Developing translator competence: understanding trainers’ beliefs and training practices

Abstract

Translator trainers are faced with the challenges of helping translator trainees develop translator competence that meets the needs of the current language services industry. However, the existing literature provides little information on translator trainers’ beliefs about translator competence or their actual training practices. The study reported here adopted a mixed methods approach, in which both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to investigate translator trainers’ beliefs and training practices in the Chinese context. Analysis of the responses to a questionnaire as well as the interview and classroom observation data suggests that there were discrepancies between Chinese translator trainers’ beliefs and their training practices. It was found that the translator trainers generally recognised the importance of all the sub-competences of translator competence. However, they primarily focused on developing trainee’s bilingual and translation knowledge sub-competences and marginalised other sub-competences in their training practices. The observed discrepancies could be attributed to several internal factors (e.g., self-efficacy and motivation) and external factors (e.g., students’ abilities, curricula, examinations, colleagues and facilities). Based on these findings, several implications for the (self-)training of translator trainers are elaborated.

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