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Article published In:
Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 34:1 (2021) ► pp.311–338

Becoming a translation teacher

A longitudinal case study of a novice teacher’s identity and emotions

ORCID logo | Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
ORCID logo | The University of Auckland
ORCID logo | The University of Auckland

Teachers who enter the translation teaching profession are generally in lack of training in how to teach translation because such training is barely provided by the current professional or academic oriented translation programmes. Therefore, they have to go through a process of learning to become translation teachers on the job in real teaching settings. However, little has been documented systematically, either qualitatively or quantitatively, on how translation teachers, especially beginning teachers, think of their teaching and themselves as teaching professionals. In this longitudinal case study, we focused on one novice translation teacher and tried to understand how she constructed her translation teacher identity during the first year of her teaching career. We employed emotions as a lens to investigate the process of her teacher identity construction through collecting data from interviews and journals. Findings show that this particular participant’s teacher identity went through a process of constructing, reconstructing and expanding. This process was accompanied by the negotiation between her identity and the various positive and negative emotions that she experienced in the complex sociocultural context. Implications for translation teachers, especially novice translation teachers, are discussed.

Keywords: translation teachers, teacher identity, emotions, translation teacher training, case study
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Teacher identity and emotions
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Research questions
    • 3.2Participant
    • 3.3Context of the study
    • 3.4Data collection
      • 3.4.1Interviews
      • 3.4.2Journals
    • 3.5Data analysis
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Teaching approach: Transmissionist vs. transformationist
    • 4.2Position: Expert vs. co-learner
    • 4.3Teacher-student relationship: Intimate friends vs. distant friends
    • 4.4Teacher duty: Teaching exclusively only vs. multiple responsibilities
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1The identity (trans)formation: A process of constructing, reconstructing and expanding
    • 5.2The interaction between teacher identity and emotions
  • 6.Conclusion and implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.18040.wu
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