Tipton Rebecca (2024). The Routledge Guide to Teaching Ethics in Translation and Interpreting Education. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 221, $39.19 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-367-56577-0.

Jing Zhao, University of Science and Technology Beijing

University-level trainers of translators and interpreters have long advised their students to adhere to professional codes of ethics, even though ethics is seldom formally included in the curriculum. As the teaching environment has been rapidly evolving with the explosive growth of science and technology, there has been a burgeoning interest in incorporating ethical issues in translation and interpreting (TI) education. Rebecca Tipton’s latest work, The Routledge Guide to Teaching Ethics in Translation and Interpreting Education, is a timely and valuable contribution to integrate ethical awareness into professional training and academic research.

The guide offers a comprehensive framework for incorporating ethics into TI education, addressing both theoretical underpinnings and practical implementation strategies. It presents an integrated and pedagogically engaged approach to ethics education in TI, providing TI educators with a practical set of resources, rich practical activities and illustrative cases to foster ethical reasoning in students.

The goal of the book is to empower TI educators to build an ethics-related curriculum that helps students to cultivate ethical competence, sensitivity, responsibility and commitment. Specifically, the book aims to offer an in-depth exploration of various ethical aspects in TI, foreground key ethical issues, provide pedagogical tools, and open up debates in related issues.

This volume consists of an “Introduction” and five chapters. Besides stating the ultimate goal of this guide, the introduction also clarifies its overriding principles and themes, stressing that an integrated approach to ethical education in TI class means educators should include an ethical dimension into teaching and learning in ways that are commensurate with what is currently taught (pp. 1-2). In line with this thought, the book unfolds across five meticulously structured chapters, each addressing distinct facets of ethics in TI education.

Chapter 1 lays the groundwork by exploring normative ethical theories and proposes an integrated approach to ethics education (p. 21) which emphasizes the need to embed the ethical dimension into existing curricula without overwhelming them. In congruence with Goodwin’s (2010) view that ethics is not extrinsic to translation (and interpreting), but an intrinsically ethical activity, Tipton believes that ethics education in TI should not be viewed as a burden to an already crowded curriculum, but as a dimension that can be fostered transversally in regular classroom activities and independent learning tasks (p. 48). A central tenet of this integrated approach is that ethics should permeate all aspects of TI education. It is argued that this approach helps to improve ethical sensitivity, deepen ethical awareness, enhance judgement and reinforce ethical commitment among students. Throughout this chapter, detailed prompts for reflection and suggested activities accompany the discussion.

Against such a backdrop, Chapter 2 is devoted to integrating ethics into translation practices, using literary and commercial translation scenarios to demonstrate how ethics can be weaved into the curriculum in alignment with what is currently taught. It first explores the concept of “ethical responsibility”, and then develops suggestions for enhancing ethical sensitivity through conducting pre-translation tasks, such as reading, peer translation, text profiling, and monolingual revision (pp. 46-53). Afterwards, it discusses how to develop ethical competence through case-based literary and commercial translation learning. Cases of novel translation (The Vegetarian), poem translation (The Hill We Climb), and children’s fiction translation are discussed to showcase thorny ethical issues in literary translation. In relation to commercial translation, issues of website localisation and hashtag translation are discussed in detail both to illustrate some of the multiple factors contributing to the complexity of translation situations and to make students aware of the similarly complex ethical implications involved in translation decisions. Such case-based learning is regarded as an effective pedagogical method to immerse students in real-world ethical dilemmas.

Chapter 3 examines how technologies assisting TI raise new ethical challenges within the curriculum and focuses on ethics in the current digital environment. With the expanding prevalence of translation technology and its deeper integration into the profession, questions about ethics and technology use have gained increasing attention. This chapter explores different facets of machine translation (MT), introduces new trends in TI, including crowdsourced translation, collaborative translation, volunteer translation, and examines their implications for ethics education in terms of translation agency and accountability. With enlightening examples, it shows how students can be challenged with tasks set in hypothetical scenarios to enhance their ethical competence. For instance, in relation to post-editing, the class can be presented with a simulated case in which a local organisation plans to use MT for a new transport scheme’s communication with diverse communities. Students can be tasked with creating various types of translation (raw MT output, rapid MTPE output, full MTPE, and human translation from scratch) and evaluating them in terms of community needs, text timeliness, and data security. This type of tasks which requires students to weigh the pros and cons of various choices and decide the most suitable approach makes them better prepared to handle similar situations in real-world scenarios in their future careers. In section 3.3.2.3, in order to manifest how to cultivate “digital ethics” (p. 94), four different activities are presented, covering topics of honesty and integrity in the use of MT, the language of data protection, digital ethics awareness development, and copyright issues in various jurisdictions. By following a step-by-step task procedure in all cases, the aim is to encourage students to critically engage with these topics and prepare them for ethical dilemmas they may encounter in future professional settings.

