Less Is More? Microcredentials as an Alternative to Degree-Awarding Translator Education

Abstract

Microcredentials have recently attracted substantial attention in academia. While short, practice-oriented courses and the concept of lifelong learning (e.g. Jarvis 2009) have been around for decades, the idea of receiving credit in the form of open digital badges and stacking them to form a personal portfolio is new – and exciting. Add to it the ongoing discussion on the decline of the university diploma as such, and a viable alternative to traditional translator education looms in the distance.

This paper explores the rise of microcredentials in general and in language and translation studies in particular. The numerous approaches to translation competence (see Quinci 2023 for a more recent one) seem to be in agreement that it is a construct made up of several subcompetencies. It is logically sound, therefore, to acquire these subcompetencies separately in the process of competence development that is individual and free from the typical constraints of university education, such as completing it in the allotted time. However, this system means that there is no authority to tell the trainee that they are „competent enough”, other than perhaps the employer, who chooses to hire them or not. As regards the translation market, microcredentials are too new to be universally recognised, so for the time being translation agencies will prefer more traditional qualifications. This, in turn, leads to higher education institutions shying away from offering them (and students from taking them), since they do not yet constitute a fully-fledged qualification.

The paper includes a presentation of a pilot microcredential on offer at University of Lodz, as well as the results of a focus group survey on microcredentials in translation.