Teaching how to teach translation: tribulations of a tandem-learning model

The growth in translator-training institutions since the early 1990s has obliged many language teachers to teach translation skills and some translators to pick up teaching skills. When these two needs are combined with the use of translation activities in additional-language learning, the global demand for training in the teaching of translation is considerable, especially in countries where the growth in these needs is still recent. In an attempt to address this demand, a course in translator education was offered at the University of Melbourne and was included in both the Master of Translation and the Master of Applied Linguistics, which deals with language education. The two learning groups brought different but complementary backgrounds to the course and were to some extent able to teach each other through tandem activities: the students with training in applied linguistics were to teach the translators about teaching, while the students trained as translators would ideally teach the teachers about translation. In practice, however, the composition and aims of the two student groups were far more mixed than were the best-laid plans of theorists.