Translation in the University

In the ‘global society’ of the year 2000, the social, institutional, and commercial importance of translation would be impossible to deny. Translation pervades our daily lives to such an extent that much of our ‘business as usual’ would break down if it were suddenly stopped. Yet despite its apparent ease and familiarity, translating is arguably the most complex and delicate of all modes of human communication (Beaugrande 1997a, 2000).

Moreover, the place of translation in modern education has remained marginal and tenuous. Our primary and secondary education rarely accords it its own place in the curriculum, even in the many multilingual cultures, such as South Africa, where the teachers and pupils frequently translate in the classroom. Our tertiary education in colleges and universities sustain only occasional programmes or institutes expressly devoted to translation, even when more than one language is in use as a medium of instruction.

We are evidently facing a peculiar and costly paradox. Translating is an omnipresent and indispensable practice in our societies, often constituting an essential skill for entering highly-paid careers. Yet the institutions of those societies do not educate their citizens to prepare them for doing it well. So translating is often carried out unskilfully, potentially wasting billions of dollars every year in misguided labour and degraded information. Such hidden costs vastly exceed the costs of setting up programmes for studying translation and training future translators. To reject such programmes for being ‘too costly’ is a false and perverse economising — saving small sums while wasting large ones.

Perhaps the low profile of translation in the universities is one aspect of the more general problems in correlating higher education with the rapid evolution of society and technology. When assessed in practical terms of social or economic needs, the conventional university curriculum may seem rather ‘academic’, that is, devoted to concerns that are specific to the university setting. Apparently, the emphasis is more on general intellectual exercise and mental discipline than upon specific preparation for a professional future.

Translation poses its own peculiar problems by lacking an clearly defined academic home. The Humanities are routinely divided up into individual ‘Language Departments’, each working in relative isolation from the rest. For example, many North American universities sustain a ‘Department of Germanic Languages’ and a ‘Department of Romance Languages’; the two rarely interact with each other, nor with the ‘Department of English’. In contrast, translation would logically be the legitimate concern of all the Language Departments working together.

The conventional Department is divided into two programmes, each entailing its own paradox for translation. The Literature Programme serves the Humanities as an international enterprise celebrating the creative potential of language realised in the works of great literature from antiquity down to modern times. To reach wide audiences, many works, such as the Odyssey or the Divine Comedy, must be read in translations. Surely we should be committed to providing translations of the highest quality to preserve the excellence of the originals. Yet the majority of the commercially published translations fall far short, largely because the publisher does not feel obligated to sustain higher standards as long as Literature Programmes do not insist upon them.

So the paradox in the Literature Programme resides in relying upon translations whose quality patently contradicts the higher mission of the Humanities. We strive to present the most excellent achievements of language, yet much of the excellence gets lost through mediocre translating. Furthermore, we teach each ‘national literature’ in isolation even though many authors were vividly inspired by the literary works of other nations and some tried their own hand at translating them. If we focussed on the great challenges and delicate problems of translating literature, we could gain a novel perspective on the ways of exploiting the creative potential of differing languages.

The Language Programme of the conventional Department entails a paradox of another sort. We undertake to provide fluency in foreign languages, yet we fail to appreciate that translating is a primary strategy for acquiring foreign languages in real life. Translating can also refine our understanding of how languages work in comparison to each other. In addition, it constitutes a key skill in the social and economic activities of future careers in using the foreign language.

The situation is not much brighter in the Linguistics Department, even though its official subject-matter is the study of many different languages. Such departments often cultivate extremely abstract and theoretical notions of ‘language’ as an ideal formal system constructed upon ‘universal properties of language’ (Beaugrande 1997b, 1998). The idealisation tends to make the practical uses of language, such as translation, seem too diverse and unmanageable for scientific investigation.

A Department may seek to mediate this imbalance by subdividing into Theoretical Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. Unfortunately, the two sides rarely interact. The theoreticians rarely follow up the practical applications of their theories; and the practitioners rarely submit a plan of ‘applications’ for which ‘theories’ are to be developed (Beaugrande 1997, 1998).

The subject-matter of the ‘applied’ side has been widely interpreted to be the study and methodology of teaching and learning ‘foreign languages’. As I have remarked, the use and value of translation in foreign language study have not been widely appreciated. Indeed, some methods have claimed that translating should be actively discouraged or rejected so that the learners are kept totally away from the use of their native language. Since the native language is always at work in the minds of the learners, the claim is unfounded but may be welcomed to teachers who have no training in the field of translation, or are not fluent in the native language of the learners. The same claim has made language teachers uneasy about emphasising translation in their work even when they firmly recognise its value.

