Abstract
Translator training has been increasingly relying on simulations of reallife professional practice. One way of bringing learning closer to authentic professional experience is by introducing project-based instruction.
The aim of this paper is to present a project conducted in an optional literary translation seminar at the Institute of Translation Studies (Charles University, Faculty of Arts) in the summer semester of the 2018/2019 academic year. Providing students with an opportunity to engage in an authentic translation assignment, the project was a collaborative translation of Bertha von Suttner's Die Waffen nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms!) from German into Czech under the supervision of two Czech university teachers.
During the opening session, a work schedule was drawn up, covering all the stages of translation and editing. Later, groups of students worked on individual chapters, consulting across the teams and with the teachers, both in person and through online shared documents, which is also where the editing took place.
The students worked independently on authentic tasks in a real-life context, with the teachers acting as facilitators. The principles of cooperative learning were applied to the project as sharing, collaborating and mutual support were part of all the stages of the translation.
The participants were administered a questionnaire to explore the learners' attitudes and feelings regarding project-based learning in translator training with a view to identifying the possibilities and limits of this type of learning experience compared with conventional forms of instruction. The latter part of the paper will comment on the most interesting student responses.