The present collection reveals the field of research in language mediation education to be finding a surer footing for itself in various ways. Perhaps most conspicuous and refreshing from an editorial point of view has been the absence of earnestly dogmatic pleas for the importance and necessity of train ing in translation and interpreting, which seemed to characterize discourse in the field for several years. The value of education, it seems, is something which can now be increasingly presumed at least within training circles and discus sion has progressed to more challenging issues of what and how we should be teaching (and indeed, in the case of Minako O'Hagan's contribution, of how our training efforts can be informed by the successes of translators who define themselves through their very lack of training). Other trajectories become apparent on closer examination. There appears to be a move away from papers which focus hermetically on the individual experiences of trainers arriving at their own solutions in their own classrooms. Contributions in the current collection challenge this isolation in different ways, perhaps most obviously in the fact that researchers are feeling increas ingly assured in talking about training as it connects with a variety of other fields - Haidee Kruger's extension of the discussion into editing appears, in this respect, as entirely appropriate as Dorothy Kelly's investigation of transla tion in student exchange programmes and Christine W.L. Wilson and Rita McDade's study of lexicography for sign-language interpreting. Most particularly, however, it appears that we are becoming more comfort able in talking about education at the same time as we talk about translator and interpreter training. There is a more conspicuous willingness to move into other disciplines to inform our research and, concomitantly, a greater bravery in viewing the implications of our work in the broader social arena. Such a tendency is clear in Candace Seguinot's examination of the role of training intervention in the context of broader notions of professionalization or Alessandro Zannirato's study of the interplay of interpreter training and sec ond language acquisition. Moreover, this extension into other fields appears to be matched by a growing awareness of the development of a research canon in our own field of investigation. This is particularly evident with regard to the increasingly sophisticated discussions which are evolving around the notion of competence, the meticulous research trajectory of the PACTE group in Barcelona being a case in point here. While competence is also a primary theme of the contributions by Dorothy Kelly and Catherine Way to this collec tion, it is worth noting that it is a notion which is mentioned in one form or another in all of the papers in this volume. Along with the development of a common vocabulary, the contributors here reveal an increasing tendency to draw on a common research canon. One name mentioned frequently in the papers is that of Don Kiraly, whose social constructivist approach to translator training responds to the inadequacies of many traditional 'transmissionist' training models with a pedagogy informed by recent thought in constructivist psychology. For many, notably O'Hagan, the direction which these collaborative methods of learning point towards is firmly within the potentialities offered by new technologies. Cutting-edge technology is also at the core of Wilson and McDade's project, which maps new ground in terms of research into the development of training tools. Catherine Way shares this concern with tools when she aptly notes how train ers nowadays are not only faced with the task of enabling trainees to acquire new professional competences, but also of providing their graduates with the tools to ensure that they are capable of maintaining and upgrading these competences throughout their working lives. In keeping with the sentiments of Kiraly's approach, perhaps the future of translator and interpreter training research lies in examining ways in which we can enable our learners to learn how to learn, as this would seem to be a primary competence demanded in both professional and personal life after university. The broad international range of these papers reflects the fact that all but one were initially presented at the Second International Conference of the International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS), held at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa in July 2006. In addition to thanking all the contributors, I would also like to thank both the conference organizers and those within IATIS for making such an international endeavour possible. I extend my gratitude to series editor Jeremy Munday for his unfailing support and to the many specialists who provided peer reviews for the articles. Finally many thanks to Gurdeep Mattu and Colleen Coalter at Continuum for their patience and understanding.
