Training Translators and Interpreters: The Need for a Competence-based Approach in Designing University Curricula

Translation and interpreting in the modern world of the 21st century are markedly different from the traditional practice. In recent decades, universities and institutions worldwide have moved toward modifying their curricula accordingly. One significant popular step taken so far is the adoption of a Competence-based Approach to teaching translation and interpreting. The present study, as a narrow part of a PhD dissertation on translation and interpreting competence, is a qualitative research using documentary analysis to figure out the components of translation and interpreting competence. To this end, this study investigated the major translation and interpreting competence models (47 translation and 35 interpreting models as the corpus or material) as structured texts. The descriptive content analysis of the data indicated distinct competences as well as common core competences between translation and interpreting, inductively suggesting that universities and institutions develop different curricula for the respective programs so they can train individuals based on the standards of the market.