Translation Didactics: What Are the Ways to Train a Translation Teacher?

Abstract

The chapter deals with the most common issues of translation didactics as a special branch of pedagogy that studies the process of forming a personality that will have special competencies, mental capacities and realize the uniqueness of their social status. The authors show that translation didactics is in high demand in the field of pedagogical studies today due to the fact that mass training of translators is getting indispensable to the society. In contemporary common educational environment, there is not sufficient place for training a translation teacher, who is the central actor within the system of translators training. Forming and training of educational staff within the domain of teaching translators are of primary importance. Translation teachers, even most successful and competent ones, are in effect “didactic autodidacts,” people who were able to develop necessary competences by comprehending their own translation experience, making their own pedagogical experiments, conducting research, acquiring the experience of senior colleagues and studying the theory. In order to form the required competences a certain “superstructure” is necessary, which would make it possible to train both former professional translators and university foreign languages teachers to teach translation. Such a superstructure might be in the form of international update course or specialized university Master’s programme, in the course of which the experienced teachers of translation, who had discovered all the secrets of this craft, would convey their experience to the less experienced colleagues. This superstructure will promote a more successful adaptation to professional activity of those graduates of translation educational institutions, who find themselves university teachers of translation, seeking wider application of their skills and knowledge. Forming and training of educational staff within the domain of teaching translators are the sphere in which the work of international professional and educational associations becomes vital.