The scientific-pedagogical staff of the Department of Philology and Translation of Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design highly appreciates the potential of meetings of first-year (bachelor’s) students with practicing specialists as the way of competitive specialists’ training.
On May 30, 2025, a lecture “Work of a translator in a translation agency: pitfalls and modern trends” was presented by Ph. D. Yulia Davydova who is an experienced translator, Deputy Director for Operations of the Translation Bureau “Admiral”. The lecture was presented for the students of 1st-4th courses of the educational program “The English language: translation in business communication” (specialty 035 Philology).
The specialist has told students about the work within the sphere of translation, about the carrier opportunities, shared with them with information about her professional and scientific path. The lecturer outlined the main components of the work at translation bureau, modern tendencies and challenges of the translation market. The lecturer made stress on the importance of the opportunity to obtain the successful translator’s competencies, particularly, the development of digital skills for work with translation software. Later the lecturer proposed useful advice and answered the students’ and guests’ questions.
Yulia Davydova underlined that the modern translation bureau is the dynamic and structure which comprises specialists from various fields who deal with the oral and written translation, certify documents, perform layout, transcription, and multilingual design of materials. The guarantee of the quality and work’s timeliness lays is obtained due to the project approach and to the team of the multilingual managers, translators, editors, correctors and coordinators.
The translator underlined that the successful specialist masterly operates with the skills which belong to three categories: hard skills – professional skills, soft skills – personal skills and meta skills – “skills which are over skills”. The effective translator communicates in several foreign languages, works as experienced in grammar, vocabulary, lexical and stylistic issues of the foreign languages, works with the chosen fields of the translation fields. The professional traslator is also able to work with terminology databases, specialized dictionaries and CAT programs (SDL Trados Studio, MemoQ, MateCAT, etc.)
The modern market demands not only the linguistic expertise but also the deep digital skills. The effective communication, cultural awareness, skills of team work, attention to details and organizational skills become the key for the correct interpretation and transfer of the information, because the translator has to adapt the translation according to the specifics of the target audience. Besides, the specialist has to adapt quickly to new technological and market requirements that’s why it is important to develop the abilities to learning, to develop critical thinking, self-analysis and cognitive flexibility.
The students of the Department of Philology and Translation obtained knowledge about the nuances of the official documents’ translation, about the risks and consequences of the translation’s mistakes. The directions of the development of translation’s service were also discussed. The lecturer emphasized on the fact that the professionalism, continuous self-improvement, and possession of innovative tools are three fundamental pillars of the success of a competitive translator.
The stakeholder outlined the main challenges, demands, and trends in the work of a translator within the modern market. She underlined the importance of a balance between technical skills, linguistic proficiency, and digital literacy. We’ like to thank the stakeholder for the opportunity to enrich their knowledge and gain practical experience which was proposed to the students of the educational program “The English language: translation in business communication” of the Department of Philology and Translation of Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design.
28.06.2025
