The Termin'eau course takes place over a whole week (five days) with third-year students in the Applied Foreign Languages (LEA) degree course, Specialised Translation and Writing (TRS). It alternates lessons, practice of one or more water sports activities, meetings with either translation and technical writing professionals or specialists in these sports fields, and debriefings with the teacher. The aim is to immerse students in a field with precise terminology. In addition to this way of working on the terminology of the field (practising the activity, informal exchanges with instructors, etc.), the activities include the detailed study of texts and the corresponding concordancers (terminology tables), through formal exchanges with identified informants and debriefings with the teacher.
It is inspired by the Termino à vélo course offered at the University of Ottawa, which travels around Quebec over a two-week period. David Le Roux took part in the course in 2019, with the support of the International Relations Department at Rennes 2 University, and has adapted it to the Breton context, where the situations in which terminology and translation are practised are not as diverse. The addition of a terminology treatment that extends and deepens the teaching of the second year of the bachelor's degree in the TRS pathway also makes it possible to teach the consultation of informants for terminological purposes.
Termin'eau was designed during a leave of absence for a teaching project granted by Rennes 2 University in the second semester of 2021-2022. To set it up, the teacher benefited from the support of two educational engineers from the University Pedagogy Service (SUP) at Rennes 2 University.
For the 2022-2023 edition, the course was held from 12 to 16 September in Rennes, with introductions to rowing, canoeing, kayaking and kayak polo. A SUP multimedia engineer followed the progress of the course with a hand-held camera, and a video promoting it has been available since the beginning of 2023. Don't hesitate to contact me if you'd like to sponsor the course!
How is this course also a research project? It is linked to the chapter published in 2021 in the book coordinated by Rosa Agost Canós and David ar Rouz: ‘Didactique de la traduction: peut-on enseigner une démarche terminographique scientifique’ (see presentation here). It is an attempt to provide a concrete answer to this question in the form of action research.