Designing a sight translation course for undergraduate T&I students: From context definition to course organization

Sight translation is widely used in the T&I classroom as a pedagogical tool to enhance trainees’ acquisition of interpreting skills and as a communicative tool to prepare trainees for the translation market. Sight translation, as a separate course, or at least as a necessary component of an interpreting course, is increasingly visible in most T&I programs. However, the pedagogy of sight translation is a rarely touched upon topic in the current literature. This article discusses the design of a sight translation course as a stepping stone for interpreting courses in an undergraduate program. Graves’ (2000) course development model is adapted to serve as the framework of course design. Drawing on findings from previous research, the author describes the five initial elements of course design: context definition, articulation of beliefs, content conceptualization, goals and objectives formulation, and course organization. This article aims at inspiring fellow trainers to design sight translation courses and other T&I courses in a scientific and systematic way.