Translation was only gradually accepted by Applied Linguistics as a valid concern in its own right. The general uncertainty about translating as pedagogical method seems to have carried over to translating as field of training. At the time I reviewed the available research literature for my dissertation project in the mid 1970s, there were still just a few substantive contributions. The picture has dramatically improved after 1980, but the relation between theory and practice of translation remains unsettled (Beaugrande 2000).

Like the humanities, the sciences are and always have been a thoroughly international enterprise. And like the authors of literary works, the creators of scientific ideas and discoveries have been inspired by their colleagues in other nations. Conversely, scientific progress has at times been badly delayed because key works were written in languages inaccessible to other scientists. The need for systematic translating should have been obvious, but here too it was neglected, and the hidden costs have been immense.

We face newer problems today, when scientific progress is far swifter than ever, and more international as well. Most of it is reported in just a few ‘international languages’, especially English, which are not the native languages of many scientists and science instructors. Translations are heavily used both in collecting one’s technical matter from international sources and in publishing one’s own products in international outlets. Only systematic training could ensure that this too is not unskilfully done, much to the discredit of the universities involved. Moreover, such training could even the balance between the international language and the local language by displaying the latter a as valid resource for scientific communication.

In many countries, an international language is also the preferred medium of instruction in the sciences. The universities try to contain the ensuing problem by hiring expatriate instructors who happen to be native speakers. But the problems are then largely pushed across onto the students who are not native speakers and who have not had any comprehensive preparation for using scientific English. In consequence, the whole instructional process may be horrendously inefficient and much of the information may become severely degraded on the way from teachers to learners.

So yet another costly paradox has emerged. The sciences must work very hard to sustain their international status, yet they fail to acknowledge and enhance it by offering or sponsoring programmes of study in scientific or technical translation. Like the humanities, the sciences contradict their own mission at the very heart of the university. They clamour for excellence while neglecting one of their best opportunities to achieve it, and once again the hidden costs are colossal.

The general disinterest in translation was costly enough when the individual departments within the university, and also the individual university within a country or region, appeared reasonably self-sufficient. But the costs are wildly unaffordable at a stage where interdisciplinary and international co-operation are absolutely essential for social, economic, and academic success. Isolation can only doom a department, faculty, or colleges to mediocrity and obscurity, no longer able to attract and keep qualified staff or students.

As the ‘information age’ hits its full stride, the new millennium looks uncertain in many ways. But we can be certain that information and information technology make a sound investment, now and in the foreseeable future. As a key strategy in the global acquisition and dissemination of information, translation and translator training must be a major part of that investment for any university aspiring to genuine excellence.

Instruction and training in translation could be established in the university in several formats:

A. establishing general-purpose translation courses within existing language departments;

B. establishing special-purpose translation courses within the respective faculties and departments in strategic areas across the curriculum;

C. establishing an interdisciplinary translation centre with the status of a programme.

D. establishing an independent translation centre with the status of a department or faculty;

E. establishing a graduate programme to award degrees in professional translation.

Each option entails its own challenges and investments. Option A would be the least expensive and most gradual, allowing for translation to be introduced at multiple points without incisive organisational or administrative changes. Also, such courses are already in the curriculum of some departments, at least planned if not implemented.

But to be truly valuable and effective, translation courses should be closely interfaced with the content of all other courses involving a contact between languages. The Literature Programme should take an active interest in the practices and problems of translating literature, including specific translation projects for students or student groups. The Language Programme and the Linguistics Programmes should address translation as a prominent means of comparing and describing the structures of different languages in such areas as ‘grammar’ or ‘syntax’.

If implemented this way, Option A would spread translation all across the Programmes of a Language Department, instead of being confined along the margins. The content of a whole programme could be suitably reassessed to acknowledge the full implications of languages in contact. Due recognition could finally be granted to translation in the dissemination of world literature and in the teaching and learning of foreign languages, as described in section II. All this might lead to a significant deepening and broadening of perspective in the study of languages in higher education.

As far as I know, Option B would be quite novel for most universities. Some do have courses in English for Special Purposes (or Academic Purposes) in specific fields of study, but these are rarely sustained or comprehensive, nor are they strategically integrated with the respective departments. More often, they are consigned to some language centre or programme with a purely provisional and preparatory function for students at low levels. Also, such courses tend to approach English in isolation from other languages and deal mainly and unsystematically with vocabulary. In consequence, little explicit concern is devoted to languages in contact or to translation.

