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Publication type:	Conference other
Type of review:	Editorial review
Title:	New roles and tasks : educating translators for the (near) future
Authors:	Massey, Gary
Conference details:	DG TRAD Conference, Luxembourg, 16-17 October 2017
Issue Date:	16-Oct-2017
Language:	English
Subjects:	Translation
Subject (DDC):	370: Education 418.02: Translating and interpreting
Abstract:	This paper explores some of the actual and potential effects that the digital present is having, and the digital future is likely to have, both on the highly technologized profession of translation and on the education aimed at preparing students for it. The paper begins by considering the predicted impact of artificial intelligence on employment and demand in the translation industry, and looks at how the translation profession will need to re-position itself in order to exploit the full potential of value-adding high-quality human translation services. The ability to do so depends decisively on re-conceptualizing translation as an adaptive, (co-)creative, mediatory and advisory activity. A large-scale survey of professional translators reveals that achieving such a goal will necessitate transforming widespread professional self-concepts and role perceptions, with many of the translators participating in the research indicating that their profession shares features of a low-autonomy profession. This is backed by more recent data from a Swiss study of translation and corporate communications professionals, which additionally suggests that inadequate provision for feedforward and feedback interactions between translation service-providers, clients and source-text authors further constrain translators’ capacity to act as intercultural mediators, (co-)creators and advisors. From an educational perspective, the paper therefore proposes that, alongside learning with and about digital technologies in order to use them to their greatest effect, students must develop the metacognitive capacity to reflect on when and when not to deploy them. It then puts forward a heuristic four-dimensional scheme of intuition, creativity, ethics and adaptability to serve as a tentative guide to focusing key parts of translator education curricula on the added value of high-quality human translation. It ends by briefly suggesting that current processes and practices in the translation industry might also be fruitfully re-designed to accommodate the improved feedforward-feedback loops and cycles with which the range of competences developed by suitably trained professional translators can best be utilized.
URI:	https://digitalcollection.zhaw.ch/handle/11475/6655
Fulltext version:	Published version
License (according to publishing contract):	Not specified
Departement:	Applied Linguistics
Organisational Unit:	Institute of Translation and Interpreting (IUED)
Appears in collections:	Publikationen Angewandte Linguistik

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