Westminster research is building best practices for translation and interpreting (T&I) across universities and industry to enhance both training provision and consumer services.
T&I courses have exploded in number over recent years – particularly those run by private companies. However, with no uniformity in curriculum, teaching and assessment styles, there is a desperate need for best practice guidance to ensure consistency in quality.
Dr Elsa Huertas Barros and Juliet Vine’s empirical studies of translation courses within Higher Education have identified the need for assessment tools that more explicitly reflect the skills demands of the commercial translation market.
Demonstrating how the construction of assessment standards can be enhanced through direct engagement with learning communities (both tutors and students) through their implemented changes at Westminster, the researchers have adapted their best practice findings into adoptable techniques for embedding into an industry context.
Improving commercial T&I courses worldwide
In June 2017, Huertas Barros and Vine ran a joint industry and academia workshop for 25 international course providers, offering practical, results-focused methods for enhancing translator competence. Three years later, the beneficial impact of this engagement was made clear by several attendees.
“After consultation with key staff I decided to make specific changes in line with the ideas discussed at the workshop,” says the Course Director of Translator Training, an online training provider, employing 45 tutors, which has helped more than 1000 translation students. These changes included adopting a “diagrammatic/visual layout [that] enables both teachers and students to ‘see’ and chart progress. This can then provide an important starting point for discussion in telephone tutorials or Skype sessions”.
Hogarth Worldwide, a leading marketing consultancy firm with over 4,000 employees across 28 cities worldwide, provides language services, such as transcreation, to a broad range of clients. The Account Director at Hogarth specified a number of changes that were inspired by their engagement with the researchers’ workshop. These include workflow changes that would ensure consistency of quality in their service provision, a new vetting process for recruited translators, and the introduction of a Translator Performance Review Tool that would ensure staff continued to work at the highest standards.
Helping industry understand the nature of the trained workforce
The Association of Translation Companies (ATC) – the UK language sector’s leading professional body – commissioned Dr Huertas Barros and Vine to produce an in-depth industry briefing, based on their research. This briefing was aimed at helping language service providers to better understand their workforce by providing insight into the training their staff will have received.
“The briefing was welcomed by the ATC and the language service companies it represents”, says ATC’s Chief Executive Officer, “as it provided up-to-date insights into the academic provision undertaken by current and future staff members and freelancers employed or commissioned by the ATC”.
These insights help direct further on-the-job training needs, and form a solid basis for understanding new candidates’ academic backgrounds.
– The Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Translation Companies
The briefing was published on the ATC website and promoted in its newsletter, which reaches around 3,500 language services industry recipients.
Bringing T&I trainers together
In 2015, Dr Huertas Barros and Vine’s undertook a UK-wide survey on assessment practices on MA T&I programmes – the first ever review of all 27 MA Translation courses offered by UK universities.
This survey has been described by the President of APTIS (the Association of Programmes in Translation and Interpreting Studies in the UK and Ireland) as “an important undertaking that made many T&I colleagues across the UK realise the importance of looking at the specifics of translator training provision in the UK”.
Further, the research played a significant role in the formation of APTIS: “This first survey coincided with and contributed to the desire for T&I programmes in the UK to collaborate more closely in order to be in position to face the many challenges facing translator training. To this end, my colleague Dr Castro (Warwick University) and I set about creating an association for T&I programmes in the UK in 2016”.
APTIS provides a platform through which T&I trainers can share information on best practice through knowledge exchange. As such, Huertas Barros and Vine were invited “to present their cutting-edge research” at their first annual conference in 2018, delivering a session that “was extremely successful in challenging participants’ views on assessment on T&I programmes,” says the President.
At the third annual conference in 2019, APTIS officially endorsed Huertas Barros and Vine’s proposed second iteration of the survey of – this time encompassing 30 UK institutions. The April 2020 follow-up survey provided richer data and a fresh opportunity for educators to further share best practices.
Working towards European-wide translation standards
Dr Huertas Barros and Vine’s findings have reached Spain via the “Evaluation in the Acquisition of Translation Competence” (EACT) project, led by Procés d'Adquisició de la Competència Traductora i Avaluació (PACTE), a world-leading research group in translation training.
EACT aimed to establish standard evaluation procedures for translation competence. Its first phase replicated Huertas Barros and Vine’s survey-based research, EACT’s Principal Researcher explains, with the former acting as a consultant on their survey design and validation tests.
The results of this project set the foundations for building an international translation benchmark, similar to the widely used A-C Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
Huertas Barros and Vine were also part of the external expert advisors’ panel for the 2015-2018 “Establishing Competence Levels in the Acquisition of Translation Competence” (NACT) project. Huertas Barros advised on the initial proposed competency framework and both researchers helped evaluate the revised framework.
The NACT and EACT projects were central to PACTE winning a €253,280 EU grant to complete the final stages of their creation of European-wide translation standards.
Find out more
Connect with Elsa Huertas Barros
Connect with Juliet Vine
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