Translation as a Profession (Benjamins Translation Library)

Chapter 17. Training translators 339What actually happens in many cases is that training institutions have managedto bypass the specialisation issue on the grounds that:1. they do not have to feel concerned about professional specialisation. Universitiesare no vocational schools: they are the place for research and theory.Specialisation is something the students will acquire through work placementsor during the first few months of professional practice;2. they may be satisfied with giving the students overviews of a variety of specialfields, e.g. accountancy, electricity, mechanical engineering, measurementtechniques, hydraulics, means of payment, control systems, transport, drilling,pumping, industrial safety, and so on. Students will then put that to advantageany way they decide to.3. the institution has no responsibility beyond giving future translators anintroduction to information retrieval techniques and strategies – so they canlook after themselves once they start practising as translators.When they do include some degree of specialisation in the course, in a laudableattempt to increase their graduates’ employment prospects, most institutionstend to focus on the same fields and domains. Training profiles (in terms ofcompetence, know-how and social skills) are all too often simply equated withthe fields or domains where the skills, know-how and social skills are, or willbe, applied.In fact, skills and competences which used to be considered as ‘specialist skills’are now more often than not included in the basic translator job profile, andemployers expect far more of beginners than used to be the case only a few yearsago. Translation markets are now so diverse – diversification and industrialisationbeing the two most significant developments which have affected the translationprofession and industry these past few years – that translators starting out on acareer in the profession must be prepared to face any situation and able to cope.Translation skills are of course a pre-requisite, but so (increasingly) are computerskills and ‘special’ skills including subtitling (up to a point), Web site cloning, Website localisation, video game localisation, and so on. It goes almost without sayingthat the translator will also be expected to have some experience of technical, legaland economic and commercial translation. . . and even to be reasonably proficientat interpreting (at least liaison and consecutive interpreting). Even the beginner,straight out of university, is now often expected to be immediately operational inall these areas simply because requirements have changed and the conditions foremployability have changed accordingly.