It can be argued that, compared with the attention paid to ethics in the translation curriculum, aspects related to ethics in interpreting education have been even less explored in specialised literature. Chapter 4 fills this gap and exemplifies how to incorporate ethical issues into interpreting lessons with a particular focus on dialogue and conference interpreting. For dialogue interpreting, it discusses the application of the “Demand Control Schema” for ethical decision-making, and proposes practical strategies, such as role-play and drama-based approaches, to enhance ethical sensitivity and professional conduct among students. For conference interpreting, it addresses the role of case-based learning in developing ethical reasoning skills, emphasising the need for simulating realistic, high-stakes scenarios that place students in real-world situations. The chapter discusses the ethical responsibilities of interpreters across diverse settings, including legal, medical, social work, and media contexts. Tipton also highlights the importance of self-care as an ethical commitment, acknowledging the emotional and psychological challenges faced by interpreters in demanding professional environments.

Chapter 5 shifts focus to teaching research ethics in the domain of translation and interpreting. Tipton posits that infusing research integrity principles into research methods training is pivotal in equipping students with the ethical competencies required for conducting ethically sound research in TI studies. She urges an exploration of concepts such as “integrity” and “risks” at every stage of the research process, and underscores the importance of “informed consent” (section 5.5.2), “confidentiality” (section 5.5.3), “data management, storage and retention” (section 5.5.4). The chapter provides educators with practical tools for integrating ethical dimensions into research training, reinforcing the guide’s overarching theme of ethics as a cross-cutting concern that permeates the disciplinary fields of translation and interpreting.

Making a difference as compared to The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Ethics (Koskinen & Pokorn 2021), which provides an extensive exploration of ethical issues in translation and interpreting, and to Translation Ethics (Lambert 2023), a textbook bringing together key ethical issues and guidance for students, educators, and professionals, this current volume underscores the necessity and significance of weaving ethical aspects systematically into the TI curriculum and exemplifies the approach argued for with significant pedagogical support.

Throughout the book, Tipton advocates for a reflective pedagogical approach that encourages students to engage critically with ethical dilemmas rather than adhering to rigid rules or codes of conduct. This resonates with the goal of the guide, which is to boost critical thinking and ethical judgment, not to dictate rigid guidelines. Instead of providing an authoritarian list of dos and don’ts or a prescribed set of rules, teachers assume the role of moderators by providing students with possible suggested solutions and encouraging them to take accountability for their decisions. The ethics teaching promoted in this guide is not prescriptive, but evaluative, based on description of the particular challenges of diverse professional settings. This enables educators to customise the teaching content to fit context-specific needs and available resources.

A prominent feature of this book is that it places a strong emphasis on aligning ethics education with real-world professional practices and offers educators engaging class activities and valuable practical guidance for incorporating ethics-related topics into TI tasks. Baker & Maier (2011, p. 5) believe that educators need to develop a set of pedagogical tools that may be used to create an environment in which students can make situated ethical decisions, rehearse the implications of such decisions, and learn from this experience. The activities described in this book serve as a springboard for developing effective pedagogical tools. In agreement with the view that the classroom must be configured as an open space for reflection and experimentation (Baker & Maier, 2011, p. 1), the guide proposes activities that can be incorporated as such or with adaptations in the TI curriculum. Three types of activities are interwoven throughout the chapters: prompts for reflection for educators (for instance, the assessment of current coverage of ethics in class included in section 1.2); points for discussion in class (e.g. the indicative list of topics linked to ethics in relation to translation technologies offered in section 3.2.3); and task suggestions for class teaching (particularly, the detailed description of how to teach and exercise pre-editing rules included in section 3.3.2). Abiding by a practice-first approach to ethics, the activities suggested throughout the chapters offer rich material from various contexts, providing educators with a set of pedagogical tools to resort to in class. The activities help break down ethics teaching into actionable components. The prompts for reflection and tasks can support educators in implementing ethics education effectively and constructively.

