书评---Translator and Interpreter Training--- Issues, Methods and Debates

300 Book Reviews Díaz Cintas, Jorge and Aline Remael (2007) Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling, Manchester: St Jerome Publishing. Gottlieb, Henrik (1992) ‘Subtitling: A New University Discipline’, in Cay Dollerup and Anne Loddegaard (eds) Teaching Translation and Interpreting, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 161-70. Kelly, Dorothy (2005) A Handbook for Translator Trainers, Manchester: St Jerome. Kearns, John (2004) ‘Poor Technologies – Elegant Solutions’, ITIA Bulletin, July 2004: 4-6. Available at http://www.uvic.cat/fchtd/_fitxers/ITIA-bulletin- JUL04.pdf Kiraly, Don (2000) A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education: Empowerment from Theory to Practice, Manchester: St Jerome. Mayoral, Roberto, Dorothy Kelly and Natividad Gallardo (1988) ‘Concept of Constrained Translation: Non-Linguistic Perspectives of Translation’, Meta 33(3): 356-67. Available at http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/1988/v33/ n3/003608ar.pdf. (last accessed 3 April 2009). Orero, Pilar (2004) Topics in Audiovisual Translation, Amsterdam & Philadel- phia: John Benjamins. Remael, Aline and Gert Vercauteren (2007) ‘Audio Describing the Exposition Phase of Films: Teaching Students What to Choose’, Trans II: 73-93. Titford, Christopher (1982) ‘Subtitling – Constrained Translation’, Lebende Sprachen III: 113-6. Tomaszkiewicz, Teresa (2000) ‘Kształcenie tłumaczy na potrzeby komunikacji audiowizualnej’ [Translator Training for Audiovisual Communication], in Anna Setkowicz (ed.) O nauczaniu przekładu [On Teaching Translation], Warsaw: TEPIS, 120-30. Translator and Interpreter Training: Issues, Methods and Debates (Con- tinuum Studies in Translation Series). John Kearns (ed.). London & New York: Continuum, 2008. xiv + 223 pp. ISBN 978-0-8264-9805-2 (hbk), ISBN 978-0-8264-9806-9 (pbk). £75 (hbk)/£24.99 (pbk). T ranslator and Interpreter Training: Issues, Methods and Debates comprises nine papers, most of which were presented at the Second International Conference of the International Association of Transla- tion and Intercultural Studies (IATIS) held in Cape Town, South Africa in 2006. This volume presents a variety of pressing and/or challenging issues in a number of regions around the world. The collection does not attempt to provide guidance for teachers of translation and interpreting as do some monographs; nor is it an unstructured or incoherent collection of isolated issues. It is not clearly stated whether the papers were selected in line with particular themes, but the editor’s introduction implies that the collection Book Reviews 301 does follow the major themes and reveal emerging trends in the field of translator education.2 Among the new and emerging trends highlighted in this volume, the first and most prevailing is a subtle, though far-reaching, shift in the pedagogical paradigm regarding ‘transmissionist teaching methods’ and ‘educating for society’. These changes have been well received among translator educators. This shift appears to have been guided by two fundamental needs from within the field: one for viable alternatives to transmissionist teaching methods (cf. Kiraly 2000, Colina 2003, Kelly 2005); the other for “educating for society” as stated in Dorothy Kelly’s contribution (p. 67). There is no doubt that Don Kiraly has been one of the most strident voices in the field calling for change in transmissionist teaching methods over the past few years. Influenced by contemporary educational philosophers, he introduced a social constructivist approach to translator education as a paradigm to meet the educational needs of the 21st century and suggests that learner-centred, project-based learning is the methodology most compatible with this paradigm. It is conspicuous that this approach serves as an underlying pedagogical framework in a number of contributions in this volume (see the articles by Alessandro Zannirato, Dorothy Kelly, Catherine Way, Minako O’Hagan and John Kearns). With respect to the second social need, reform policies in higher edu- cation in many parts of the world place increasing value on the development of generic skills and life-long learning, as Catherine Way explains in her contribution. These new reforms are in line with a call for education for sustainability initiated by the United Nations and followed up by a number of universities around the world (cf. Kim 2005). The contributions of Dorothy Kelly and Catherine Way are good examples that demonstrate that the shift in the pedagogical paradigm and the need to educate translators as members of society are compatible and complementary. Dorothy Kelly analyses the im- pact of student mobility programmes in general and their impact on translator education in particular. She criticizes a procedure to assess learning outcomes of students who participate in