Shibin Lin1,*, Chang Liu2, Yu Liu1
1School of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, Heilongjiang, China.
2Malaysian Education Exchange Association, Jalan Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur 55100, Malaysia.
*Corresponding author: Shibin Lin
Abstract
Academic translation from Chinese has become more and more prominent as a tangible point of convergence of knowledge dissemination, international publica-tion, and translator education. Nevertheless, in many professional programmes book translation remains to be seen as a mere consequence of personal accomplishment of individual teachers, not as a teachable and repeatable process of training. Building upon the existing research on translator education, situated learning, translation competence, and language service-based training, this paper argues that academic translation with a view to publication is a valuable way to train professional translators due to its educational potential which does not only lie in a quantity of words translated, but also includes reading, terminology management, revision, editorial discussion, metadata preparation, and post-publication reflection. This article first gives an overview of relevant literature both from China and internationally; it then discusses educational potential and shortcomings of university-industry translation collaboration; finally, it pre-sents a multi-step model which covers topic selection, team building, translation, evaluation, publication and classroom reutilization. Thus, it is concluded that academic outward translation can serve as an effective competence-building tool if properly arranged as a supervised project instead of loose extracurricular activity.
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