Students’ perspective on Web 2.0-enhanced telecollaboration as added value in translator education

The development of soft skills, which are the most critical skills in the global job market (Abbas & Hum, 2013), is an essential goal of contemporary translator education (Mathias, 2013). A solution that permits students to simultaneously develop translation skills and soft skills is telecollaboration (Dooly & O’Dowd, 2012), i.e. the use of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) for collaborative project work. This paper investigates students’ views of the usefulness of telecollaboration in translator education, particularly in relation to the development of soft skills. Initially the author introduces the notions of soft skills (Bartel, 2011; Mathias, 2013) and telecollaboration (Belz, 2003; Dooly & O’Dowd, 2013). Then he demonstrates how the latter links to the development of the former (Fleet, 2013; Keedwell, 2013). Finally, he reports the results of a survey study on students’ perceptions of the value of CMC in translator education