An international conference was organized by the Institute of Germanistics of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Debrecen and the German Cultural Forum in Debrecen. The focus of the online event was on the difficulties and challenges posed by the pandemic that translators and trainers involved in translator training faced.
Slovenian, Croatian, Romanian and Hungarian speakers discussed the topicality of translation training, the problems caused by the epidemiological situation, the answers to them and possible good practices at a professional meeting entitled “New Normal – Neue Wege” on 22 April entitled “New Digital Challenges in Translation Science”.
Helga Begonja (University of Zadar) analyzed the impact of the epidemic on the Croatian translation market, Viktorija Osolnik Kunc (University of Ljubljana) analyzed the situation in Slovenia, Krisztina Varga (Eötvös Loránd University) and Péter Csatár (University of Debrecen) summarized the lessons learned from translation courses.
In addition to the training, the current issues of literary translation were also discussed. Through the presentation of Lídia Nádori (Association of Hungarian Translators), those interested could get an insight into how the translation environment has changed with the spread of the epidemic, and what effects this has had and will have on the future. Daniela Vladu (Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca) presented practices that can be well applied in the translation of literary texts in the current situation.
The main lesson of the conference is that the use of multimodal e-learning systems, which came to the fore in the training of translators, will remain an integral part of the training in the future. The electronic interfaces (MOODLE, CANVAS, MS TEAMS) will not only serve for the storage of the used literature and the administration of education, but will also occupy a prominent place in the teacher-student interaction, and part of the examination can be transferred to the online space.
– said Péter Csatár, Head of the Department of German Linguistics.
It seems to literary translators that it will only become clear in a good year how much the past epidemic has negatively affected the literary translation market due to falling orders.
– added UD coordinator, the program moderator.
The online event, organized with the participation of literary translators from the four nations, was monitored by lecturers and students in Hungary and abroad.
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