The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2019 - 17

focus of CBE programs should be on
inputs or attributes-commonly referred
to as knowledge, skills, and dispositions
(KSDs)-it's important to consider
essential occupational tasks and relevant
professional standards when defining,
assessing, and teaching them.
Consistent with this view that integrates
tasks, standards, and attributes, I've
proposed the following definition to my
fellow team members: competencies are
the knowledge, skills, and dispositions
that enable a practitioner to perform a set
of key occupational tasks with a specified
degree of competence. For our purpose,
this definition raises a series of related
questions, such as:
■■

What are the key occupational tasks
performed by translators?

■■

What KSDs are needed to perform
these tasks?

■■

What constitutes entry-level mastery of
these KSDs?

Answering the first two questions
suggests the need to consider the results
from an appropriately focused job task
analysis. ATA Past President Caitilin
Walsh, who chairs ATA's Education and
Pedagogy Committee, reminded our
group early on that ATA conducted a
job task analysis from 2009 to 2011
that produced data that might be useful
to our efforts. The focus of that study,
as stated by researchers Geoff Koby
and Alan Melby in a 2013 article, was
to "define the job of a professional
translator by identifying the knowledge,
skills, and abilities (KSAs) needed to
perform professional translation services
competently" in an effort to "strengthen
the validity of [ATA's] certification
exam."6 The procedures used by the
researchers to gather information (focus
groups and a survey) yielded 36 KSAs,
as well as 16 personal attributes (e.g.,
being "open-minded" and "culturally
sensitive")-far too many items for a
single exam to assess.
Arguably, the results uncovered in
ATA's job task analysis are most useful
when viewed as a preliminary roadmap
for designing an instructional program.
I say preliminary because I see them
as informing a new job task analysis
whose purposes would be to identify the
www.atanet.org

essential tasks and related competencies
for a training program targeting entrylevel competence. Given the high number
of items ATA's job task analysis yielded,
an important issue researchers would
need to consider when designing the
study would be the degree of detail to
encourage when eliciting input regarding
essential tasks and related KSDs.

Collaboration, research, and
consensus-building take time
and effort.

sounds interesting and you would like to
contribute to our ongoing effort, or if you
simply have some input or information
to share, please feel free to contact me at
jasjol71@gmail.com. I look forward to
collaborating with more of you!
NOTES
1
Jolley, Jason. "Can Competency-Based
Education Enhance Translator Training?"
The ATA Chronicle (July/August 2017),
http://bit.ly/Jason-Jolley.
2

Interagency Language Roundtable Skill
Level Descriptions for Translators,
http://bit.ly/ILR-skill-level.

3

Competency-based education (CBE) is
an innovative approach to teaching and
learning that has been gaining traction
in universities throughout the U.S. and
beyond. It differs markedly from traditional
approaches in higher education. Instead of
measuring learning in terms of credit hours
and letter grades, CBE programs focus on
student mastery of specific competencies.

4

Hoffmann, Terrence. "The Meanings
of Competency," Journal of European
Industrial Training (July 1999), 275-286,
http://bit.ly/Hoffmann-competency.

5

Hager, Paul. "The Integrated View on
Competence." In Competence-Based
Vocational and Professional Education,
Technical and Vocational Education and
Training: Issues, Concerns, and Prospects
(Springer International Publishing, 2017),
23, 203-228, http://bit.ly/Paul-Hager.

6

Koby, Geoff and Alan Melby. "Certification
and Job Task Analysis (JTA): Establishing
Validity of Translator Certification
Examinations," The International
Journal for Translation and Interpreting
Research, Volume 5 (2013),
http://bit.ly/Koby-Melby-JTA.

NEXT STEPS AND A RENEWED CALL
FOR VOLUNTEERS
I would like to conclude by summarizing
the outcomes attained by the project team
thus far. In the year or so since we began
working together, we have:
■■

Clarified our project goal.

■■

Revised and expanded its phases
and steps.

■■

Identified previous research that has and
will continue to inform our actions.

■■

Settled on a definition of competencies
that is consistent with CBE program design.

■■

Identified possible steps in a protocol for
developing competencies.

■■

Shared initial findings with and
sought input from translation and
interpreting professionals.

Our next steps include conducting a
job task analysis to identify the essential
tasks translators perform and the
KSDs needed to carry them out with
entry-level competence, developing
or identifying translation standards
consistent with that level of competence,
and deciding on a philosophy to guide
our approach to assessment.
Despite the slow pace of our work and
the challenges inherent in collaborating
on a large-scale project, I remain
convinced-and this experience has so
far demonstrated-that many heads are
indeed better than one. It's in that spirit
that I would like to renew my original call
for volunteers. If what you've just read

Jason Jolley teaches Spanish at
Missouri State University, where
he is head of the Department
of Modern and Classical
Languages. He has a PhD in
Spanish from The Pennsylvania
State University. His teaching and research interests
include translation, Latin American literature and
culture, and self-directed language learning. He
has worked extensively as a freelance translator
specializing in financial documents. He maintains
the YouTube channel Professor Jason Spanish. He
serves on the board of directors of the Mid-America
Chapter of the American Translators Association.
Contact: jasonjolley@missouristate.edu.
American Translators Association

17
http://www.bit.ly/Jason-Jolley http://www.bit.ly/ILR-skill-level http://www.bit.ly/Hoffmann-competency http://www.bit.ly/Paul-Hager http://www.bit.ly/Koby-Melby-JTA http://www.atanet.org
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2019

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