Training second language tertiary students as translators in a multilingual South Africa: translation from English into Afrikaans

Due to South Africa’s diverse speech community, and the needs of Afrikaans speakers, translation from English into Afrikaans has become relevant in making documents accessible. This study explored translation training of University of Technology (UoT) second year students who enrolled for a course in Language Practice engaged in translating. The study attempted to shed light on translation challenges experienced by Afrikaans second language translators translating from English into Afrikaans to bridge the knowledge gap on perceptions and challenges faced. Translation theories such as Skopos theory, and Communicative equivalence were used as theoretical lenses. A qualitative research approach was employed engaging students and lecturers in focus group interviews. It was revealed that students lacked the needed vocabulary, general knowledge, grammatical skills as well as application of translation strategies. A need for training in machine translation to improve the quality of translations surfaced from the research.