Borislava Eraković

Activist Translation Scholar and Translator Trainer

A university translator trainer is typically expected to keep translating and researching in parallel to teaching.  One way of achieving all three is to make one stem from another: researching translations may feed into the corresponding translation practice (or vice versa) and inform the teaching, making it more relevant and up to date. Specific obstacle on this pathway is the difficulty of entering the communities of practitioners in a certain field (such as legal translation) or interest groups (such as translation companies or freelancers). The paper will present a possible way of overcoming such obstacles by taking a more activist role in translator communities outside the academia, for tripartite benefit:  a translation scholar’s/teacher’s participation in conferences organized by the professional groups (translation agencies, legal translators) may lead to further cooperation, as in setting up new internships for students or creation of new, specialized, short term courses for continual professional development of the translators who are already in the market. Such activities which bring the representatives of the translation market and university translator trainers together, can lead to new insights that find their way into the teaching of various specialized translation courses, to the benefit of the practitioners, students and the translation scholars involved. The paper will present lessons learned from the cooperation between the teachers of the MA Program in Conference Interpreting and Specialized and Audiovisual Translation (Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad) and Serbian Associations of Legal Translators and Translation Companies.

Dr. Borislava Eraković is Assistant Professor at the English Department, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, where she teaches courses on specialized translation, translation theory and career development. Her main research interest lies within Translation Studies and her publications cover topics on translation theory and criticism, translation pedagogy and English into Serbian translation of books for children. Her pedagogical research deals with the acquisition of translation and translator competence, application of social-constructivist models in translation teaching and curriculum and syllabus design. She has been actively involved in setting up the first MA in Conference Interpreting and Translation in Serbia, developed as part of the Tempus Refless Project, and in drafting the programme for this MA. She has published a book On Translation of American Substandard Language Varieties and co-edited a volume titled Topics in Translator and Interpreter Training. She has over ten years of translation experience in the field of humanities.