As you have probably noticed, one of my pet enthusiasms is bringing together academia and professionals. So this year’s Annual Translation Conference, the 14th in fact, to be held in Portsmouth, UK, is right up my street.
* * *
Translation Studies is always at the meeting point of theory and practice. Professional practice affects and influences the paradigms within the discipline. Translation teaching ideally draws from both the academic discussion of translation and the professional needs of the translation industry. In the current economic climate, translation is one of the subjects at university which offers students key employability.
But how do they fare when they go out into the real world of freelance work or into in-house positions? How does translation relate to other transferable skills? At the same time, how does translation practice relate to the rest of the curriculum and wider concerns within the humanities? Can these concerns be reconciled with professional practice?
The goal of this conference is to bring together translator trainers, academics, translation professionals and students in a dialogue about how translation students become translators and the relationship between professional practice and the academic environment. We will feature 60 minute workshops and 20 minute papers on this topic from academic and professional viewpoints from a wide range of disciplinary approaches. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- Transitioning from student to practitioner: Welcome to the real world!
- Defining translation competences
- Translation and wider issues of ethics, agency and empowerment
- Ethics in the workplace
- Incorporating employability in the curriculum
- Meeting the technological requirements of industry
- Best practice for negotiating with agencies/negotiating with translators
- Professionals entering Translation Studies
- Translation and digital media: new challenges?
- Empowerment of translation students
- Research into translators’ workplaces
- Teaching translation in a post-national HE environment
* * *
Please see the university website for more information and to register.
From Words to Deeds: translation & the law 