Orieb Masadeh-Tate

Fellow of The Higher Education Academy (FHEA)-UK 

Fellow of the British Association of Teachers of Arabic (BATA)

Current Role 

Director of the University Language Center's Language Experience for All Programme (LEAP) . Responsible for the organisation and delivery of courses offered in 14 different languages to students, members of staff and public. 

I am also Senior Lecturer (Arabic Studies), responsible for all Arabic language courses at UG level and LEAP. This includs curriculum design and development, teaching and other administrative work, including coordinating the duties of the language tutors. I am also the module convenor for all Arabic language courses and teach final year students MEST51050 (adnavced Arabic) and MEST30182 (Media and Business Arabic). 

Received  Awards 

June 2016,  Exceptional Performance Award in recognition of my contribution, work and commitment to the University.  

June 2021, Exceptional Performance Award for my sustained excellent performance in my role as LEAP Coordinator. 

Biography: I began my career in 1993 as a translator and correspondent for the Jordan News Agency (Petra), where I was assigned to cover the Royal Court, the Prime Ministry, Foreign Ministry and Embassies.  I subsequently worked on the translation of the Jordan-Israeli peace negotiations which culminated in the signing of the ‘Wadi Araba’ Peace Treaty in October 1994. In 1996 I pursued my higher education and travelled to the UK to obtain a MA degree in Translation at the University of London (SOAS). In addition to working as a translator and correspondent for the Jordan News Agency, in 1997 I was appointed as a lecturer in translation studies at the Applied Sciences University (ASU) in Jordan before returning to the UK to pursue a PhD in legal translation at Durham University. Whilst undertaking my research at Durham I was also employed by the university as a lecturer in sociolinguistics and as an Arabic tutor in the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.  I completed my PhD in 2003 and returned to Jordan where I established a translation agency and between 2004-2010 worked extensively with several United Nations agencies, including the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) and the United Nations-Iraq Reconstruction and Development Project (UNOPS). Much of this work included the translation of official UN documents and interpreting assignments at UN conferences. During this time, I also worked as a consultant on the Arabic to English translation of the new Constitution of Iraq and as an interpreter for various private and public sector conferences and events, including the World Economic Forum on the Middle East. Additionally, part of my translation/interpreting duties involved courthouse interpreting and the translation of legal documents.  I continue to work as a professional translator and interpreter for various private sector clients and volunteer as an interpreter for the British Red Cross on issues of asylum and immigration. 

Previous jobs: 

Arabic Senior Language Tutor (UWLP) - Salford University- UK (2017-2020) 

Lecturer in Arabic and Interpreting & Translation Studies - Salford University-UK (2012-2017) 

Visiting Lecturer in Interpreting & Translation Studies at City University -University of London- UK (2016-2017) 

Lecturer in Interpreting- Manchester University- UK (2016-2017)   

Research interests: 

My research interest is in Media & legal translation with focus on effective translation strategies in both domains. In addition to this, and through my experience as liaison and community interpreter I have developed a keen interest in the pedagogy and didactics of teaching interpreting, particularly designing and using multimodal products with intended objectives that will help the novice interpreters to identify the skills they need to improve through their own reflective thinking. 

My other research interest is ‘effective teaching methods in teaching Arabic as a foreign language’.  My main focus is the use of reflective writing as a dynamic process which gives students a framework to improve their performance in a structured way through self-evaluation.

Papers presented at conferences: 

- Do we teach translation to learn languages? Or do we teach languages to learn how to translate?

The Fourth Biennial Arabic Language Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Conference- Translanguaging and Linguistic Diversity in Arabic (The University of Cambridge- April, 2024)

-  Transcreation, a form of original translation protected by copyright. Or is it?  

12^th Translation Conference- Translation and Creativity: An Interdisciplinary Encounter. Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) – (Doha, Qatar - March 2023)

- Transcreation in Arabic Commercial Adverts. 

BATA 2nd Annual International Conference -University of Westminster (London-UK- June 2022)

- Reflective Thinking (RT), a mean for assessment of engagement in Blended-Online teaching within the Community of Inquiry Framework (COI).

3rd Biennial Arabic Language Teaching & Learning in the UK Higher Education Conference-Arabic in a Globalized World. Exeter University (Exeter, UK April 2021)

- Employing Reflective Thinking (RT) as a PBL model for learning Arabic.

XVI CercleS international conference. Language Centres at a Crossroads: Open Directions for New Generations of Learners. (Brno, Czech Republic- September 2020)

- Non-professional Interpreters: a violation to domestic workers’ human rights in Jordan.

International Conference on Multilingualism and Interpreting in Settings of Globalisation: Asylum and Migration (Ghent, Belgium February 2015).

Published work:   I contributed to the following publication which is based on practical interpreting exercises, with a theoretical & pedagogical introduction. Interpreta 3: Prácticas de interpretación.Edited by Gracia Torres and MJ Fernandez Colección Manuales. Servicio de Publicaciones y Divulgación Científica de la Universidad de Málaga, Spain - 2019