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CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS EMUNI Translation Studies Doctoral and Teacher Training Summer School 24 June – 5 July 2013, Piran, Slovenia Guest Lecturer 2013: Dr. Douglas Robinson, Hong Kong Baptist University The more than 300 MA programmes in translation across Europe indicate that there is both a great need to provide high-level doctoral study for prospective teachers and a pressing need to continuously provide teacher training to existing translation teachers in order to keep them up to date with the latest developments in the field. The EMUNI Translation Studies Doctoral Summer School and Teacher Training Summer School, a joint initiative by 6 different universities (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; Boğaziçi University, Turkey; University of Turku, Finland; University of East Finland, Finland; University of Granada, Spain; and EMUNI, Portorož, Slovenia), responds to this need by focusing, in particular, on contemporary research into literary and non-literary works from a historical perspective. Participation will be limited to a maximum of 15 individuals; particularly welcome are doctoral students in the early stages of their projects, teachers of translation at MA level or its equivalent and other academics, as well as professionals who are involved in research in translation and interpreting studies or in other doctoral fields where translation, interpreting or intercultural mediation is a focus of interest. Basic activities at the EMUNI Summer School:a) Critical discussion of the most current approaches to translation theory, paying particular attention to contemporary research into literary and non-literary works from a historical perspective.b) Presentation and critical discussion of different methodological approaches in TS, focusing in particular on researching the translation of literary and non-literary texts in historical TS from the perspective of historical and sociological studies, or through the use of ethnological and corpus approaches.c) A series of lectures by the guest lecturer.d) Teacher-training in the field of translator training, with a particular emphasis on curriculum and syllabus design, definition of objectives and learning outcomes, trainee and trainer profiles, ICT resources, classroom dynamics and assessment.e) Tutorials for doctoral students and young researchers.f) A graduate conference. Teaching Staff: Dr. Ebru Diriker, Boğaziçi University, Turkey Dr. Vojko Gorjanc, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Dr. Dorothy Kelly, University of Granada, Spain Dr. Nike K. Pokorn, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Dr. Kaisa Koskinen, University of Eastern Finland, Finland Dr. Outi Polaposki, Turku University, Finland Dr. Sehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar, Boğaziçi University, Turkey Dr. Špela Vintar, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Publication: participants shall be invited to submit an article to be refereed and published in print and on the EMUNI summer school website. Expenses: Associates will be responsible for their own airfare and local transportation to and from Piran. The expected maximum costs for students for 12 days (registration + tuition + accommodation) is 970 €. Students from the non-EU countries of the Union for the Mediterranean, are eligible for grants. Application Deadline: March 15, 2013 Website: For the application procedure and more details of the school please visit the website at:http://www.prevajalstvo.net/emuni-doctoral-summer-school or write to emuni.info@ff.uni-lj.si
Le succès des classes de sixième «bi-langues» a enrayé le déclin de l'apprentissage de l'allemand en France.
Résumés ou des extraits des articles. Les articles du dossier ne sont accessibles qu’aux abonnés aux Langues Modernes.
The digital technologies, virtual learning / instruction, as well as the change in translator work patterns had an impact on translator training at university level. The need to rethink the pedagogical approaches as well as the type ...
A failure to avoid the fiscal cliff would exact a perilously high price from the academic institutions, which help drive the American economy.
New Guides Aim to Become the Yelp for MOOC’s
December 4, 2012, 3:06 pm By Alisha Azevedo
Students looking for massive open online courses, or MOOC’s, have many options, with a growing number of providers and course titles. A handful of Web sites have popped up over the past few months to help students find courses they’re interested in, much as a restaurant-goer might turn to Yelp. Some of the sites let students review the MOOC’s they’ve taken, incorporating their views into the sites’ overall guidance. One new directory, Course Buffet, was started two months ago by Bruce Bolton, out of his frustration over trying to compare the quality of online resources. The site lists more than 500 courses from various MOOC providers, and each course is assigned a difficulty level (Psychology 100, for example), to help students move from easier to more difficult material. He hopes to turn a profit by selling advertising, such as by sending offers from certification companies to students.
