The Incorporation of Subject Knowledge in Teaching Scientific Translation

Scientific translation accounts for a big proportion of translation work currently commissioned by the industry. On the one hand, translation commissioners tend to rank specialized knowledge in a given subject area as more important than translation skills. On the other hand, the literature suggests that translator trainers rate subject knowledge as highly as linguistic skills. However, both the deductive and inductive approaches to teaching subject matter fail to prepare students for real-life translation work. Enlightened by the theory of social constructivism which sees learning as a social collaborative process, this paper discusses the importance of subject knowledge in translating science and technology and explores feasible ways to foster translation students' acquisition of subject knowledge in their learning of scientific translation. It is hoped that the study in this paper could shed some lights on further improvement of pedagogical practices in scientific translator education.