About On-Going Translation Training Program Group

Background

Based on a document of CSIR-NISCAIR dated 26 March 2009 issued on the inaguration of this On-going Translatin Training Program
CSIR-NISCAIR has been building and maintaining a panel of translators for several decades, ever since its incepetion as INSDOC. Many of the country’s top established foreign language translators, who have been on the panel of NISCAIR or erstwhile INSDOC, were groomed through this system.

This panel building system, so far, had been one-to-one and face-to-face interactive mechanism between the senior staff translator of NISCAIR and trainee or junior transaltor. It was an informal but integral part of the working in the Translation Division and it ran in the same format for over seven decades with minor modifications, such as a certain degree of automation and some in-campus as well as off-campus translation courses in between.

On one hand, the Patent regime, WTO, organized Terrrorism and globalization changed the world scenario leading to higher trans-national communication needs, while on the other hand the resources in CSIR-NISCAIR dwindled. This induced a new impetus to this domain at CSIR-NISCAIR. To meet the growing needs of expert bi-lingual resources, the traditional one-to-one grooming mechanism metamorphised into a structured, formal, specialized OJT type training programme in 2009.

Dr Subas Pani, then Secretary, Planning Commission, H.E. Mr Masashi Mizukami, then Chargé d'affaires, Embassy of Japan in India and Mr Vijay Gokhale, then Joint Secretary, East Asia, Ministry of External Affairs graced the inaugural program. On this occasion, coordinator introduced the program, the needs and way-forward. Dr Gangan Prathap, then Director NISCAIR welcomed the dignitaries and assured that the program, which has been started on experimental basis will evolve to meet the needs of the nation. Dr Pani underlined the need for national level efforts to build a system that grooms the bilingual resources ahead of times. Congratulating NISCAIR H.E. Mr Mizukami talked about the limited bilingual resources that are consequential to the bilateral and multi-national relationships and assured possible support from the Japanese Embassy. Mr Goghale thanked NISCAIR for providing the Japanese language support for high-level interpretation at the highest level of the nation continuously for many years and emphasized that similar resources have to be prepared in other languages as well. He termed the program a very significant initiative with long-term perspective.

This course is unique, as the trainees are taken through a process that is a miniature replica of the process that a translator is expected to follow during translation of any document, particularly in a new domain. Individual trainees prepare abstracts of two documents related to translation thoery or some other aspects of translation and make presentation. Orientation regarding the program, theoretical aspects and important learnings are touched upon and deliberated by the coordinator through the post-presentation QA sessions. Then, trainees translate documents in groups of two each. Translations are presented in the class after the trainees have matched and agreed upon their respective translations and 100 pages are checked for each translator. On completion of each translation, individual translator sums up the learnings in the form of expressions and writes two papers based on overall learning.

There are two modules at present and all those, who successfully complete their first module are enpanled on the panel of NISCAIR and have the option of going for the second module as well. The Structure of the Program is listed in the table here. 

Current Status 

Currently, Batch-5 of the translation training program is in session

Week-end class 28 May 2016; where trainees are individually guided for their internal papers

Week-end class 28 May 2016; where trainees are individually guided for their internal papers