Inclusion, Diversity and Innovation in Translation Education: meet the editors
Posted on 1st October, 2024
Today marks the publication of a new book from UCL Press: Inclusion, Diversity and Innovation in Translation Education, edited by Dr Alejandro Bolaños García-Escribano and Dr Mazal Oaknín. We are delighted to celebrate this new publication by sharing an interview with Alejandro and Mazal, exploring their backgrounds in the field of translation education, their reflections on the process of editing an academic volume, and their thoughts about the future of academic publishing.
Tell us more about your background and experience in this field.
Alejandro: I have been involved in translation education since 2016 when I started training subtitlers at UCL Centre for Translation Studies. Since 2022, I have served as Associate Editor for The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, a leading scholarly journal on translation and interpreting education.
Mazal: Although I have been teaching Spanish language and literature since I graduated, my BA was in Translation. Pedagogical translation plays a key part in my teaching and research interests. I am also on the Editorial Board of Hikma: Translation Studies Journal
What do you enjoy most about your work?
Alejandro & Mazal: We have found many opportunities to collaborate and build a network within and beyond UCL. Our seminars and publications have opened up new research possibilities that have materialised in this book. Our activities have also nurtured a healthy work atmosphere, allowing us to exchange expertise and build a community of like-minded translation educators.
How do you work with authors and contributors to ensure their voices are heard and their work is presented in the best possible light?
Alejandro & Mazal: From the inception of this writing project, we have strived to include a diversity of voices from an array of backgrounds and areas of knowledge. We have worked closely with our contributors to ensure that the book aligns with our ethos on EDI approaches in education. Our work ethics enhances the human factor behind the production of an edited volume of this calibre. This is our trademark and something that we are extremely proud of.
How do you balance the need for academic rigour with the need to make your publications accessible and engaging to a broader audience?
Alejandro & Mazal: Since 2018, we have made efforts to disseminate our research through a series of free, hybrid seminars featuring renowned speakers and cutting-edge education-focused projects and proposals. Albeit scholarly rigorous and therefore appealing to lecturers and researchers alike, these seminars have also attracted much attention from students, language instructors and professionals. This is a testament to the accessible nature of our seminar series, on which this book has been based. In our book, we as editors as well as our contributors have followed this principle, ensuring that content is adequate for a wide readership.
What advice would you give to aspiring editors, and what do you think are the key skills and attributes required?
Alejandro & Mazal: Editors must never lose sight of the overarching themes and rationale of the book. At the same time, a good degree of flexibility is needed to accommodate new circumstances that might arise and thereby affect the workflow, structure or timeline of the writing process. In this respect, communication is always key, and editors need to be in regular touch with contributors and series editors, ensuring that there are no misunderstandings – everyone needs to always be on the same page at all times. For instance, we created ad-hoc documents including components such as rationale, structure, writing style guide, etc. Last but not least, it is easy to get dragged down by the possible challenges but remember to always enjoy the process and the promising opportunities it presents.
Surprise us with something unexpected you encountered in your work on this book.
Alejandro & Mazal: We are extremely pleased to have received the support of many colleagues from the outset. Among our long-term collaborators are UCL’s Centre for Humanities Education (CHE) and the Institute of Advances Studies (IAS), which have duly supported this initiative from its inception. We look forward to our book launch, generously sponsored by both CHE and IAS, on 11 November 2024. Looking back at our initial meeting with the series editors, we could not possibly imagine that so many renowned scholars and specialists would have endorsed the publication of this book. This has been a welcome confirmation of its relevance and timeliness.
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing academic book publishing today, and how do you see the industry evolving in the future?
Alejandro & Mazal: There is a lot to unpack here! Despite its endless opportunities, artificial intelligence is undoubtedly disrupting the ways in which researchers obtain, analyse and discuss data as well as the writing process itself. In the face of ‘Publish or Perish’, scholars are under constant pressure to have their work published, which could potentially lead to malpractice in some cases.
In a more general sense, as Lecturers who work closely with students, we see the impact that social media has on our understanding of knowledge – for instance, the expectation of immediacy, the lack of nuance and the sweeping power of buzzwords appear to have replaced the need for in-depth research, reflection and discussion.
We believe that reflection and critical thinking cannot be rushed in academic publications, and to lead by example we have done our best to find the time and space that this volume has required in the past few years.
About the editors
Alejandro Bolaños García-Escribano (SFHEA, MCIL, CL) is Associate Professor in Audiovisual Translation at University College London.
Mazal Oaknín (FHEA) is Associate Professor (Teaching) and Language Coordinator of Spanish at University College London.