--By Hannelore Lee-Jahnke, Honorary President of CIUTI; Rectorate's Delegate for International Relations, University of Geneva, Switzerland

 

Abstract

 

The concept of the Chinese Dream, which is fairly young and has been largely promoted since the beginning of 2013, is multifaceted and describes on the one hand, the role of the individual in Chinese society, but also Chinese prosperity and collective effort on a sustainable basis, on national, individual and economic levels.

By and large, to our understanding, a key factor to achieve this goal – or rather these goals – is communication and understanding. Communication between the different languages but also cultural understanding. We do know that the Confucius Institutes play a key role to promote not only Chinese language, but also the Chinese Culture. In addition to that, since 2007 with the introduction of the Master in Translation and Interpretation – MTI – by the Government of China – high quality training of those language and culture communicators. A very important step for the world of translators. Because, on the one hand it did underline the importance of translation and, on the other hand, it did stress proper and high quality training in this field.

Now, when talking about the question how our students can become qualified translators and interpreters, one has to talk about certain developments in general didactics in the context of higher education where different new approaches must be taken into consideration, because there is a fundamental change taking place in the way we teach and support learning.

We are moving from a paradigm based on the transfer of knowledge (or rather information) from teacher to pupil (or trainer to student), to a paradigm based on learner acquisition and based on construction of knowledge through active dialogue with other learners and the teacher.

The learner centred approach is more dynamic, and more flexible to the needs of the students, but this approach is also a great challenge to our traditional educational institutions.

The current cognitive theory emphasizes three interrelated aspects of learning:

First, learning is a process of knowledge construction, not of knowledge recording or absorption.

Second, learning is knowledge-dependent; people use current knowledge to construct new knowledge.

Third, learning is highly tuned to the situation in which it takes place.

Learning is knowledge-dependent; people use current knowledge to construct new knowledge!

Knowledge is retained only when embedded in some organizing structure.

All new knowledge is constructed on a foundation of prior knowledge, and this new knowledge, once interlinked and referenced to the prior knowledge, forms a foundation of new prior knowledge. The learning brain is constantly re-organising itself by adding and subtracting information as cognitive sciences clearly show us.

A new challenge for instruction is to develop ways of organizing learning that permit skills to be practiced in the environments in which they will be used.

The Current Didactical Mainstream is characterized by a shift from teaching to learning. Learning is seen as a co-production process between the learner and the learning environment.

A learner orientation thus means to take the learners situation, references and knowledge about his or her situation as the reference point for the didactical, technological and other organisational decisions when designing a learning environment. This also stresses, of course, the importance of the cultural background of the learner.

Lack of quality awareness

Unfortunately, the professional translation market has very often no awareness of translational quality.

As long as clients and customers, sometimes under pressure to reduce costs, accept poor translation and interpreting work and low quality standards and as long as translators and interpreters themselves and their professional associations (as well as the training institutions) fail to agree on quality norms, nothing in this bleak picture will change.

Market monitoring

? Clear market-oriented definition of the training that the institution offers, namely translation studies.

? Knowledge of and creation of core values for customers, thereby generating competitive advantages. This value-to-customer lies in the product, namely translation competence, a fact which must be made clear to the end-customers on the translation market.

The future

The trend is quite clearly moving away from inadequately trained translators and interpreters in the direction of appreciating the work of fully trained experts in interlingual and intercultural communication.

By supporting this in the areas of initial training and continuing training, we can contribute to providing translators with an adequate position on the translation market and within the society of the future.

This society of the future will be a knowledge society, for knowledge will be its key resource, and knowledge workers will be the dominant group in its workface.

Its main characteristics will be: 1) borderlessness, because knowledge travels easily and will be made accessible everywhere through the internet, and, 2) upward mobility through easily acquired education, which has to be underlined.

In this future society, the so-called ?knowledge technologists will be the fastest growing group, and among them we will find the professional translation providers, for they combine knowledge and special skills.

In view of this future society we must convince the public that translation is and will be of importance and that translators will contribute to the welfare and prosperity of the global knowledge society of the future in which global thinking and a global mentality are crucial.

One of the solutions to bring translators and interpreters – the so-called service providers – together with the major stakeholders in the Chinese Dream, we could imagine a square and each of the four angles is occupied by:

1. The Government/State 2. Universities and their innovative, sustainable training 3. Service providers – translators and interpreters 4. Economy /Economies- global Market.

In this square we place a triangle with the key-points: Quality, flexibility, efficiency. In order to ensure these key qualities to be effective in the right time at the right place, the triangle is placed in a circle which can move – or be moved – according to the respective needs of the objectives of the Chinese Dream: be it culture, economy or others on individual, national or global levels.