Translation as a Profession (Benjamins Translation Library)

Chapter 17. Training translators 341– cover all the skills and competences required to practise as a translator, and notsimply ‘translation skills’ assessed on the basis of two or three hours a week ofclass work involving the translation of a few so-called ‘specialised’ articles.6. Which students?Translator training courses should be open to students who have graduated inall kinds of subject areas. Essential pre-requisites are then language skills for nonlanguage graduates and specific domain knowledge for language graduates. Theproblem can be approached in three different ways:– either all applicants to translation courses are systematically screened beforehandto make sure they have the necessary language skills and competencesrequired for the course,– or all applicants are admitted (generally because the system forbids priorscreening) and, in that case, the institution should take all means to make surethat all students do acquire the required skills before they start the translationcourses,– or those in charge decide not to run a translator training course at all, becauseit would take so much time, effort and expense to bring the students up tothe required standard that academic bodies would consider this economicallyunrealistic anyway.This is the crux of the matter in a number of countries and institutions. Theyspend far too many important resources (time, energy and money) on tryingto improve students’ language skills before they can begin to train them astranslators, simply because they are not allowed to set minimum entry standardsfor such courses.In short, many translator-training institutions, while not finding the kind ofapplicantstheywouldliketoenrol,havetodissuadethosewhowouldliketoenrolfor all the wrong reasons (some of the wrong reasons possibly being ‘translationis something I already do’, or‘I love languages’, or‘I have always wanted to be aninterpreter’, or even the unbeatable ‘I love to travel, etc.).No wonder, therefore, that, in countries where selective entry for degree levelcoursesisforbiddenbylaw:– the most determined course managers have designed undergraduate coursesin such a way that they can be reasonably sure that all students will havereached the right level of language proficiency before they enter the final,crucial years at master’s level.