The Place of Writing in Translation: from Linguistic Craftsmanship to Multilingual Text Production

The School of Translation at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences is one of two Swiss institutions educating translators. The contribution describes the institute’s literacy conception and the changes from linguistic parallelism to a model of multilingual literacy in which many forms of language interactions are reflected, not only translation. A first year writing program has been created that provides a variety of writing tasks focused on genre use in different domains (literary, academic, professional, and journalistic). The program places a strong emphasis on the connection of writing with linguistic knowledge acquired in the other parts of the study program. While the first part of the course may be characterized as genre training, the second one is devoted to creativity work leading to a group product in the form of a conjoint dossier. The program builds on a process approach, uses electronic portfolios, and places a strong weight on self-directed group activity. It is taught in three languages parallel.