Prospective translators' responsibilities in the transition from translation competence to translator competence and contributions of translation education in this process

Abstract

This study focuses on the concept of translation competence, which develops further with professionalization following the translation education and evolves into the concept of translator competence in practice. For this purpose, the word “competence” was first defined from different perspectives and the synonyms of the term were explained. After that, the linguistic competence, used first by Noam Chomsky, was discussed. Because one of the main components of the translation competence is the linguistic competence. At a time when classical approaches dealt with translation as a mere linguistic transfer, the linguistic competence was considered sufficient to explain the translation. And the translation activity was, therefore, regarded as a sub-branch of Applied Linguistics. But at a time when the demand for translation has been constantly growing in a globalized world, it is obvious that the phenomenon of language alone is not enough to explain translation. In order to meet economic, global, social and cultural needs of the target audience, different competences have also begun to take part under the translation performance. The most important of these is by far the cultural competence. Because the translator cannot make an adequate and acceptable levels of translation, which are Toury's initial norms, without knowing the source culture very well and by ignoring the expectations of the target culture. The concept of culture is then necessary in terms of empathy with both the source and the target reader. For example, a word can have multiple connotations other than its denotative meaning and what is expected of translation may be one of the most distant connotative meanings of the word. In this respect, it is important to recognize the culture in finding a translation equivalent. In addition, in today's approaches and in terms of the market expectations, even the cultural competence has started to be not enough to explain the translation action. Then it can be asserted that translation competence can no longer be explained only by linguistic and cultural competences. New subcompetences brought by market driven needs like the increasing necessity of the use of modern technologies in the translation process have also begun to be among the important components of the translation competence. How can a translator gain all these? First of all, in order to successfully overcome the translation process, the translator as well as gaining an expertise in the subject area, must also have a meta perspective of the translation process and internalize the theoretical infrastructure that explains the translation competence. This is also possible with a good translation education2 which is guiding and inspiring. In fact, all kinds of theoretical knowledge and components learned by prospective translators towards enhancing translation competence which is constantly supported by translation assignments throughout the translation education are put into practice more intensively after graduation, allowing the translation competence to cross existing boundaries and to turn this concept into the translator competence at the end. In this case, a translation pedagogy which can be useful in practice among existing translation theories/approaches for prospective translators should be adopted, and this pedagogy should be organized in such a way as to enable translation students to be able to create a self-guiding model of education by translation instructors. In this way, translation students can develop their translation performance. Last but not least, it is thought that this study will also be useful to show how prospective translators will make their declarative information procedural at the end.