Translation Practice – A Means for Enhancing Student Employability

Recent studies on employers’ expectations regarding the language skills of their employees,as well as the language-related tasks the latter are expected to perform, show thattranslation activities are essential for everyday business operations. With this in mind, thepaper aims to explore the benefits of using translation activities in developing ESP learners’language skills, as well as domain-specific knowledge, so as to meet the demands on thelabour market. The case study describes the following steps: student exposure to minimaltraining in translation steps and strategies, classroom practice on excerpts from economicarticles, home translations of full-length economic articles. Feedback exchange on classworkand homework points to the relevance of such activities embedded in Business Englishlessons: on the one hand, students increase their awareness of language and employabilityrelated aspects; on the other hand, the teacher identifies best practice examples, apart fromneeds regarding remedial work.