Sustainability of translator training in higher education

Abstract

The United Nations has set a Sustainable Development Goal in education to be met hopefully by 2030. One of the target areas is to substantially increase the number of youth and adults possessing training and proficiency relevant to the technical and vocational skills needed for employment, well-paying jobs, and decent entrepreneurships. Enrolled students need to be equipped with core competencies suitable for the fields in which they are specializing, including the field of translation. For student translators, “transcreation” is a core competency they are expected to acquire and practice. With its increasing application in all sectors of life, the use of artificial intelligence or machine translation is on its way to becoming mainstream in the translation industry, eliminating bread-winning opportunities from translators, leaving them in the stream of life to sink or swim. That is why trainers of translators and practitioners alike insist that it is time to consider transcreation so that student translators can better embrace future challenges and boost their employability. A one-shot case study was adopted in this research. After a one-semester trial of teaching and practicing transcreation, an online questionnaire survey was administered to gain the overall perceptions of transcreation from the students. Findings show that the students have raised their awareness of transcreation as a novel approach to translation and most of them feel confident about their employability in the translation job market. Implications for translation syllabus design and translator training are also illustrated.