TRAINING OF TRANSLATORS IN COLLABORATIVE ENVIRONMENTS. A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Due to the fast development of communication and information technologies, translation is no longer a solitary task carried out by secluded individuals. On the contrary, interpersonal competences are key for a translator, that is, the ability to work and negotiate with others, namely fellow translators, translation clients or initiators, project managers, proofreaders and so on. Collaborative learning has shown to be the most adequate methodology to acquire those skills as well as to empower students.

This paper focuses on the responses, obtained in two consecutive school years (201213 y 2013-14), to a questionnaire filled in by third-year translation students at ISCAP regarding a team project developed at the final stage of a two-semester training period on Spanish-Portuguese technical translation. This team project was intended to reproduce actual working conditions as closely as possible, by assigning them specific roles, such as glossary construction, translating, proofreading and project managing. Since students attended class at different hours, face-to-face communication was reduced to a minimum and other means were used, such as fora and videoconferencing. This case study analyses the students' attitudes to team work and collaborative effort under those particularly conditions, as well as compares their degree of satisfaction with that obtained from other types of assignment.