How do we help novice learners become more expert? Peter Skillen uses collaborative journal writing environments to move kids beyond social talk into deeper thinking.
We all know the disadvantages of teaching a subject as a content novice, but what are the advantages? Brian Taylor By James M. Lang When I was a teenager, I wanted to become a professional golfer. I spent endless hours hitting balls on the range, putting on my basement carpet, and practicing my chipping at a field down the street from my house. I played on the golf team in high school, read magazines about the latest techniques and equipment, and studied the professionals in televised tournaments. Twenty years after those aspirations (mercifully) died, I am now a tenured faculty member and administrator with a working spouse and five children. Although I still love to play golf, and sneak out whenever possible, it has been knocked down a substantial number of pegs on my priority list. Two years ago, though, my wife decided that she would join a group of her friends who were taking up golf, and she got herself a set of lessons and some clubs. She quickly fell in love with the game. I was thrilled: What better than a happily married couple sharing a love of golf? Her golf lessons had mostly involved learning how to swing, which meant she had not received much instruction in what golfers call "the short game": chipping shots onto the green and putting them into the hole. Don't worry about that, I assured her: The short game was always my specialty. I can teach you how to chip and putt in a snap. So out on the course we went. I was confident that my many years as a student of the game, and my extensive knowledge of chipping and putting techniques, would enable me to help her develop those skills quickly. The first time I saw her chip, I began instructing her. "Keep your wrists stiff," I said. She hit a line drive over the green. "Not that stiff, obviously. Break them a little bit." She popped it up into the air about four inches. "Mostly stiff," I said, "but break them a little bit just over the ball." She glared at me and kicked the ball onto the green. This went on for several holes, with her chips scattering everywhere—or going nowhere—and marital tension mounting. I grew increasingly frustrated, both with her and myself. Why wasn't she doing this right? And why couldn't I fix what she was doing wrong? Here was one of the few skills in the world in which I could claim some level of expertise. Over and over again, as I hit my own chips, I tried to analyze what I was doing and explain it to her, but nothing seemed to help her improve. Eventually I gave up. "Playing golf is like dying," I pronounced philosophically, as we neared the end of that unhappy round. "There may be other people around, but ultimately you have to do it alone." Somehow it always surprises me how little she appreciates my philosophical pronouncements. This marital low point was the first real-world example that popped into my head while I was reading Therese Huston's Teaching What You Don't Know (Harvard University Press), which analyzes the gap between teaching as an expert of the course content and teaching as a novice of it. In the introduction to the book, which was just released in paperback, Huston points out that graduate students and new faculty members traditionally expect to be able to teach courses in their areas of expertise. That seems like a benign enough assumption. However, she writes, "college and university faculty members often find themselves having to teach what they don't know. They have to get up in front of their classes and explain something that they learned just last week, or two days ago, or, in the worst-case scenario, that same morning over a very hurried breakfast." I can confirm that easily enough from my own dozen years of teaching at a liberal-arts college. Although my background is in 20th-century British literature, I regularly have to dip back into the 19th century for my survey course on British literature. With almost no formal training in rhetoric, I count "Argument and Persuasion" among my standard course offerings. Every member of my department could make similar claims.
