Addressing Trainees’ Diversity Conundrums in Translator Education: Towards a Responsive Pedagogy

This paper assesses the impact of some trainee translators’ background factors on their learning outcomes by highlighting the challenges that diverse classrooms pose for translator trainers. The study demonstrates that psycho-socio-educational and professional background factors such as educational and linguistic backgrounds, prior-work or professional experiences, socio-economic status and home learning environments, perceptions and dispositions towards translation learning, as well as expectations, levels of satisfaction and loyalty provide an explanatory background to the process of translation production and performance of most translation students. The data for this study is drawn from 60 students of the MA Programme in Translation at the Advanced School of Translators and Interpreters (ASTI) of the University of Buea in Cameroon. The data reveals that students’ performances vary significantly with these background characteristics. The study posits that responsive pedagogy in translator education can only grow out of an understanding of students’ background, whereby the strengths and weaknesses that students bring to school are identified, nurtured and utilized to promote student achievement.