Yet wherever English is the medium of instruction for non-native speakers, the latter will certainly be doing extensive translation. Without course training, they are likely to proceed with naïve, superficial, and haphazard tactics that degrade the quality of the very information they seek to access and apply. In contrast, such training would alert them to the importance of special -purpose terminology across languages and of the need to use it conscientiously and precisely.

At present, the supply of special-purpose translators is far too modest to cover the requirements of implementing Option B. Most of the translators now emerging from university training come out of language departments with a general-purpose orientation. For the immediate future, staffing the courses for Option B would require active team-teaching and work-sharing between trained translators and subject-area specialists. Over time, the same courses would produce suitable contingents of special-purpose translators who could in turn take over the staffing of courses.

Yet close and regular contact should be maintained with the instructors in each field. They would indicate the current topics of study and provide samples of course materials such as textbooks. They would also act as informants about the communicative problems they can identify by means of student feedback. The topics and materials used in the translation courses themselves would thus maintain a directly practical orientation.

Further benefits would be achieved in building the students’ scientific competence and fluency in their native language. Where special-purpose resources are not yet available, these translation courses could offer a fine initial testing ground for new coinages. The courses could thus affirm the students’ confidence in the value and potential of their native language. Their language loyalties would be enhanced, and fortified against the currently widespread misconception, inherited from British imperialism, that English is somehow so superior that it alone is worthy for use in scientific and technical communication, as noted in section III.

A truly innovative curriculum could allot to translation a key role in co-ordinated bilingual instruction in English and in the learners’ native language. The benefits would be unique to that linguistic and cultural setting and would offer an advantage over the popular ‘study-abroad’ exodus to universities in the US or the UK. The students would realise the value of study in the home countries where the cultural personality will be treated with respect rather than condescension.

For Option C, an interdisciplinary translation centre could be established to oversee courses like those described for Option A and Option B; the centre would work more from the top-down, and the courses more from the bottom up. Holding the status of a programme, the centre would not have its own staff but would have them seconded from the participating departments. Its chief function would be to provide co-ordination, consistency, and support for the design of the courses, so that they would all to some degree be guided by the most authoritative research and discoveries in the field of translation.

However, such a centre would need special efforts to sustain a coherent and integrated organisation against the destabilizing forces of disciplinary or departmental boundaries and of the contingencies in available staff. The participating departments would have to commit the necessary resources on a long-term basis and to encourage their students to include translation in their study plans. Some departments may need to move out of their relative isolation and strive to appreciate how crucially their own areas of study are affected by languages in contact. Only be recognizing themselves to be in the business of communication can they effectively exploit communication in the pursuit of excellence.

Alternately, Option D would establish an independent translation centre with the status of a department or faculty. It would maintain its own permanent staff, specifically trained and hired for the work. In return, its courses should be cross-listed for credit in other departments and should be co-ordinated through regular interdisciplinary discussion of current content and level. The difference between Option C and Option D would thus be less pronounced in intellectual terms than in administrative terms.

Option E would place translation on the plane of a graduate programme accredited to award advanced degrees. Its detailed organisation would depend on which of the other Options were adopted. It would most logically be housed among the language departments or inside one of these. But it should not be a mere addition to a previously decided menu of degrees, nor a simple regrouping of conventional courses like ‘Syntax’ and ‘Semantics’. Instead, it should be recognised as an innovation whose special requirements should be consistently reflected in the design of its courses and course materials, such as ‘English and Arabic Syntax in Contact’ and ‘Semantics in Translation’.

The degree programme should strike a balance between general purpose and special purpose translating. Candidates should acquire a broad training in the challenges and problematics of translating, but also a focus on one pair of languages, such as English and Arabic for active practice. Moreover, they should specialise in some field for which a social or economic demand for translators has been identified in the region. One example is the urgent demand for military translation between English and Arabic in the Gulf States as kingpin in the international defence systems.

At least some of courses and methods would be fundamentally new. Candidates should become proficient in such rarely-taught skills as simultaneous interpreting, or abstracting and summarizing during the process of translation. They should also become resolutely literate in accessing and exploiting multilingual resources through the Internet and the World Wide Web, such as parallel large corpora of language data and innovative electronic dictionaries. They should be conversant with the latest technologies in automatic translating and with the techniques of evaluating and editing their products to achieve fully human quality.

At its best, the degree programme would become a recognised contributor to the international state of the art in translation and translator training. It would produce materials that mediate between the global demands for translating and the services of a local university and its community. It would participate in networked discussions of methods and problems and share its own insights with other translation programmes. It would compile and offer corpora of data on local Englishes and learners Englishes at various levels of educational development and in various subject-matters, e.g., translating in English for petroleum exploration or Arabic for computer science.

