ABSTRACT
A major dilemma built into foundational approaches to professional education is that the learner is expected to be an essentially passive recipient of knowledge during the programme of studies, but upon graduation must then function as an expert and a professional. Students tend to leave the institution, not as professionals or even semi-professionals, but as pseudo-translators who have studied and practised and tested their way to a degree, but who have essentially no real, first-hand experience of the pressures and constraints placed on the language professional. They may have achieved some significant mastery of some sub-domains of translator competence through ersatz activity, but they lack full membership in the community of translators, which can only come through collaboration and professional experience. The constructivist approach begins with the global goal of the educational process: membership in the community of professional translators, which entails having and using abilities, knowledge and skills that are characteristic of, and appropriate for, members of that group.
