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.
We could all be forgiven for ‘postmodernism fatigue’. And yet, we cannot resist postmodernism, if not for its allure then
for its ubiquity, even if we eschew the label itself. The present work is premised on the assumption that postmodern precepts still
circulate widely, claims of their death notwithstanding (see Peters, Tesar, and Jackson
2018), that they could be made more intentional by translation teachers and learners, and that still others remain pure
potential. Kiraly (2015, 21–24) has offered a few introductory pages on the theme, as have
Arrojo (1996, 2012), Torres del Rey (2002), and
Varney (2008), all valuable starting points for teaching. In what follows, I do not
seek to exhaust the postmodern ethos, but merely to show some connections with educational psychology and educational philosophy, and
some phenomena already in evidence that may be considered postmodern (or poststructuralist). My purpose is not to label but to reflect
on practice and to contribute to what Kiraly (2015, 24) calls a “still-emerging postmodern
Zeitgeist.” An overarching goal along the way is to take stock of what has been articulated disparately to date, across a quarter
century of pedagogical theory in this vein, and tie together aspects that remain unassimilated in Translation Studies, such as
postmodern textuality and politics. In many cases, principles but not practices or procedures are on offer in the literature; I will
attempt not a ‘how to’ or a syllabus but an overlay map of theory and practice.
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