An Investigation into Translation Studies Curricula at Postgraduate Level in Terms of Students’ Needs Market Demand: The Case of Saudi Arabia’s KKU and KSU.

Abstract

The current practice on translator training in Saudi Arabia has not met the Saudi market demands yet but an overall evaluation of translator training practices has not yet been done. In this regard, the present paper will attempt to examine the status of translator training in Saudi Arabia, by the choice of two Translation postgraduate programs, King Saud University, and King Khalid University. For this purpose, the course contents of each program will be examined. Besides, a questionnaire survey was conducted, addressing the students’ needs and expectations towards the MA translation program they have studied in. Moreover, it has been argued that there is a resistance in integrating translation technology into the coursework despite its current importance. Therefore, an investigation was held into how the two programmes under study present translation technologies and gauge students’ satisfaction with it. Studies have yet to tackle how the market demand and present translation technologies and whether or not their presentation of technology affects the curriculum design and its outputs. Thus, a relatively small corpus of 28 job advertisement is done to check how they present technology. The results show that the overall two programs were compatible with some observations, also the questionnaire showed that the majority of students expressed a level of satisfaction with the program as a whole. However, the students’ satisfaction was coupled with some comments that indicate some improvements and developments must take consideration from curriculum developers. Students' responses upon translation technologies express a severe weakness in its integration in translator training programs. After examining the market through examining the job ads it also became clear that the market does not appropriately demand or promote translation technologies (CAT tools in particular).