Report on the Third IATIS Workshop
The main focus of this two-day event was translator and interpreter academic education and professional training. The Workshop was organized by the English Department at the Faculty of Philosophy, under the aegis of the International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS). This event was the first of its kind in Serbia, where such discussions have only rarely and sporadically taken place since the end of the 1980s, and where the first MA in Conference Interpreting and Translation to be taught at the host institution has only just been accredited, in October 2014.
In addition to providing an opportunity for teachers of T&I to discuss their work and to network with colleagues from across the globe, the Workshop organisers also sought to impart a new impetus to discussions on translation didactics by T&I trainers within the region, where T&I programs are either at their very beginning (as is the case in Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina) or within their first decade of implementation (in Croatia, Montenegro and Macedonia).
The Workshop on Translator and Interpreter Training was open to scholars and practitioners, and it brought together 29 translation scholars from 15 countries (Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia), representatives of regional translation agencies based in Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade, as well as both established professional translators/interpreters and newcomers to professional translation.
The keynote addresses reflected the focus of the Workshop, the ethics and methodology of T&I training. In her plenary speech, Professor Mona Baker (The University of Manchester), delivered a presentation on Ethics in T&I Curriculum and Profession stressing the necessity of including ethical questions during training, either as a full course or as a segment of all specialized translation/interpretation courses, in order to help students develop a more reflective and critical stance towards their role not only in relation to the client but also to society as a whole.
Dr. Anca Greere addressed the topic Training Methodology in Professionally-Oriented Translator Education by taking stock of the activities related to Language and Translation, Theories of Translation, Specialized Translation and Translation as a Profession which have been tested within the European Masters of Translation Studies and Terminology at Babe-Bolyai University. Video sessions exemplifying in-class and extracurricular activities were particularly illustrative of the level of learner autonomy students achieve in this programme. The third keynote speaker, Dr. Nataša Pavlović discussed Facilitating Translator Competence Acquisition in Blended Collaborative Projects and the ten-year experience of teaching Translation Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb.
The most prominently featured topics for other participants of the Workshop were ethical issues in the profession and how these might be elaborated upon within the classroom setting, and aspects of social-constructivist, collaborative training methodology. Other contributions also discussed assessment for pedagogical purposes, translation/translator competence, teaching editing and training for specializations. In addition to paper presentations, the program included a panel on translator education and training for Romani, a workshop on software localisation, and a presentation/exhibition of the ongoing project of translating prominent Serbian writers into English.
Although Workshops do not necessarily result in a book of proceedings, an opportunity was left open for interested participants to submit papers based on their presentations. The papers in the published volume (please see link to report on this page) discuss both broad issues in translator and interpreter training, which relate to ethics and methodology, and some more specific issues, of particular relevance to translators and interpreters in the region of South Slavic countries, such as the training of legal translators, accreditation practices for translators of the mutually understandable languages of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian in Australia, and special procedures in LSP translation.
The Workshop and the accompanying volume could be seen as a landmark for university level T&I training in Serbia and in the region, and the organizers are grateful to all who have helped them along, financially, logistically, or with their time, knowledge, interest and good will: colleagues at the English Department, Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad, members of the IATIS Regional Workshops Committee, the Provincial Secretariat for Science and Technological Development, and the Serbian Ministry for Science, Technology and Research.