On connaissait les poupées « ethniques » aux traits afros, comme la Barbie noire de Mattel. Plus fort, une entreprise britannique propose des poupées qui parlent des langues africaines. L’idée, permettre aux enfants de conserver un lien avec leur culture d’origine, via le langage. Elle s’appelle Ama et parle le twi, le ga, l’ewe et le krobo, langues parlées au Ghana. Sa mission ? Initier les enfants, à partir de trois ans, aux langues de leurs parents. L’argument se veut pédagogique. Selon le quotidien britannique The Guardian, Chris Chidi Ngoforo, le fondateur de la société Rooti Creations, à l’origine des poupées, aurait eu l’idée de ces jouets en voyant l’incapacité de ses filles à parler l’igbo, sa langue maternelle, parlée au Nigeria. Rooti Creations affirme en effet que la plupart des enfants issus de la diaspora africaine ne parlent ou ne comprennent pas leur langue maternelle et qu’ils seraient également nombreux dans ce cas-là en Afrique. D’où l’idée de cet outil éducatif. « Comment vas-tu ? » Pour autant, pas de quoi prétendre, bien sûr, faire des enfants d’authentiques petits bilingues. Avec des phrases comme « Comment vas-tu ? », « Je vais bien, merci », le niveau de vocabulaire reste basique. Néanmoins, les poupées proposent plusieurs langues d’un même pays et divers pays sont représentés, comme le Ghana, le Kenya, l’Afrique du Sud ou encore le Nigeria. Au-delà de l’aspect didactique, l’idée est aussi, toujours selon la firme, de donner une image qui se veut plus réaliste de la beauté noire, auxquelles les petites filles africaines peuvent plus facilement s’identifier. Comme l’avance l’entreprise, « (nos poupées) ont des nez plus larges, des lèvres plus pulpeuses, de longs cheveux bouclés et elles existent dans différentes variations de noir. » Les poupées sont actuellement proposées à plusieurs magasins du Royaume-Uni et d’Afrique. Et les responsables sont en discussion avec des fournisseurs pour s’implanter sur le marché français.
How to teach writing, reading and thinking
OCTOBER 11, 2012 BY JOANNE LEAVE A COMMENT
“Explicit teaching of writing makes kids better writers” and readers. Does writing improve thinking? Dan Willingham looks at the evidence in The Atlantic.
Not all writing instruction is helpful, Willingham writes. Students learn to write well if they’re taught “the nuts and bolts,” such as “text structure, how to use specific strategies for planning, revising, or editing text, and so on. . . . if a teacher does not show students how to construct a paragraph or a well-written argument, some will figure out it anyway, but many will not.”
Writing instruction improves reading comprehension, but again the details matter. When students write about what they’ve read — analyzing, interpreting, summarizing and answering questions — they build comprehension, Willingham writes. Explicit teaching of writing conventions helps students understand how authors use conventions.
It’s worth noting that these two advantages — better writing and better reading — will probably not accrue if most writing assignments consist of answering short questions, writing in journals, and completing worksheets — exactly the writing tasks on which elementary school kids spend most of their time (Gilbert & Graham, 2010). Students need assignments that include writing in longer formats with some formal structural requirements.
The research is not as clear on the question of whether teaching writing improves thinking, he writes.
There is a certain logic to the idea that students can become better critical thinkers by completing writing assignments. Writing forces you to organize your thoughts. Writing encourages you to try different ideas and combinations of ideas. Writing encourages you to select your words carefully. Writing holds the promise (and the threat) of a permanent record of your thoughts, and thus offers the motivation to order them carefully. And indeed some forms of writing–persuasive or expository essays for example — explicitly call for carefully ordering thinking.
Five-day workshop in IIUI Islamabad—A five days workshop on the topic of “Teaching Translation and Interpretation, Theory, Practice and Challenges” under the auspicious of Faculty of Arabic of the International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI) with the collaboration of Higher Education Commission (HEC) is continued here since last Monday in the new campus of the university. On the third day of the workshop Mr. Abdul Karim Shah spoke on “Scope of translation and interpretation in international market”, Dr. Fadeela Daud spoke on “Interpretation and role of Interpreter in international conference”, Shareef Sheikh spoke on “Media, Legal and Conference Translation”.—NNI
Several developers in our network make apps that focus on learning new languages. Our guest post this week highlights strategies from two families that cover storytelling as an important component of bilingual education in the home.
