AN EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE CURRICULA FOR TRANSLATION PROGRAMS AT THE UNDERGRADUATE AND THE GRADUATE LEVELS IN IRAN : PROBLEMS AND SUGGESTIONS

The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the curricula for translation programs (training translators) at the undergraduate and graduate levels in Iran. Observations and experiences indicated that Iranian senior translator trainees at the undergraduate and graduate levels were not competent enough to perform satisfactorily in real situations of translation/interpretation careers. To investigate the sources of this problem, a pilot study was conducted that demonstrated traces of deficiency in the university curricula rather than weaknesses in the trainers per se. To investigate the deficiencies in the curricula, nine hypotheses were formed that questioned the curricula in different ways. The hypotheses were tested through triangulation (Mackey and Gass, 2005): data were collected via questionnaire, observation, interview and test of the translator trainees. The participants of the study included two groups of senior translator trainees at the undergraduate and the graduate levels, two groups of teachers for the undergraduate and the graduate levels and one group of translation experts. The data of the study were analyzed via SPSS using descriptive statistics. The results of the study indicated that there were more deficiencies in the curriculum for translator training programs in Iran at the undergraduate level than the curriculum at the graduate level. Finally, an optimized curricular model for training translators in Iran was presented. INTRODUCTION Language provides one of the most readily accessible windows into the nature of the human mind. How children acquire this complex system with such apparent ease continues to fascinate the student of human language (Hakuta, 1977). The last quarter of a century, in particular, has witnessed a qualitative leap in our knowledge of the language-acquisition process in young children. In recent years, researchers have begun extending their scope of inquiry into the problem of second-language acquisition (SLA). The motivation underlying this new endeavor is two-fold: first, it provides an added perspective on human language, and second, interest in second-language teaching and bilingual education has resulted in a greater need to understand the mechanisms underlying second-language acquisition. The focus of analysis has undergone distinct shifts in perspective as a function of our changing conceptualizations of what language is and also what the learner brings to the learning situation (Hakuta, 1977). Research on SLA has been expanded enormously since its inception. Studies of SLA have increased in quantity as researchers have addressed a wider range of topics, asked new questions, and worked within multiple methodologies. At the same time, the field has become increasingly bidirectional and multi-faceted in its applications. As new theories and research have emerged on language and learning, their application to the study of SLA has been fruitful. It has led to long-needed explanations about developmental regularities and persistent difficulties, and has opened up new lines of research on the processes and sequences of second language (L2) development (Pica, 2005). Discovering and applying newer findings from the study of SLA to educational concerns has been the focus of long-standing debates about the role of different variables in the SLA process, specifically, about the nature of the learner’s input needs and requirements. That is, what the learners learn for, or the gap between the current and the desired proficiency level. A modest, but increasing, number of SLA research findings, have had direct application to instructional decisions. Most other SLA findings have served as a resource to inform teaching practice. One of the significant applications to and from the study of SLA, translation, is the focus of this investigation. Today, it is believed that translation and Translation Studies, as a discipline, share partly common grounds with Contrastive Linguistics (Granger, 2003). By virtue of their object of study, the fields of Contrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies share a great deal of common ground. As noted by Chesterman (1998, as cited in Granger, 2003) they “are interested in seeing how ‘the same thing’ can be