Online education has grown substantially over recent years, and projections indicate that it will continue to grow. Translation training programs are participating in this trend. Over this same time period, it has become increasingly common for translation professionals to carry out their work both remotely and collaboratively.
The principal purpose of this analysis is to identify and propose methods of incorporating socio-affective strategies which are effective in compensating for the lack of direct human interaction in an online translation class. The underlying basis of this line of thought is that the incorporation of socio-affective strategies both enriches the acquisition of translation skills (translation as a process) and improves the quality of the result (translation as a product). These strategies are transferable to a professional virtual work environment, which is the working modality of a significant number of professional translators today.
The proposal offered is for a collaborative and situated approach to translation teaching and learning (Vygotsky, 1986; González Davies, 2004, 2006a, 2006b, 2010; D. Johnson and R. Johnson 2009; Kiraly 2000; Lantolf and Poehner 2014; Lave & Wenger 1990, Oxford 2011).
Diego Mansilla teaches advanced translation courses at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he is also the Director of its Translation Program. Diego is a grader for the American Translators Association Certification Program (English into Spanish). He has been a professional translator for over 15 years. His areas of research include translation pedagogy, online education, and collaborative translation.