Translation sections in varsities urged Staff Report ISLAMABAD: A five-day workshop, organised under the auspices of International Islamic University, Islamabad’s (IIUI) Faculty of Arabic on Monday, learned about the importance of translation in transformation of knowledge from one language to another. Held with collaboration of Higher Education Commission (HEC) at the university’s new campus, the workshop’s topic was ‘Teaching Translation and Interpretation, Theory, Practice and Challenges’. Presiding over the inaugural session of the workshop, IIUI President Prof Dr Sahibzada Sajidur Rehman said, “It is impossible to transform knowledge from one language to another without proper translation.” He said that due to these translations the scholars and clerics of sub-continent became familiar with the knowledge of the holy Quran, the hadith and fiqh. He said there was a time when the Western world used to look towards the Muslim world for seeking knowledge. “Nowadays Muslim scholars head for the Western universities to seek knowledge of the holy Quran, the hadith and other Islamic disciplines.” He said that it was the need of the hour to establish translation departments in Pakistani universities to transform the Quranic as well as the knowledge of modern disciplines in native languages. He assured all possible cooperation to the Faculty of Arabic in this regards. Earlier, programme coordinator Dr Inamul Haq Ghazi briefed the participants about the workshop and said that the IIU was the first university in Pakistan to introduce the four-year BS in Translation and Interpretation. He added that MS in Translation and Interpretation would also be introduced next year, which will be converted in PhD programme later on. He thanked the HEC for its cooperation to hold the workshop.
One of the most important things I learned as a young assistant basketball coach, from the grizzled veteran who became my first mentor, was the acronym “KISS.” That stands for “Keep It Simple, Stupid”—and not, apparently, for “Knights in Satan’s Service,” as a local youth pastor asserted back in 1975, when I was still trying to figure out how the heck to play a vinyl LP backward so I could hear the hidden messages. But I digress. The point my mentor was making is that even though basketball is basically a simple game, coaches have a way of making it more complicated than it has to be. That proved to be a valuable lesson throughout my coaching career, and it’s been just as valuable to me as a writing instructor. Writing, too, is basically a pretty simple process—simple, not easy—but we have a way sometimes of overcomplicating it. Nowhere is that more true, apparently, than in today’s middle and high schools, where regular “writing assessments” are to harried teachers what annual colonoscopies might be to the rest of us. No doubt that’s partly because all those teachers genuinely want to do a good job, but I imagine it’s also because schools, and school systems, are essentially large bureaucracies, where everything is done by committee. That means you have a lot of smart, dedicated people sitting around a table, all eager to contribute something to the lesson plan or the rubric or whatever. And all of them do contribute something, thus making the document about five times longer and more complex (let’s be honest) than it really needs to be.
These exercises and more can be found in Conference Interpreting - A Students'Companion, A Gillies, 2001, (p80-83) and are reproduced with the kind permission of Tertium Krakow). More exercises can be found in the 2004 revised eidtion of this book, Conference Interpreting - A New Students' companion.
[image]Learning English was never about winning a personal challenge - it was about survival for Japanese writer, translator and freelance film co-ordinator Izumi Uchida.
Call it the year of the mega-class. First a Stanford University professor opened his computer-science course up to anyone who wanted to join in online. Soon some of the world's best-known universities tried similar experiments. It's a mix of self-service learning and crowd-sourced teaching. The reality, though, is that professors have been slow to reshape their strategies. | Read More »
In many ESP programs in South America, teaching ESP is the equivalent to teaching reading comprehension. What can be said of ESP in your part of the world? Southamerican colleagues are invited to corraborate or support my perception.
Are you a tweetin’ teacher? Do you rely on tweets for your extended PLN? Whether you use the service or not, there’s a whole world of information being shared and you should start taking part. But if you’ve been too nervous or unsure about HOW to actually use Twitter as efficiently as possible… the wait is over. We’ve offered up plenty of tips and tricks for Twitter but never anything like this. It’s an elegantly organized set of infographics detailing the step-by-step process of using Twitter and making it work for you. Here are some of the key questions answered in the set of graphics by Cheryl Lawson below. Some tips are geared towards businesses but I know that many of them will benefit the Edudemic audience too!
Much debate centres on controversial topics being covered in schools: is it better to protect young people by hiding the truth? Or is it more beneficial to face these topics head on? Furthermore, at what point does a controversial issue become acceptable to make the curriculum?
