Global visions: Promoting excellence in the education of professional communicators and translators

Despite the increasingly unified and multicultural consciousness of the world today, and the tendency of authors such as Hoft or Weiss, on the side of professional communication, and Nord or Risku, on the side of translation, to bridge the gap between professional communication and translation, these activities are still viewed as separate, requiring different competencies and educations. At most, one finds professional communicators being asked to be aware of the involvement of translators in their work processes and of the characteristics of translation, and translators being asked to be aware of localization and of the potential need to adapt their work to the characteristics of the receiving culture. This distinction corresponds greatly to the geographical divide between the United States and Europe, being actively promoted by the definition of translation, translation process, and translator competencies stated out in documents such as the recently adopted EN 15038 standard. However, the unique context surrounding both professional communicators and translators, the communicative and rhetorical basis of professional communication and translation, and the knowledge and skills they share bring up the question of whether the education of these professionals should retain their distinctiveness. This paper refutes this idea. Instead, it proposes the education of multicompetent international professional communicators (MIPCs) as an ideal education if one wishes to prepare students to meet the challenges of work in and for the complex local, national, international and global markets of today. It also puts forward a three-phase instructional process as a means of attaining this objective.