uncommon teachingapproach. For students to see the value of working collaboratively on authenticprojects, a focus on authentic practice and on the development of expertisethrough autonomy will have to be included in the mission of our educationalinstitutions.

Many of the benets of working on projects are self-evident. In theseclasses, the students are actively and continuously engaged in critical thoughtand debate for the better part of each session. Rather than focusing on oneproblem at a time that the teacher chooses to discuss, students nd (or con-struct) their own problems and work toward resolving them in small groups.Reection-in-action is also a major part of the students work, as they mustwork together to compare alternative solutions with their fellow group mem-bers and justify the decisions they make. The project-based classroom serves asa constant reminder that my overriding goal as a translator educator is to helpstudents become competent, reective, self-condent, and professional col-leagues; a goal that I believe can be better accomplished through participationin praxis rather than practice.

Action research: A tool for perpetuating innovation

The work that has been done on the development of collaborative approachesto translator education is clearly only the very tip of what I hope will turn out tobe an enormous iceberg. However, it will be an uphill battle to establish a viablealternative paradigm as a counterweight to deeply ingrained objectivist beliefsand to generations of transmissionist teaching practice. Echoing my view ofthe hand-me-down nature of conventional, objectivist pedagogical practice,Michael OLoughlin (1989) has said:

Research suggests that the system is self-reproducing, and that if the cycle ofdidacticism is to be broken, it must be done by impacting on teacher beliefs about


knowing and teaching, as well as by inducing teachers to engage in critical reec-tion on their practice. (9)

The very process of developing collaborative learning methods will have to be acollaborative one itself if it is not to fall by the wayside like a passing fad.

One way to promote the rapid generation of ideas and the formation of acommunity of constructivist teachers might be through a coordinated inter-institutional program of action research. Initially proposed by Kurt Lewin inthe 1940s, participatory action research has become a powerful tool for changein education. It is based on the idea that teachers themselves can and should beresearchers in their own classrooms. Starting with observations of what actuallygoes on in our own classrooms, followed by systematic plans and actions forchange, we can create a groundswell of local research that can inform ourcommon search for alternative teaching methods and techniques. Administra-tors cannot simply prescribe a teaching method, no matter how noble the aimsor how plausible the approach, and hope that that one act will change the faceof our profession. It is the teachers themselves who are tired of pulling old textsout of a drawer semester after semester, of sitting in front of group after groupof passive students, and of dominating each and every class. They are the oneswho must develop a veritable culture of innovation based on perpetual inquiry,through dialogue with other teachers, administrators and students. We need tostart observing our own classes and eecting change in them rather thanwaiting for outside researchers to come along and put us under the microscope.We need to identify room for improvement in our own teaching practices andto devise our own viable remedies for change that we can continuously observeand modify as necessary. Instead of stagnating in a career of repetitive pedagogi-cal practice that treads water while the translation profession and translationstudies forge ahead, we need to turn our classrooms into experimental labora-tories where innovation is the order of the day.

The translation profession will continue to evolve along with advances intechnology, increased globalization, and changes in lifestyle and business prac-tices. Society, and with it the translation profession, is programmed for perma-nent change. To keep pace, we need to infuse our classes and our curricula withthe seeds of perpetual innovation and with a spirit of collaboration on manylevels: between and among students, between teachers and students, and be-tween and among teachers. Action research cannot be reserved for teachersalone. Students, too, need to get involved in the process of bringing change totranslator education, since the next generation of translation teachers willcome from the ranks of todays students. We need to encourage students to do

26 Donald C. Kiraly

seminar projects and write theses on experimental work in translator educa-tion, and we need to draw them into our research projects wherever possible sothat they come to understand that education is not something that is merelydone to them, but to which they can also make a signicant contribution.

The creation of a culture of translation-education research through thejoint eorts of administrators, teachers, and students would surely constitute apowerful force for catapulting pedagogical practice in translator education intothe 21st century. Just as students cannot expect to be handed knowledge andskills on a silver platter, neither can teachers expect empowerment to be passeddown to them by their institutional authorities. We must begin to worktogether toward the development of viable teaching methods and techniquesthat reect the translation profession as we know it today and that can prepareall of us for the challenges that await us tomorrow.

Notes

1. The ideas summarized in this chapter are developed more extensively in A SocialConstructivist Approach to Translator Education.

2. Similarly, Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) write: It is a fact that, even in the mostintellectually barren of schools, students are expected to leave with more knowledge thanwhen they arrived. But what schools do to bring this about has never been guided bytheories of knowledge and knowledge acquisition, not even bad theories. Instead, it seemsfair to say that at all levels, from kindergarten to university, education has been based oncommonsense beliefs about knowledge (188)

3. I have discussed some of this evidence at length in Pathways to Translation.

4. For example, at the University of Rennes, the University of Stockholm, the University ofGeneva and the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

5. See Klein, G.A. and R. Homan (1993) for a discussion of the stages of expertise.

6. The net proceeds of each paid project have been donated to charities of the studentschoosing.

References

Bednar, A. K., Cunningham, D., Duy, T. M. and Perry, J. D. 1992. Theory into practice:How do we link? In Constructivism and the Technology of Instruction: A Conversation,T. M. Duy and D. H. Jonassen (eds), 1734. Hillsdale, NJ & London: Erlbaum.

Bereiter, C. and Scardamalia, M. 1993. Surpassing Ourselves An Inquiry into the Natureand Implications of Expertise. Chicago & LaSalle, Ill: Open Court.


Bruee, K. 1995. Collaborative Learning: Underlying Processes and Eective Techniques. SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass.

Collins, A., Brown, J. S. and Newman, S. 1989. Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching thecraft of reading, writing, and mathematics. In Knowing, Learning and Instruction:Essays in Honor of Robert Glaser, L. B. Resnick (ed), 453494. Hill

beyond the ivory tower - rethinking translation pedagogy

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