Abstract:

The years of experience in translator training have given us the opportunity to observe the profile development of a competent future translator and interpreter. And the concept of cultural ability has become of considerable importance to the local translation and interpreting studies over the past decade. To find out if nowadays teachers and students acknowledge equal importance to the intercultural competence as to the communicative competence in translation and interpreting studies, we conducted a study on intercultural teaching and learning experiences at local level.

The study is based on the responses of a large majority of teachers and students of the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Translation and Interpreting Study Programme, Politehnica University of Timişoara, Romania. The survey was conducted exclusively online during the last three months of 2020, addressing separately the teachers and the students of the mentioned Study Programme.

The concept of equally training communicative and intercultural competences, to form a perfect sociolinguistic mechanism, has gained importance among the local teachers and students. This concept is rapidly spreading worldwide and our intention was to identify the local teachers’ and students’ perceptions regarding the importance of this synergy of competences in the field of translation and interpreting studies.

Keywords:

Culture-specific behavioral patterns, socio-cultural abilities, cultural gaps, cultural bridging, upgrading translation and interpreting studies.