PENANG, 16 October 2016 – Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) through the Translation and Interpretation Studies offered by USM School of Humanities (PPIK) would remain committed in producing more translators and interpreters to fill the demands of the market requiring a professional workforce in the field of translation and interpretation and having global potential.

“We could see that close to 100% of the graduates who recently graduated with the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) (Translation and Interpretation) [BATI] have obtained jobs in the related field in various industries and organisations locally and also abroad,” said the USM Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Student Development Affairs and Alumni), Professor Dato’ Dr. Adnan Hussein in representing the USM Vice-Chancellor at the officiating ceremony of the ‘Seminar Terjemahan dan Interpretasi Kebangsaan’ (National Seminar on Translation and Interpretation/STI) 2016 here recently.

According to Adnan, this has also shown that the BATI programme has succeeded in producing quality graduates able to excel globally and who are relevant to the nation, in their contributions as the go-between in aspects of the transferral of knowledge, language, cultural and social aspects as well as in the building of civilised nations.

“Apart from that, we aim to produce graduates who are not merely knowledgeable, skilful and having commendable academic achievements, but also having high values and ethics, more so in the translation and interpretation line.

“In short, as with other study programmes, the teaching and learning of translation and interpretation at USM has been aligned with the three main agenda of APEX 2020 USM which are global excellence, national relevance and value-driven,” he said.

Adnan also touched on the challenges that translation students would possibly face in the era of the borderless world and globalisation, among which are to gain fluency in at least two languages especially from the nations in ASEAN to facilitate mobility among the countries, benefitting the latest in technology and translation-assisting software to speed up translation work, and to explore means of conducting flexible education such as the global classroom at the Master and Doctoral levels.

Earlier on, the Coordinator for Translation and Interpretation Studies, who also coordinates the Translation and Interpretation Research Unit (UniTI) at PPIK, Associate Professor Dr. Goh Sang Seong was proud of the success of various networking projects between the university-community, involving lecturers from the section.

“One good example would be the collaboration between USM and Media Prima Berhad in the preparation of subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired in Malaysia, headed by a senior lecturer of PPIK, Dr. Leelany Ayob.

“Apart from that, I hope that through UniTI which was newly-established at PPIK, various research efforts on research in pure and applied Translation Studies and Interpretation, involving various forms of transdisciplinary collaborations and with different language counterparts could be implemented to raise the overall standards of teaching and learning of the translation and interpretation course,” said Goh, who was part of the first BATI cohort when it started in 1992.

Meanwhile, the Chairperson of the STI 2016 Organising Committee who lectures at PPIK, Associate Professor Dr. Haslina Haroon hoped that this seminar would provide opportunities for trainees in the field of translation and interpretation to exchange ideas and experiences on best teaching practices in the field, and also in exploring alternative approaches having high potentials for application.

The two-day seminar organised by UniTI PPIK with the theme ‘Teaching and Learning of Translation and Interpretation’ has gathered close to 70 participants comprising of linguists, translators and interpreters, writers, publishers, editors, teachers and students, and a total of 32 working papers to be presented.

At the same ceremony, Adnan also launched books authored by the staff of BATI comprising of two books on research, a book on the compilation of chapters, two translation-assisting items (Glossary on Criminal Law and a Glossary on Contract Law) and four translated works, as well as the launching of the UniTI website - https://humanities.usm.my/index.php/discover-us/sections/translation-studies-interpreting.

Also present were the Dean of PPIK, Professor Dr. Narimah Samat and the keynote speaker who also lectures at PPIK, Associate Professor Dr. Hasuria Che Omar.

USM is the first public higher educational institution in Malaysia to offer an undergraduate programme in Translation and Interpretation. Now, the Master in Arts programme (Translation Studies) in Mixed Mode is offered at the USM Main Campus, as well as through offshore studies at IPS@Kuala Lumpur.

Translation: Mazlan Hanafi Basharudin