Situated learning has become a dominant goal in the translation classroom: translation didactics is being developed in a learner-, situation- and experience-based direction, following constructivist and participatory teaching philosophies. However, the explicit use of situated approaches has, so far, not been the centre of attention in translation theory teaching and research training. As a consequence, translation theory often remains unconnected to the skills learned and topics tackled in language-specific translation teaching and the challenges experienced in real-life translation practice. This article reports on the results of an exploratory action research project into the teaching of academic research skills in translation studies at Master's level. The goal of the project is to develop and test possibilities for employing situated learning in translation research training. The situatedness perspective has a double relevance for the teaching project: the students are involved in an authentic, ongoing research project, and the object of the research project itself deals with authentic translation processes at the workplace. Thus, the project has the potential to improve the expertise of the students as both researchers and reflective practitioners.

Multi-componential models of translation competence are widely used in translator training as a yardstick for curricular and syllabus design. These models must be adapted to reflect professional trends, such as the impact of artificial intelligence, and machine translation in particular, on working methods. This paper describes the process of adapting a pioneering model of legal translation competence to the broader scope of institutional translation in light of recent trends, as verified by triangulating information from multiple interviews, analyses of translation volumes and job descriptors and other professional inputs. The resulting revised descriptor was validated through a survey of 474 translation professionals from 24 international organisations of diverse sizes and domain specialisations. The suitability of the descriptor was corroborated across the board, but variations were found in perceptions of the relevance of sub-competences to ensure translation quality. Profiles with a stronger specialisation in legal translation or more experience in institutional translation showed higher awareness of the relevance of all the sub-competences, especially the core language, strategic and thematic competences, and even more so for translating texts of a legal or administrative nature. The implications of these findings for training purposes in particular are discussed.

The relevance of translation and law degrees as pathways to professional legal translation is the subject of persistent debate, but there is limited research on the relationship between legal translators' backgrounds and competence levels in practice. This study compares the revision performance of several groups of institutional translators (44 in total) according to their academic backgrounds (legal translation specialisation, translation degrees with no legal specialisation, law degrees or other degrees) and legal translation experience (more or less than three years). The scores of justified, missing and over-corrections, among other indicators, corroborate the crucial impact of legal translation specialisation and subject-matter knowledge in ensuring legal translation quality, while experience can serve to partially fill certain training deficits. Qualified translators with a legal specialisation stood out as the most efficient revisers, followed by law graduates, translation graduates without a legal specialisation and other translators. A subsequent holistic assessment of the revised target text yielded results globally in line with the revision scores, as well as mixed perceptions of the target text as potential machine output. The findings support the added value of legal translator training, and are of relevance for translator recruitment and workflow management. They also challenge the rationale behind ISO 20771:2020 qualification requirements.