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Target
Vol. 36:1 (2024) ► pp.1–25

Theorizing a postmodern translator education

ORCID logo | Kent State University,
The goal of this article is to unite the different strands of postpositivist thinking about translator education, including both axiological and epistemological, as well as the often-neglected political dimensions. Accordingly, the study considers evidence-based versus values-based education, performativity, dialogue, deconstruction, reflexivity, emergentism, border pedagogy, complexity, pluralism, and the enactment of “multiple voices” (González-Davies 2004). Thirteen postmodern notions and their implications for translation pedagogics are surveyed, including ethics, intersubjectivity, shifting classroom power structures, and the dilemma of canon. How are uncertainty and fragmentariness reconciled with the inherent progress-orientedness of the educational project? And significantly, how is postmodern consciousness enacted in classroom practice? In seeking what Torres del Rey (2002, 271) calls a more participatory and reflexive educational context, I entertain postmodern teaching and learning in the discipline as a possible approach to active, flexible, creative, collaborative, and inclusive roles and identities for both facilitators and learners.
Keywords: postmodernism, deconstructive pedagogy, indeterminacy, evidence-based vs. values-based education, emergentism, complexity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The postmodern and translation: Thirteen postmodern notions and their implications for pedagogics
    • 2.1The partiality, uncertainty and subjectivity of knowledge
      • Implications for the classroom
    • 2.2Emergent versus aprioristic knowledge
      • Implications for the classroom
    • 2.3Postmodern ethics emphasizes intersubjectivity and fluidity
      • Implications for the classroom
    • 2.4Shift from monologue to dialogue
      • Implications for the classroom
    • 2.5Dehierarchized power roles in the classroom and uncovering the hidden curriculum
      • Implications for the classroom
    • 2.6Space and time unmanaged
      • Implications for the classroom (and beyond)
    • 2.7Student empowerment
      • Implications for the classroom
    • 2.8Teacher empowerment
      • Implications for the classroom
    • 2.9Language and power in (and around) texts
      • Implications for the classroom
    • 2.10Elusivity of ‘originals’
      • Implications for the classroom
    • 2.11Laying bare of the device (the Russian formalist term for self-reflective foregrounding)
      • Implications for the classroom
    • 2.12Inclusivity of marginal voices
      • Implication for the classroom
    • 2.13Complex systems
      • Implications for the classroom
  • 3.Potential problems and a tentative conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 July 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/target.21163.was
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