Are translation departments preparing students for professional life?: a case study of the translation department at the faculty of letters Kairouan, Tunisia

الملخص EN

While the number of sworn translators in Tunisia has recently increased, which can be easily noticed through the increasing number of translation agencies and translation bureaus launched in different places of the country, these remain acting basically within the domains of legal and administrative translation and have to be licensed by passing a contest of translation organized every year by the Tunisian Ministry of Justice.

Moreover, the majorities of these translators do not hold a diploma in translation and come from different academic backgrounds, mainly languages, despite the availability of translation departments in some Tunisian universities.

The other facet of the situation shows that graduates from translation departments, apart from rarely being able to pass the Ministry of Justice contest for sworn translators, are also rarely part of the translation market either inside or outside the country despite the increasing demand for translators in domains other than the legal and administrative ones.

This status leads us to shed light on the translation curricula designed for translation departments in Tunisia in relation to the increasing and more varied demands for translation both inside and outside the country.

The translation curriculum designed for the translation department at the Faculty of Letters at the University of Kairouan, where I am currently teaching various translation courses, will represent the corpus of investigation of the study.

The methodological approach followed is both qualitative and quantitative.

The aim of the study is to show the gap between the academic achievements required and the market demands in the field of translation in an attempt to upgrade the curriculum and prepare students for better chances of integrating professional life.