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Translation and Interpreting Pedagogy in Dialogue with Other Disciplines
Edited by Sonia Colina and Claudia V. Angelelli
[Benjamins Current Topics 90] 2017
► pp. 7–30

Occasioning translator competence

Moving beyond social constructivism toward a postmodern alternative to instructionism

For the past thirty years, as the translator’s profession has undergone a radical metamorphosis from a sort of bilingual craft to a highly technologized profession, translator education has been undergoing a comparatively slow evolution. From pervasive chalk-and-talk transmissionist practice just a few decades ago, the contemporary literature on translator education reveals a plethora of theoretical and practical approaches to the study and teaching of translation-related skills. In this article, the author reviews some key trends in this development within the translator education domain on the basis of his own evolution as a translator educator over the past three decades. A key focus will be placed on the role of epistemology, a mainstay of educational philosophy and learning theory, but a topic that he feels can help elucidate pedagogical practices of the past and guide the way toward ones better suited to educating translators today … and in the future.

Keywords: complexity theory, emergence, post-positivism, social constructivism
Published online: 30 June 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.90.02kir
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