Employability and entrepreneurship in the training of translators and interpreters: A proposal to develop the entrepreneurial skills of translation and interpreting graduates

Abstract

Since the Bologna Process came into force, many Higher Education (HE) institutions have started to include in their curricula professional competences and skills that help to develop entrepreneurship in their graduates in the context of a constantly evolving labour market. Within the framework of Translation and Interpreting (T&I) Studies, although numerous initiatives are being carried out in recent years to improve professional skills and encourage students' entrepreneurial attitudes, several recent research studies show that professional and entrepreneurship contents are not clearly integrated in all undergraduate T&I curricula. This article aims to describe the scene of T&I training in Spain in relation to entrepreneurship between 2015 and 2020. To do so, we will first analyse the concept of entrepreneurship in the current HE framework, paying special attention to its integration into the curricula for translator training in Spain. Subsequently, we will present a specific proposal for the development of employability and entrepreneurship skills in this context, developed at the University of Valladolid over several academic years.

Keywords

• Entrepreneurship
• translator training
• entrepreneurial skills
• employability