English Language Teaching for Translator and Interpreter Trainees: Syllabus analysis and design

This article purports to study the linguistic situation of Language B English in the Spanish Translation and Interpreting curriculum. Most translation lecturers usually complain about the students’ poor competence in English when they start their translation and interpretation subjects.
We believe that this might be due to the fact that the foreign language subjects are approached from a general viewpoint without taking into account the students’ linguistic needs as prospective translators and interpreters. For our purposes, we will review the Language B English syllabi of six Spanish state universities to determine whether the objectives are geared toward the development of the required linguistic skills in accordance with professional translation practice or, on the contrary, these courses adhere to more general teaching patterns whose objectives are clearly different from the ones pursued in a Translation program.