Balancing teaching and research

PHILIP Cerny is wrong in putting the research versus teaching debate solely in terms of whether teachers do or do not carry out research. Equally important is to seek proper recognition for practitioner research as well as the pure variety.

Much of my research, into the processes of translation, is crucial to and widely acknowledged in the profession, but gets me no RAE recognition unless it can be cast in the mould of the restricted range of journals accepted for RAE purposes. The debate should move on and challenge the narrow horizons of the RAE rather than, as Professor Cerny appears to be doing, be used as a means of recreating the binary divide.

Janet Fraser Senior lecturer in translation, School of languages, University of Westminster