Fostering Employability through Versatility within Specialisation in Medical Translation Education

Ana Muñoz-Miquel,Vicent Montalt,Isabel García-Izquierdo

doi:10.7146/hjlcb.v60i0.121316

Abstract

The current increase of automation (Rodríguez 2017; Massey/Wieder 2018) and the emergence of new needs and forms of communication are triggering substantial changes in the translation profession, in the role of the translator and in translator education. Previous studies (Muñoz-Miquel 2014, 2016a, 2018) have shown the rich variety of tasks — beyond those traditionally considered — that medical translators perform in the workplace, including heterofunctional translation, editing, or community management. The ability to develop new skills and to adapt continuously to the changing needs of the market is one of the essential characteristics of the translator in the 21st century. That is why we consider it of critical importance that, together with specialisation, versatility is promoted in translator education. In this article, we explore the notion of versatility and propose a teaching strategy that incorporates it and can contribute to improving the employability of future translators. Specifically, we put forward some pedagogical proposals for the English-Spanish language combination that promote diversification of competences and tasks within a narrow specialisation — the medical and healthcare field — in order to provide (future) translators with the versatility necessary to respond to new demands and thus be more employable. Our approach is based on the results of surveys of professional medical translators on the tasks and roles they perform, as well as on our own teaching experience in a master’s degree programme in medical translation.

Highlights

The present time of technological change, increasing automation (Rodríguez 2017), growth of neural machine translation (Massey/Wieder 2018) and emergence of new communication needs is triggering substantial changes in the translation and interpreting profession, and even calling into question the very existence of translation as a human activity, as well as translation education as we currently think of it.At the same time, there is a growing interest in fostering the employability of graduates (Calvo et al 2010; Peverati 2013; Álvarez-Álvarez/Arnáiz-Uzquiza 2017; Rodríguez 2017) and in conducting empirical studies to provide data on the tasks currently required of professional translators
Some studies (Muñoz-Miquel 2014, 2016a, 2018) have shown that specialised translators carry out a wide variety of tasks, and this could be indicative that specialisation is not in conflict with versatility but rather the opposite
Our concern in this paper is not so much in employability itself but in the role that versatility — the ability to change one’s perspective to adapt to new professional situations and develop existing and new competences in response to changing market needs (Montalt 2011) — should play in the curriculum of the specialised translator, as a possible tool that can contribute to make him/her more employable

Summary

Introduction

The present time of technological change, increasing automation (Rodríguez 2017), growth of neural machine translation (Massey/Wieder 2018) and emergence of new communication needs is triggering substantial changes in the translation and interpreting profession, and even calling into question the very existence of translation as a human activity, as well as translation education as we currently think of it.At the same time, there is a growing interest in fostering the employability of graduates (Calvo et al 2010; Peverati 2013; Álvarez-Álvarez/Arnáiz-Uzquiza 2017; Rodríguez 2017) and in conducting empirical studies to provide data on the tasks currently required of professional translators. Our concern in this paper is not so much in employability itself but in the role that versatility — the ability to change one’s perspective to adapt to new professional situations and develop existing and new competences in response to changing market needs (Montalt 2011) — should play in the curriculum of the specialised translator, as a possible tool that can contribute to make him/her more employable This proposition is framed within the broader argument that in an era of growing automation, new professional paths in which the human factor is desirable but inevitable and of critical importance can — and should — be explored. This may involve redefining — or even extending — the tasks, roles and responsibilities (Angelone 2018; Massey/Wieder 2018) expected of translators, which could influence the directions that translator training should take

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