Trans-Atlantic & Pacific Project or TAPP: Audio description
How can instructors of writing give their students experience in preparing texts for translation and localization and working with translators? Similarly, how can instructors of translation give their students experience at working with source texts and their authors, most of whom are subject matter experts but not experts in writing? The network of partners participating in the Trans-Atlantic & Pacific Project establishes links between students in different countries so that each learns from the other. In so doing, students become aware of the diversity of the world community in which their documents travel.
Launched in the 1999-2000 academic year, the Trans-Atlantic & Pacific Project (TAPP) has developed into a complex educational network of bilateral writing-translation projects, bilateral translation-editing projects (since 2001), and multilateral projects (since 2010). NDSU joined the TAPP in 2007. Across two decades of operation, the TAPP network has over time connected classes in writing, usability testing, and/or translation at 41 universities in 19 countries across 5 continents. TAPP’s main aim is to share insights into collaborative writing across borders and cultures, and, in the course of this work, to gain knowledge of others’ cultural bases.
The Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project (TAPP) is a grassroots organization of teachers who organize Internationalization at Home projects. A particularly successful project that I regularly organize links writing classes at Behrend with English as a foreign language classes offered at several different Universities overseas.
Both groups of students write papers that they send to their peers abroad in order to receive feedback on the rhetorical effectiveness and clarity of their writing. Early drafts of their papers are shared through Google Docs, a platform that stimulates both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration by allowing writers and readers to negotiate meaning-making at all stages of the writing process.
U.S. students are always excited to act as language experts, but they also learn, from global users of English, how to translate local English into global English to accommodate diverse audiences.
For those who want to know more: A longform article on virtual exchange created with Adobe Spark!
The extensive literature on TAPP projects shows that students who collaborate with peers abroad gradually develop their intercultural awareness and competence and ability to collaborate with users of English from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Students develop their intercultural awareness and competence
On the more pragmatic level of skills, students learn how to adjust their use of English to interact with diverse audiences. They also learn how to write effectively in different genres and for diverse readers; how to manage complex projects; how to work effectively in cross-cultural virtual teams; and how to use a variety of digital tools (e.g. email, instant messaging, video conferencing, VoiceThread, Google Drive, Google Docs, etc.).