Hiding the truth?
Controversy is dangerous. It is intimidating and divisive, and has the ability to divide society. Bearing this in mind it is easy to see why there is an argument against controversial issues being taught, particularly before a certain age. Does it make logical sense to teach 5-7 year olds about genocide or civil unrest? Well it appears that yes it does. Japanese students often get taught about the impact of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima atomic bombs from a young age; partly due to how integral these events are to Japanese history.
Nonetheless, there is speculation as to how much detail is revealed to students in Japan; with many overseas teachers stating on blogs that many controversial issues get swept under the carpet as the government ‘don't want their kids to feel sorry for the past’.
Although it is easier to avoid discussing controversial topics at school, the unpredictability of the classroom often results in students introducing controversial topics on their own accord. Surely this can only be viewed as a positive when a surly teenager suddenly decides to discuss the positives of a political manifesto, or who develops an opinion on international relations in the Middle East?
Facing topics head on?
In Germany, students under 16 learn about the Holocaust, and although it is voluntary, some schools even encourage pupils to visit former concentration camps. By openly discussing such a sensitive issue, it encourages tolerance.
Dutch sexual education can begin for some pupils from the age of five. Although some people in Britain have criticised this approach, Holland have the lowest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. This illustrates that teaching controversial topics at school can be beneficial.
Teaching sensitive topics can also be seen as an essential requirement as it creates open-minded adults. For instance, pupils in a non-diverse small village would benefit profoundly if they were to learn about religions such as Buddhism. It would not be something they came across in their everyday life, but it would equip them with knowledge of other cultures.
At what point does something become history?
Students taking free online courses offered by the startup company Coursera have reported dozens of incidents of plagiarism, even though the courses bear no academic credit. This week a professor leading one of the so-called Massive Open Online Courses posted a plea to his 39,000 students to stop plagiarizing, and Coursera's leaders say they will review the issue and consider adding plagiarism-detection software in the future. In recent weeks, students in at least three Coursera humanities courses have complained of plagiarized assignments by other students. The courses use peer grading, so each student is asked to grade and offer comments on the work of fellow students. "I just graded my second batch of peer essays and was saddened to find one of them was lifted from Wikipedia," wrote one student in the discussion forums for the course, "Fantasy and Science Fiction."
There are obviously numerous different paths that can be followed in order to become a fully qualified translator or interpreter. No one definitive route exists that is considered the standalone, perfect way to forge a career for yourself in the industry. In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of working for a translation agency is that I get to meet linguists from all sorts of different backgrounds besides the obvious cultural ones. Many have always operated as freelancers, while others have had careers as translators in the private or public sector or have worked more directly in their specialised field. Some have little more than a bachelor’s degree to their name; others have more qualifications than you can shake a stick at! One experience that countless translators I come across have benefitted from and speak highly of is completing a master’s degree. Again, master’s graduates I have the pleasure of meeting have done their degree at different stages in their career. Going straight from a bachelor’s degree to a master’s is a common route for translators who know exactly what they want and have the means to do so, although there are plenty who have gone back into studying and working towards a master’s after having considerable experience as a translator. From gauging the opinion of those at Quick Lingo who have chosen to further their careers with translation-related master’s degrees, I can tell you more about options available from five of the UK’s best universities: Read more: http://home.yourprofessionaltranslator.com/2012/08/guest-post-masters-degrees-in.html
The knock on my door didn’t sound different from any other knock, so I had no idea that my day was about to get much better. My mentee walked in. She had been my doctoral student and was now my colleague, thanks to an unusual set of circumstances that had led her to start her academic career at our university. As a result, she had been working hard to diversify her experience and her scientific network. She was also submitting grant applications and multiple manuscripts to journals. That day she walked into the office, emitting a kind of radiance that made my heart leap. “I got the grant,” she said with a giddy laugh. As I leapt from my chair and shouted, “Yes!,” she hugged me, exclaiming, “I got it! I got it!”
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