Meaningfulness in the Work of Language Professionals (original) (raw)
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Investigating demands on language professionals
Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée , 2010
Die professionellen Anforderungen an Sprachexperten sind in den letzten Jahren stark gestiegen und umfassen heute nicht mehr nur das Übersetzen im traditionellen Sinne sondern unter anderem auch die Revision von eigenen Übersetzungen und Texten, von fremden Übersetzungen sowie von Texten nicht-muttersprachlicher Autoren. Am Arbeitsplatz zeigt sich dieser Wandel in der Entwicklung neuer Software-Applikationen und neuer Geschäftsprozesse in vielen Übersetzungsdienstleistungsbetrieben. Im Bereich der Forschung wurde bisher allerdings nur wenig unternommen, um herauszufinden, welche Anforderungen diese Übersetzungs-und Schreibprozesse an die kognitiven Ressourcen stellen. Viele Übersetzer sind unter Umständen nicht bereit für den Wandel am Arbeitsplatz und empfinden eventuell eine gewisse berufliche Orientierungslosigkeit. Unser empirischer Ansatz zur Erforschung translatorischer Kompetenz befasst sich mit den methodologischen Herausforderungen von Forschung am Arbeitsplatz und trägt zu einem besseren Verständnis der professionellen Anforderungen an Sprachexperten bei.
Work-related language learning trajectories of migrant cleaners in Finland
Cleaning is often the survival employment that migrants can get in their new home country. Ideally, the workplace can be a site for integration and language learning. This article explores how two migrants working as cleaners in Finland narrate their work-related Finnish language learning trajectories. The research is designed by applying nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004), which focuses on social action in the intersection of interaction order, participants' life experience s, and discourses in place. The social action in focus here is investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015), which means a commitment to developing language skills to achieve one's aspirations. The article also analyses how language learners position themselves and are positioned by others, because positioning affects access to meaningful learning opportunities. Positioning analysis by Bamberg and Georgakopoulou (2008) in a small stories approach is applied to analyse the key participants' oral narratives told in the context of ethnographic research interviews. Follow-up interviews conducted a year later are analysed to show how positioning changes over time. The study illustrates that investment in work-related language learning is meaningful when occupational development and language learning can be purposefully combined. However, migrants are positioned as a potential workforce in low-level jobs and their expertise is often ignored, which means that investments in language learning might not pay off in career develo pment. Supporting educated migrants in finding appropriate employment would facilitate goal-oriented language learning.
Platform work performed by a qualified work force – the case of technical translators
2019
So far, the discussion and research on platform work have focused on simple services with low skill requirements (for instance within the transport and catering sectors), and on how platforms blur responsibilities and contribute to the exploitation of different segments of unqualified workforces (Parker, Alstyne & Choudary, 2016; Steen et al., 2019). This policy brief highlights the fact that the logic of the platform economy may also apply to the mediation of qualified work. More precisely, it explores the section of the translation industry that is concerned primarily with technical translations in Finland and Sweden1. At present, practically all companies in Finland and Sweden outsource their translation tasks. Due to the disappearance of in-house translation units, translation firms have seized the opportunity to expand their business into global enterprises. In doing so, they have used digital platforms as a means to mediate resources and jobs between independent translators, w...
Language awareness and language workers
Language Awareness, 2017
This paper argues that linguistic awareness and skills are essential requirements for professionals whose work centres on language as a process and product. Brought about by the commodification of language in developed economies, language work such as brand consulting, text design or online marketing requires linguistic knowledge, resources and skills that many current teaching material do not provide. Extracts from interviews with a diverse group of language workers allow for first insights into their kind and level awareness, but also show that they are more concerned about what they perceive as a lack of language awareness in their clients and suggests a non-linear model of teaching and learning relations between academic linguists, language workers, clients and students. The paper further discusses the options that applied linguists in academia have if they want to work with/as language workers and argues that engaging with language work(ers) can be an opportunity to bring critical language awareness and discourse analytical skills to bear on professional practice and training.
Study Abroad, Second Language Acquisition and Interculturality, 2019
This chapter addresses foreign language learners' and users' discursive identity work and interculturality in the context of blue-collar work practice abroad. It focuses on Finnish engineering students who were working in Germany with the aim of learning about their field of study. The participants had learnt English as a foreign language at school but had little or no previous knowledge of the local language of the host country. The study aims to find out what discourses the students draw on, how they orient to sameness and difference and what identities they make relevant in these discursive processes. The data used for this study are interviews collected at the beginning and after the students' four to six months' stay abroad and analyzed from a perspective that combines ethnography, discourse analysis and sociolinguistics. The findings show that the students' interculturality is connected to language policies and choice, discourses of global and local language, the ability to use one's communicative repertoire, and identity struggles caused by the challenges posed by languages during the stay abroad.
