© 2004 - 2005 Ali Darwish. All Rights Reserved.

Translator Accreditation:
A Reductionist Approach
in A Mediocre World

Ali Darwish

06 FEB 04

ABSTRACT AND INTRODUCTION

This paper presents an argument for a fair, comprehensive and integrated system of competency standards assessment for translators within a Translation Operational Model (TOM). It argues that the current custodial system of accreditation is reductionist, exclusivist and unscientific. The paper also argues that externalization of accreditation by educational institutions undermines their degrees and reduces their credibility as internationally recognized awarding bodies.

Introduction

In the past five years or so, Australia has seen a renewed interest in translation and interpreting, due to the rapidly changing multicultural makeup of the Australian society and the need to communicate effectively across all sections of the community, especially vis-à-vis new arrivals from non-English speaking countries. In 2000 alone, about 63,515 new arrivals on humanitarian and non-humanitarian programs settled in Australia (DIMIA, 2003), mostly from non-English speaking countries — with about 25 percent of the population are now of ethnic origin and over sixty languages other than English spoken in Australia today.

The sudden demand for translators and interpreters by government agencies and social services departments to deal with the successive and intermittent waves of illegal refugees from South East Asia and the Middle East has highlighted an acute and chronic weakness in the linguistic, translation, communication and professional skills and competency standards of many accredited translators and interpreters — a weakness evidenced by the numerous examples of faulty interpreting in various community situations and settings, which often go unrecorded, and erroneous, nonsensical and sometimes dangerous translations issued by various organizations around the country, forcing certain agencies and service providers to reexamine their quality assurance processes and standards to redress the  problem.

For the past 20 plus years, the Australian National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI), which is now a government-owned company, limited by guarantee under the Commonwealth Corporations Law 2001, has been working consistently to improve the standards of translators and interpreters through periodic accreditation examinations and training workshops. Its mission has been “to set and maintain high national standards in Translating and Interpreting to enable the existence of a pool of accredited translators and interpreters responsive to the changing needs and demography of the Australian culturally and linguistically diverse society.”

In addition, universities and other educational institutions in several states began to offer externally approved undergraduate and postgraduate translation and interpreting accreditation courses, in demanded community languages, in the late eighties to the mid nineties. Some of these programs were later axed because of lack of funds, alleged mismanagement, or simply lack of interest and understanding on the part of the powers to be at these institutions.

With the recent focus on revenue-making business ventures expected of educational outfits, and in light of the new influx of the so-called “boat people” and “queue jumpers” and the ensuing demand for translators and interpreters, interest in these programs has been selectively renewed and universities have once again begun to offer limited NAATI-approved, accreditation-licensed courses.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • Introduction
  • Accreditation Ownership and Externalization of Authority
  • Regulating the Translation and Interpreting Industry
  • Accreditation Reductionism and Lopsided Competence Assessment
  • A Translation Operational Model
  • Text Focalization and Translation-Directed Repurposing
  • Translator Capability Maturity Model (T-CMM)
  • Conclusion

SNIPPETS FROM THIS PAPER

…numerous examples of faulty interpreting and erroneous, nonsensical and sometimes dangerous translations issued by various organizations …

Most of the interpreting work has typically been community-based with rarely any exposure to a professional, technified or industrialized environment.

The whole translation industry is now accreditation driven, so much to the detriment of the profession itself and the very standards accreditation is supposed to raise and uphold…

…a change of the remuneration paradigm is crucial to the development and status of the profession…

This ever-widening gulf will result in greater disparity between translators and interpreters in terms of their working conditions, remuneration and professional status.

Peer review standards rarely ever exist in translation, and where they do, they are often primitive and monolingually driven.

Quality-naïve bilingual social support workers, unqualified and untrained as translators—and sometimes semiliterate and ignorant of how languages interact to produce targeted translation, are asked as a matter of course to check and evaluate the translator’s work.

This form of compliance and conformity has seriously constrained and altered the nature of the translation courses offered and has set these educational institutions on a collision course with their own policies…

Translator performance assessment must take the notion of translation requirements and specifications as its point of
departure...

The notion of translation-oriented writing still escapes the majority of documentation developers in a multicultural society.

…translation quality assurance and translation student assessment should define the standards and metrics of assessment including the type of translation strategy chosen to achieve the stated purpose when the test passages are chosen.

Educational institutions should regain their authority as awarding bodies and introduce a more integrative Translator Capability Maturity Model (TCMM) that prepares the students to be fit to practise...

…compulsory re-accreditation through re-sitting static accreditation examinations that rehash the same format every three or five years without taking into account the psychodynamic variables of candidates are counterproductive...

An accreditation system that does not provide accreditation or certification in Translation Quality Assurance and Translation Management as specialized categories fails to address these important activities.

Under such a program, instead of accrediting individuals, accreditation authorities would accredit, license and audit professional associations and continue to license educational institutions to accredit members and students through an approved accreditation program that takes into account the progress made by the candidate over a specified period of study.

For the full text, please write direct to  Ali Darwish.

 

 





Title
Translator Accreditation: A Reductionist Approach in a Mediocre World

Author
Darwish, Ali

Publication Year 
2004

Publication Mode 
Internet – Electronic Publishing

Document Identifier
AD060204_1

Document Type
Abstract

Target Audience

Translation and Cross-cultural Communication  Practitioners, Researchers and Educators 

Descriptors
Translation Standards, Translator Competence, Translation Quality Assurance

Document Created on
06 FEB 04 
















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