Abstract
The paper addresses the field of translating legal texts (from Polish into English and from English into Polish) from the point of view of translation teaching and skill development. Due to the changing perspective of the translator’s profession, the necessity has emerged to have a closer look at the way translation skills and competence are developed and how the objective of such training is perceived by users (trainees). The results of a survey (conducted among trainees prior to the course and as a follow-up) are presented; the survey was aimed at juxtaposing expectations expressed by trainees with their follow-up achievements. It was assumed that trainees’ awareness of potential competence-related problem areas (i.e. to underline the significance of such extralinguistic concepts as, e.g., background knowledge or cognitive factors) should be increased, combined with the responsibility for tasks performed as active participants of translation interactions. The complexity of competence, problems with defining the nature of expertise and its applicability to the research context as well as the significance of the didactic process still remain worthy objectives of further research. Trainees should be also made aware of changing market requirements and expectations as to skills and qualifications they should have to be highly appreciated and competitive employees.
Highlights
Comparative Legilinguistics 18/2014The translator’s profession has been changing dynamically for the last decades and the recent years have brought the need to define it both in terms of a service rendered and a profession performed
This paper addresses the profession’s status, specialist translation, with the focus on expectations and problems related with translator education, today’s reality of system requirements and development possibilities
It shows the ability of critical self-reflection on the part of the survey participants: they are aware of the fact that both linguistic and extralinguistic types of knowledge are essential. Another interesting observation that can be made is the role of cognitive skills. These were deliberately not specified in the tables but were rather treated as an umbrella term covering such issues as good memory that translators must have, ability to concentrate, ability to self-discipline and constant development, motivation to learn, ability to apply effective decision making and problem solving strategies that were mentioned by the survey participants in their responses
Summary
The translator’s profession has been changing dynamically for the last decades and the recent years have brought the need to define it both in terms of a service rendered and a profession performed. (v) to show them the operation of market mechanisms and the challenges posed by market demands These objectives go far into the future but their implementation will allow us to improve linguistic and extralinguistic skills of our students – prospective translators – but, most of all, to teach them somewhat more holistically, or in other words, to educate them so that they will be able to develop attitudes that would motivate them to expand their knowledge, to be willing to learn, to be aware of the responsibility for the text generated and the significance of intercultural communication, mediation of meaning (in the context on legal translation that would be the mediation of two different legal systems), terminological consistency (which is one of pivotal requirements of legal translation) or the accuracy of expression. The results of the surveys are demonstrated in the tables below, with figures representing the number of responses given and the calculated percentage ratio of the responses, respectively
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