such programmes. At the outset, she clearly states that it is a general assumption that translation programmes “fulfil more than a purely vocational purpose” (p. 67). Catherine Way introduces a system that students can use as a tool for self-assessment of translator competence throughout their translation courses and which may also be applied in their professional lives. Although her discussion is based on her personal teaching experience and the model is still being developed, it has great potential to be adapted as a tool that can facilitate autonomous lifelong learning for students and professionals on translation courses, as well as other professionals-to- be. Perhaps interdisciplinary collaborative research might be a good way to verify its potential. 2 In this review, ‘translator education’ is used as a cover term for activities involved in teaching translation and interpreting. 302 Book Reviews Secondly, as the editor notes that “the absence of earnestly dogmatic pleas for the importance and necessity of training in translation and interpreting” is most discernible (p. xiii), it is apparent that most contributions assume that training is an absolute necessity. In particular, the contributions of John Kearns and Candace Séguinot represent a big step forward out of decades of debate around whether or not training is necessary for translators or whether translation skills are innate or can be taught. Kearns argues for “an holistic approach to curriculum renewal” but against the dichotomy between the academic and the vocational in translator education. He makes this argu- ment by providing a historical account, including a discussion of how and why universities and vocational schools came to exist as different types of institutions. The historical account seems to be appropriate and useful in guiding the reader to place the dichotomy in perspective and consider the issue within a broader context. Séguinot discusses the role that the inter- vention of translation theory and translator education play in the process of professionalization and considers the influence which new changes, namely technological advancement and globalization, might have on that process and translator education. Her contribution could have been more meaningful if it had allocated more space to making more constructive suggestions about ways in which translation theory and translator education can facilitate the process of professionalization rather than lament the relatively low prestige of translators, which might not be the case in some societies. Thirdly, the argument for the importance and relevance of interdisciplin- ary research to translator education is gaining in strength and influence. This is perhaps because translator educators usually have theoretical and practical knowledge about translation as well as the other field concerned. Indeed it is not rare for translator educators to be practitioners and researchers at the same time, as is the case at Heriot-Watt University (p. 128). Alessandro Zannirato promulgates the relevance of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in teaching interpreting. Drawing on SLA research, he discusses how findings in the field can be helpful in deciding how best to give efficient feedback to an interpreting student who has great potential for consecutive interpreting, but often makes syntactic mistakes. He provides the observation that “most interpreting students are first and foremost foreign language students” (p. 34) as a common ground for interrelatedness between SLA/foreign language teaching and interpreter training and contends that the two disciplines can gain insightful knowledge from each other. Haidee Kruger notes that there are many language professions that would greatly benefit from formal train- ing. She particularly draws our attention to the need for formal training in text editing in the context of South Africa, where there are eleven official languages. Drawing on her personal experiences as a professional editor, translator and a language teacher in a university, she discusses core skills required for editors and why these skills are relevant to translators and argues Book Reviews 303 that “training for editors may be done productively as part of a broad-based university programme for language practitioners” (p. 46). The contribution of Christine W.L. Wilson and Rita McDade can be regarded as the positive outcome of interdisciplinary work and the applica- tion of new technologies in translator education, which is the fourth trend observed in this volume. Their concern is lexicography and sign-language interpreting and they present, in detail, a project designed to create an online British Sign Language (BSL)/English reference tool and digital resource- base. The aim of this is to “support the learning of student interpreters and the professional activities of both newly qualified interpreters and of interpreters