I shall offer just two illustrations at opposite degrees of skill. The first was reported by Brigadier General Mustafa Jalabneh of the Royal Jordanian Armed Forces, a specialist in military translation (cf. Jalabneh 1991, 1994). During a joint training course, an American officer wrote an evaluation of a soldier containing text sample [1]. The Arabic translator unskilfully rendered it as [1a], where ‘missed’ was confused with ‘missed the point’, i.e. ‘misunderstood’; the correct translation should have been [1b].

As a result, the soldier got classified as deficient in his powers of understanding rather than merely impelled, for reasons unknown to the evaluator, to be frequently absent.

The counterexample of skilful translation was recently presented by Basil Hatim (1999) from two tourist guides for ‘Arabia’s Wildlife Centre’ just opened in the Emirate of Sharjah. Version [2a] is from the English guide handed to visitor, whereas version [2b] is from the same zoo’s Arabic guide. Finally, Version [2c] is my idiomatic back-translation from the Arabic [2b].*

[2a] The reptile house has exhibits of many of the Arabian snakes and lizards. […] A huge aviary, with a waterfall cascading down rocks into a small lake and river shows several species of local songbirds. […] A long corridor leads back to the entrance past enclosures containing baboons.

[2c] ‘The visitor begins his tour by discovering the reptile department, which contains a variety of Arabian snakes and lizards. Then he continues the journey to find himself within a huge aviary, where waterfalls cascade on the rocks. This spacious place contains different varieties of songbirds. The visitor continues his journey through a long corridor, which takes him to where there are baboons.’

As Hatim emphasised, cultural differences were skilfully taken into account. The English guide objectifies the zoo’s contents as if these existed quite independently of any visitor, who is not even mentioned. Instead, the displays and rooms are expressed as Actors of Actions like ‘having exhibits’, ‘containing species’, and ‘leading back’; the last of these is most obstinate in ignoring the visitor, who deserves to be at least the Object of the Verb. In direct contrast, the Arabic guide allots great prominence to ‘the visitor’ (‘az-Zaaʔir’), who performs Actions like ‘beginning his tour’, ‘discovering the reptile department’, and ‘continuing his journey’. In English, the objects remain static and fixed; in Arabic the visitor is dynamic and keeps moving around.

This cultural contrast in spatial orientation point us toward a much richer assessment of culture within the theory and practice of translation than is encountered in most of the existing courses or textbooks. The translator working for by the Sharjah Wildlife Centre was happily sensitive to cultural differences relating to discourse genres like tour guides and made an appropriate rather than a literal translation. But this mode and degree of sensitivity is just beginning to attain the importance it merits both in the theories of how translation is achieved and in the practices of training future translators.

This report has marshalled support for the conclusion that the rightful role of translation is far more central to higher education than most universities have acknowledged so far. Neglecting that role leads into uanaffordably costly paradoxes and isolates the university from the mainstream of international communication. Now more than ever, the quality and effectiveness of the whole educational process critically depends upon actively managing languages in contact and upon training competent graduates in the skills of that management.

Beaugrande, Robert de. 1997a. New Foundations for a Science of Text and Discourse. Stamford CT: Ablex.

Beaugrande, Robert de. 1997b. Theory and practice in applied linguistics: Disconnection, conflict, or dialectic? Applied Linguistics 18/3, 279-313

Beaugrande, Robert de. 1998. Society, education, linguistics, and language: Inclusion and exclusion in theory and practice. Linguistics and Education 9/2, 99-158

Beaugrande, Robert de. 2000. The dialectical utopia of theory and practice in translation. In Peter Schmitt, Eberhard Fleischmann, and Gert Wotjak (eds.), Paradigmenwechsel in der Translation: Festschrift für Albrecht Neubert. Tübingen: Stauffenberg, 1-14.

Jalabneh, Mustafa. 1991. A Study in the Issues of Military Translation. Amman: Office of the Royal Jordanian Armed Forces.

Jalabneh, Mustafa. 1994. Military translation. In Robert de Beaugrande, Abdulla Shunnaq, and Mohammed Heliel (eds.), Language, Discourse, and Translation in the West and the Middle East. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 218-228.

* I am deeply grateful to Prof. Basil Hatim, currently at the American University of Sharjah, for the data, as well as to Hassan Rachidi and Sami Anwar, both of the United Arab Emirates University, for further help in transcribing and translating