Theory and pratice of translation and interpreting in minor degree programs at an engineering university

Globalization of the world economy and internationalization of higher education present new challenges to the university graduates. Today’s graduates should be professionally competitive in the global labor market and possess both hard and soft skills, including a wide range of personal traits that contribute to effective teamwork and communication. Among soft skills, one of the priorities is intercultural communication in a foreign language, ‘lingua franca’, which is English nowadays. Therefore, the majority of the Russian engineering universities offer minor degree programs in foreign languages to their students. These programs used to be regulated by the state educational standards for minor degree program ‘Translator in the Sphere of Professional Communication’, which terminated in 2013 after the new ’Law on Education in the Russian Federation’ came into force. Nowadays, every Russian university is empowered to develop and run its own minor degree programs, their curriculum can be flexible depending on thedemand of the particular interest groups. The majority of the universities keep the name of the program ‘Translator in the Sphere of Professional Communication’, but they change its content significantly. The issue under discussion is the ratio between the theoretical and practical courses in the study plan. On the one hand, minor degree programs aim to develop practical skills of the students, on the other hand, translation theory is also very important. The paper describes the experience of Kazan National Research Technological University in running its minor degree programs in foreign languagesand finding balance between theory and practice in the curriculum. The paper presents a new course developed combining theoretical and practical issues of translation and interpreting, the detailed content of the course, its interrelation with other courses of the study plan, and the learning outcomes. The paper concluded that blending theory and practice of translation in one course contributes to developing self-directed learning skills of the students thus improving the final learning outcomes.

internationalization of higher education, engineering university, minor degree programs in foreign languages, Englis has ‘lingua franca’, intercultural communication, theory and practice of translation and interpreting, self-directed learning skills