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Part of
The Evolving Curriculum in Interpreter and Translator Education: Stakeholder perspectives and voices
Edited by David B. Sawyer, Frank Austermühl and Vanessa Enríquez Raído
[American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series XIX] 2019
► pp. 271–299

A relevancy approach to cultural competence in translation curricula

While traditional translation training focuses on language exercises and activities, human cognitive processes in language comprehension rely on contextual factors and hence one key educational objective in translation should be to help students become more culturally competent. In this chapter, we will discuss the notion of cultural competence from a communicative perspective and borrow the concept of relevance used in pragmatics to define this term. In a translation training setting, cultural competence can be considered as a learning product that consists of cognitive outcomes, skill-based outcomes and affective outcomes. We will use the curriculum of the Graduate Studies in Interpreting and Translation at the University of Maryland as an example of applying the relevancy approach to cultural competence.

Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Culture as communication
  • Translator-mediated communication
    • Communication process models
    • Human cognitive processes in a communication event
      • Meaning attribution: Interaction between stimuli and pre-existing knowledge
      • Contextual effects
    • Translator-mediated communication process
    • Non-linguistic symbols in a translator-medicated communication process
  • A relevancy approach to translator’s cultural competence
    • Competence as a learning outcome
    • A relevancy approach to cultural competence in translation curricula
      • Relevance theory
      • Applying relevance theory in translation practice
      • Relevancy approach to cultural competence
      • Cultural competence as a learning outcome
  • A culture-oriented translation curriculum
    • Cognitive outcomes
    • Skill-based outcomes
    • Affective outcomes
  • Closing remarks
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ata.xix.13wan
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