The book recommends a variety of instructional approaches, such as reflective practices, role-playing, and drama-based methods, to involve students in ethical thinking and decision-making. It also promotes the use of case studies and real-life scenarios to facilitate critical thinking and ethical reasoning. It is made clear that building ethics into the translation curriculum means opening up a space for critical reflection and training students to examine the consequences of their behaviour, rather than constraining their ethical vision within the bounds of pre-established codes. This guide also deepens the understanding of ethics by clarifying that ethics in TI is a “continuum” (p. 138) of ethicality, as opposed to a simple right-or-wrong dichotomy.

A notable strength of the guide is its inclusivity of diverse TI contexts, covering domains and modalities as varied as medical translation, literary translation, machine translation, post-editing, collaborative translation, and dialogue and conference interpreting. It addresses ethical issues of translation quality, fairness, data security, intellectual property, technologies, translators’ job satisfaction, professional identity, etc. A range of TI situations are discussed, both authentic and hypothetical, both for-profit (for example, MOOC translation) and non-profit (for instance, Wikipedia translation), both literary and non-literary, both technology-free and technology-enhanced. Students’ frequent exposure to common ethical dilemmas in different translation situations helps cultivate their ethical competence, and prepares them to resolve the complexities of professional translation and interpreting with a strong ethical awareness.

Another strength of the guide is its heavy reliance on academic achievements to facilitate the teaching of ethical issues. Specifically, it displays how academic research from TI studies and beyond can be leveraged to develop pedagogical interventions. For instance, Desjardins (2017) ’s research on translation and social media sheds light on the discussion concerning the ethical dilemmas of translating hashtags. When discussing machine translation post-editing, the findings of recent literature in this field are cited and their usefulness for the teaching of ethics are examined. Constructivist-inspired pedagogies stressing the importance of embodied action as the basis for learning is also drawn upon, helping to develop a contextualised approach to addressing ethical issues in practice. The combination of theoretical and practical aspects when dealing with different topics helps to bridge the gap between the academic and professional world.

Overall, the current book presents a comprehensive guide for educators in the field of TI to fuse ethical issues into their teaching practices. It advocates for an integrated approach to ethics education, which supports the incorporation of a greater ethical dimension into the current TI curriculum to help students to develop a robust ethical foundation for both their academic and professional lives. By offering innovative approaches to teaching ethics and showcasing effective methods, the guide serves as a benchmark for TI educators and as essential reading for students.

However, although the guide underlines the potential to adjust the current TI curricula to further integrate ethical education, practical challenges remain in balancing this integration, in determining optimal timing for ethical instruction, and in implementing targeted, seamless pedagogical interventions. Furthermore, the design of a coherent curriculum tackling ethical aspects requires continued research. Given the rapid evolution of TI technologies, the discussions on the implications of their use will require regular updates, particularly in light of the ethical challenges that large language models such as ChatGPT are posing for translator and interpreter training.

Despite these potential weaknesses, this book makes a solid contribution to TI education. It offers an in-depth exploration of options and possibilities for ethics-informed curriculum development, empowering TI educators with a diverse toolkit of approaches and teaching strategies. With its insightful integrated theoretical framework, its extensive coverage of subfields and topics, and its rich pedagogical resources, this guide is an impressive and indispensable tool for TI educators to train ethically informed professionals.

References

Baker, M. & Maier, C. (2011). Ethics in Interpreter & Translator Training: Critical Perspectives. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 5(1), 1-14.

Desjardins, R. (2017). Translation and social media: In theory, in training and in professional practice. Palgrave Macmillan.

Goodwin, P. (2010). Ethical Problems in Translation: Why We Might Need Steiner After All. The Translator, 16(1), 19-42.

Koskinen, K. & Pokorn, N. K. (2021). The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Ethics. Routledge.

Lambert, J. (2023). Translation Ethics. Routledge.

Acknowledgement

This review was funded by the Beijing Municipal Social Science Foundation (China) [Grant Number 24YYB013]

Jing Zhao

University of Science and Technology Beijing

E-mail: angelina_zj@163.com