On the margins of the profession: the work placement as a site for the literary translator trainee’s legitimate peripheral participation

Abstract

The concepts of situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) provide a theoretical framework for learning that is student-centred, based on collaboration and placed on the margins of a given community of practice, with a view to bringing the learner closer to that community. In translation pedagogy, these features converge most notably with the tenets of social constructivism, which insists on the importance of the publishable translation project in translator training methodology. This article aims to provide an account of a type of authentic translation project carried out at Universitat Jaume I (Castelló, Spain) as the final part of literary translator training at the institution, and to root it in learning theory and translation pedagogy. The translation project is conducted in the framework of the work placement that all students have to go through as a requirement for graduation. Actual practice in that context is for the most part in accordance with a socio-constructivist approach. But some relative departures from that approach are observed as regards the role assigned to the instructor, the notions of autonomy and empowerment, and identity formation.