with no prior experience of working in certain specialized fields” (p. 136). Minako O’Hagan pays attention to practices of translation by Japanese manga and anime fans and discusses major findings from her pilot study with a fan translator and a professional translator and its implications for Translation Studies in general and translator education in particular. Fan translation is an interesting phenomenon which has been enabled by advances in com- munication and design technologies and it is certainly worthy of closer examination. A larger follow-up study might make us revisit current theories in Translation Studies. The final trend reflected in this volume is that “competence” is still as mind-boggling a question as ever in translator education, even after decades of efforts to pin it down. Perhaps the embedded complexity in this question is the main reason for the continued endeavours to investigate it. A very positive development, however, is that a more rigorous evidence-based approach is now being taken in its investigation. The PACTE Group has carried out an experiment to further our understanding of what competence is and how it is acquired. Although the discussion in this volume is limited to initial results of the competence experiment, it presents a number of insightful observations. Among them, it is interesting to note that PACTE’s findings are compatible with findings from the work of Dorothy Kelly and Catherine Way, who have taken different approaches to the investigation of the same question. For instance, they all include generic skills such as problem solving skills and communication skills as part of competence, although they label them dif- ferently. This might be a reflection of the broadened context in the research field of translator education led by the trends discussed above. Despite the positive and exciting aspects of the study, one might raise an objection to its assumption about bilinguals’ linguistic abilities. PACTE write “Since all bilinguals possess knowledge of two languages and may also possess extralinguistic knowledge, we consider the subcompetences that are specific to translation competence to be strategic competence, instrumental compet- ence and knowledge of translation” (p. 108). Given that bilinguals are not necessarily good translators and linguistic competence of bilinguals cannot be generalized, meticulous investigations are also required to find out what kinds of advanced linguistic skills are needed for translation and how they 304 Book Reviews can be acquired. In general, John Kearns’s edited collection clearly shows that the field of translator education has made significant progress since the late 1980s when a variety of issues in the field attracted increasing attention from Transla- tion Studies scholars. This volume is certainly inspirational as it provides translator and interpreter teachers with food for thought and reflection on their own practice of teaching and points to new directions in the field. The fact that a number of contributions in this volume are reports on on-going or pilot projects is a stimulating sign of research vibrancy in the field but at the same time implies that it is still a young discipline that needs a great deal of rigorous research to examine issues that have been debated until now with little evidence, as well as to meet the new challenges that this rapidly changing era presents. In addition, if interdisciplinary work is to offer mutual benefits, rigour is a critical research quality in translator education. MIRA KIM Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie Univer- sity, Sydney, Australia. Mira.Kim@ling.mq.edu.au References Colina, Sonia (2003) Translation Teaching – From Research to the Classroom: A Handbook for Teachers, New York & San Francisco: McGraw Hill. Kelly, Dorothy (2005) A Handbook for Translator Trainers, Manchester: St. Jerome. Kiraly, Don (2000) A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education: Empowerment from Theory to Practice, Manchester, St. Jerome. Kim, Mira (2005) ‘Translator Education and Sustainability’, Meta, 50(4): CD ROM. Available at http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/019868ar (last accessed 3 April 2009). Tareas de traducción e interpretación desde una perspectiva cognitiva [Translation and Interpreting Tasks from a Cognitive Perspective]. Present- ación Padilla Benítez, Pedro Macizo Soria and María Teresa Bajo Molina. Granada: Atrio. 217 pp. ISBN 978-84-96101-58-4. €11.98. T he stated overall − and perhaps overambitious − aim of the authors of this volume is to propose a comprehensive and integrated theoretical cognitive model that is valid for all language-mediated activities, i.e. for both translation and interpreting (T/I) and for all of the different sub- categories involved within the wider scope of any translatorial activity. The book is well organized, moving from more general to more spe-