Ideals and reality

 

So I’m aware that I’ve not posted for a good while. This has been due to other projects and having to put a few things on the back-burner for a while. To my surprise, however, this has not resulted in less traffic to my blog and it’s great to see that the older articles are read just as much as the newer ones. I hope that my blog will continue to provide advice and to act as a source of information for translators all over the world.

Today’s post is just to let you know that I have recently published an article in the University of Trieste’s International Journal of Translation entitled “The importance of active foreign language competence – Maximising choice for graduate translators”. The article is based on a talk I gave at the University of Trieste in December 2015 at a conference considering the question of the degree of foreign language competence required by future graduate translators in view of the native speaker principle, i.e. if translators are only supposed to be translating into their native language, how much active foreign language competence do they really need? As usual, I jumped at the chance to talk and write about this subject which is close to my heart and is all about ideals and reality. While ideals do have their place and I personally also apply the native speaker principle in my professional legal translation practice, it is not the only way. Real life and the requirements of companies and institutions, as I discuss in my article, is often a completely different ball game. This is why I take such a keen interest in this field and, when it comes to the academic perspective, I like to keep a very open mind and to consider what the situation really is like on the ground, right now, in order to assist translators (particularly beginner translators) who are facing these questions right now and not in some ideal world which they may not live to see.

The article is freely accessible via the following link and can be downloaded as a PDF file: http://hdl.handle.net/10077/13665