Abstract:

The additional educational program named as ‘Translator in the sphere of professional communication’ is a particular type of vocational training programs, which is currently realized in a variety of technical universities in the Russian Federation. This program is aimed at students majoring in different engineering fields who are driven by a desire to obtain an additional qualification of a translator as well as to develop their communicative competence in English as a foreign language (EFL). The student body traditionally applying to this program varies from junior bachelor students to mature post-graduate ones. These students are motivated by special needs to become highly competent translators to support and advance their engineering careers. The best way to address these needs is to create a special learning environment which would stimulate non-linguist students, on the one hand, to form translation skills, and, on the other hand, to enhance their foreign language communicative competence development.

The article examines peculiar features of organization and realization of the training program on the platform of National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU), one of the oldest technical higher educational institutions in the Asian part of the Russian Federation. In the article, the author introduced a theoretical model of the program realization. This model has been tested for over 15 years. Learning outcomes, which are to be demonstrated by intended translators by the end of the study, are also specified in this article.

In addition, the author identified its main structural components presented by such learning modules as Introduction into language studies, Development of EFL communication skills, and Theory and practice in translation.

The main objective of ‘Introduction into language studies’ module is to provide learners with background knowledge and skills allowing them to produce texts of different genre styles. As far as ‘Development of EFL communication skills’ module is concerned, it aims at developing learners’ EFL communicative competence in social, academic, intercultural, business and vocational domains. Within ‘Theory and practice in translation’ module, learners are trained to apply both theoretical knowledge and skills to translate texts referring to their majors, to write research abstracts on the basis of texts reflecting learners’ fields of professional training, and to develop learners’ active and passive vocabulary while working with texts of different genre styles.

The author underlines that successful implementation of this training program is largely determined by a number of factors among which there is a collection and systematic usage of teaching and learning resources which prove to be effective in raising learners’ both translation and communicative competences in EFL. The most important of them, for instance, a program information and methodical portal and e-learning courses, are also focused on by the author of this article.

Despite its obvious benefits, the presented model of intended translators training, undoubtedly, requires further improvement in terms of its content, application of advanced teaching methods and technologies, assessment of students’ knowledge, etc.

Keywords:

Engineering students, intended translators, additional vocational training, foreign language communicative competence, translation competence, professional communication.