Technological competence of professional translators.Keeping pace with the market changes and market stakeholders’ expectations

Krzysztof ŁobodaUniwersytet Jagielloński, Cracow, Poland

Translation and L10N market Translation market vs. translators Redefining translation/L10N industry Translator training at university level EMT model + EN 15038 standard Technological competence needs assessment Final remarks

Presentation outline

Translation/LSP market size

Translation rates in many countries and/or market segments have hardly changed in 10-15 years

Prestige of translation profession has dwindled CSA Report of 31st May 2013

All of the LSPs which grow bigger use CAT tools and translation management systems

Translation/LSP market size

Paradox: the market grows but translators’ earnings do NOT Traditional (narrow) definition vs. wider definition

Traditionally, the industry has consisted of two sectors: the manufacturers of hardware and software, and the localization service providers (...). Today, however, other sectors such as telecommunications, language service providers and even universities are involved in the localization industry as businesses try to reach out to a wider audience (Quah 2006:19)

Still, we miss something… Healthcare market: providers of medical services, doctors’

professional associations, patient organisations When we hear of translation market, translators and clients are

usually ignored!

Redefining translation market/industry

Different models:

IT Faculties Linguistics (applied linguistics) Philology (Culture, literature and language) Separate university units specialising in translation studies Obsolete: restricted to specific higher education schools (e.g.

military schools)

Translation education at university level

EMT translator competence model (2009)

+ standard EN 15038

EMT translator competence model (2009)

OPTIMALE WP 5.1 New Tools and Technologies: Synthesis Report by Andrew Rothwell and Tomáš Svoboda

Technological competence – CAT tools taught at universities

Fragmentation of Polish translation market Scheme covering different market stakeholders Problem: how to persuade people to fill in questionnaires? MA students need to have internships at translation agencies. University can recommend chosen translation companies to students

(based on students progress made during internships). CAT software producers would like to get personal data of translation

students / graduates Students would like to receive CAT software licenses for free or at

reduced price Several groups of repondents: owners of translation companies,

translation project managers, professional translators, MA level and postgraduate students (beginning and end of studies, CAT trainers, other stakeholders .

Rationale behind the market needs assessment questionnaire

But what should we teach – competence needs assessment

But what should we teach – competence needs assessment

Teaching process must go beyond the use of standard computer tools (such as editors, databases, spreadsheets, search engines, general dictionaries, etc.) or the use and analysis of resources for translation (such as reliable electronic texts available on the Internet.

The recent focus on the specialist CAT tools (such as TM, terminology extraction and management tools, machine translation tools, etc.) is becoming

insufficient as well. It seems that teaching curricula should now include new quality assurance and

assessment tools, pre-editing and post-editing or the use of translation

workflow systems. if universities are to train translators professionally, they should meet the

requirements of the market stakeholders. For this we need to assess the expectations of different people involved in the

translator training and translation process: from students and teachers/trainers

to professional translators and project managers.

Final remarks