Planning for Success. Proactive Behaviour in Teaching Translation Skills to Master's Students

Abstract

The paper is concerned with an epistemologically ever more diverse field – translations studies – more specifically, with quality teaching as assured by the teacher's proactive behaviour (stepping beyond stereotyped dichotomies such as reactive- proactive). The research was carried out on two sample groups: Master's students in legal translation programme and Master's students in the field of theoretical and applied linguistics. In the former case, translation skills are at the core of the make-up of the competence-based curriculum, whereas in the latter case, they belong to the category of transversal competences. The main variables taken into account are: students’ profile (motivation, knowledge, abilities, values, attitudes, prior learning experience, collective and individual expectations) and setting (macro-social level: international education market, the Lisbon strategy – towards the knowledge-based dynamic society, European social cohesion and mobility; meso- institutional level: type of learning environment, performance criteria and standards; programme objectives and related resources; micro-individual level – students’ actively seeking knowledge acquisition and skills development in formal and non-formal contexts). The research outputs are identified to lines of action as part of a flexible comprehensive framework or checklist encompassing both commonalities and specificities in teaching translation skills to different target audiences.