Анализ тематик выпускных квалификационных работ студентов переводческих специальностей и их корреляции с потребностями рынка труда

Abstract

Problem Statement. This study contains a statistical analysis of the translation market by translation type and domain and the distribution of translation student graduation project subjects. The purpose of this study is to improve the translation teaching quality through a better match between the graduation project subjects and the translation market demand. Materials and Methods. The authors reviewed the demand statistics for the Russian, EU, and US translation markets. We also collected a large database of translation graduation projects defended in Russian universities in 2018–2020. The series contains 245 projects. It covers 8 % of the relevant universities, which makes it representative with a 20 % confidence interval and 85 % confidence probability. The subjects of the graduation projects were divided into the following domains: audiovisual translation; theoretical linguistics; game and software localization; medical translation; research and technical translation; political journalism; advertising; interpretation; fiction; legal translation. Results and Discussion. It was found that the university-level translator training does not match the actual market demand. The maximum discrepancies were found in the following categories: “fiction” (21.66 % excess), “research and technical translation” (20.08 % deficiency), and “political journalism” (16.32 % excess). In addition, we analyzed the subjects of 138 graduation papers submitted to the Translator Creativity and Education International Contest in 2022. The lack of positive dynamics was found: the share of fiction reached 34.06% while the research and technical translation category reduced to just 11.59 %. Conclusions. The following corrective measures are proposed: harmonization of the graduation paper subjects with the market demand, engaging practicing translators as instructors, internships with LSPs, personalized learning paths, and interdepartmental projects.