Educating translation ethics: a neurocognitive ethical decision-making approach

Abstract

Translation ethics today is an area of growing concern, so is its education. In the new millennium, ethics has become an explicit and integrative component of translator education. Meanwhile, the objective of translation ethics education has shifted from preaching abstract, universalistic translator codes of ethics to training translation students’ ethical sensitivity and reflexive moral judgement (i.e., ethical decision-making). This study advances translation ethics education pivoted around students’ translational ethical decision-making competence (TEDC) by first providing a definition and a competence framework for TEDC and then sketching a competence-based education programme targeting translation students’ TEDC. In completing the tasks, this article draws theories and practices from cognitive psychology, where ethical decision-making has been studied extensively. On the one hand, it borrows the Neurocognitive Model of Ethical Decision-making to theorise the dual components of TEDC, i.e., competences of intuitive and rational ethical decision-making. On the other hand, it synthesises the relevant literature on intuition education and rationalist moral education to design a tentative TEDC-targeted translation ethics education programme. It argues that the proposed programme could be put to test in practice, and ethical decision-making holds the potential to become a productive entry point into translator ethics education.