Journal of Education and Vocational Research, 2012
The objective of the research was to examine the experience world of professionals in the field of technology as users of foreign languages to illustrate the general meaning structure in the agency of a foreign language user. The theoretical framework of this research was phenomenological. The fieldwork was carried out through thematic interviews with seven interviewees in a medium-sized Finnish engineering company with international operations. Through a phenomenological method of analysis the individual meaning units were identified. Out of these individual meaning units a common meaning structure that reflected the experiences of all the interviewees was uncovered. Face-to-face communication and social positioning manifested as common meaning units, significant elements forming this structure in the accounts of the interviewees. Thus the findings of this research project suggest that in foreign language education special attention should be paid on establishing oral communication and thereby nurturing interactive communication skills in the students, instead of focusing on providing web-based language education.
Meta: Journal des traducteurs, 2014
Language technologies (for example, computer-aided and machine translation tools) are now well established in the language industry. Unfortunately, so are questions about their advantages and drawbacks. Many of these appear to be linked to language professionals’ control over their work and working environment. We surveyed these professionals to discover how they perceive language technologies’ effect on their control over the amount of work they do, the tasks they carry out and the methods they use, the quality of the product, the relationships with clients/employers, and their remuneration. The results reveal that most current users have positive opinions of technologies overall and generally feel that these tools increase their control over their work and working environment (and particularly the quantity and quality of the work). However, hesitations remain, in particular in regard to relationships with clients/employers and remuneration.
The European Proceedings of Social & Behavioural Sciences // PCSF 2019 - 19th Professional Culture of the Specialist of the Future 28-29 November 2019, 2019
The paper considers methodological problems of academic research work in master and postgrad programs training. These problems concern a student's awareness in the academic research project choice, their skills and knowledge in definition of its goal, tasks, theory choice and academic writing as it is. Training experience has shown inability of Master program students to define their assignments in research work and necessity of special courses in scientific text structure and academic writing both in Russian and English languages. These courses are to solve training problems for text creation state-of-the-art since modern level of technology and science is now determined by the potential of automation processes in industries (Industry 4.0) and an appropriate presentation of information on the project under development and implementation (Information 4.0). The paper tries to assess the need for educating a new generation of specialists-language workers-those, who are prepared to solve text processing tasks in this new technology space. The paper considers the potential of information technologies and Web resources to be used by various specialists in their practice and studies. It addresses the general problems of modern methodological education caused by the changes in modern educational situation that demand a new understanding of educational process. It also discusses some issues of professional education.
Dlaske, K. et al. (2016) Languaging the Worker
In the introduction to the special issue “Languaging the worker: globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces”, we take up the notion of governmentality as a means to interrogate the complex relationship between language, labor, power and subjectivity in peripheral multilingual spaces. Our aim here is to argue for the study of governmentality as a viable and growing approach in critical sociolinguistic research. As such, in this introduction, we first discuss key concepts germane to our interrogations, including the notions of governmentality, languaging, peripherality and language worker. We proceed to map out five ethnographically and discourse-analytically informed case studies. These examine diverse actors in different settings pertaining to the domain of work. Finally we chart how the case studies construe the issue of languaging the worker through a governmentality frame.
Lynne Li, Michael Singh and Shanthi Robertson (eds) Globalization, Languages, Knowledge. Australian languages education in the ‘Asian century’, 2012
Recent decades have seen tertiary languages programs subjected to systemic (if not systematic) de-professionalization, particularly through marked erosion of senior leadership, and widespread juniorization and casualization of staff. The causes of this profoundly negative trend-which has implications for academic standing, research activity and morale across the sector-range from neglect within individual institutions to frequent societal perceptions of languages as being without value, or only of narrow instrumental value (for example, as an adjunct to commerce or trade). This article argues, however, that the reprofessionalization process has begun. In particular, within the tertiary languages sector, there remain strong currents of resilience, dynamism and innovation, which have produced, among other things, a major initiative to counter the forces of erosion. The recently created Languages and Cultures Network for Australian Universities (LCNAU) will provide both a forum for safeguarding, enhancing and sharing professional approach to the provision of language education. It will thus contribute to the sector's long-term sustainability. It may even play a pioneering role in the wider sustainability of Australian universities.