Embedding employability in the curriculum and building bridges between academia and the work-place: a critical analysis of two approaches

In most European countries, employability is a key educational concept that has found its way into the Higher Education discourse in the last few years. Probably the question now is not so much whether this is an important concept but rather how skill-based university training should translate into a smooth transition to work by graduates. This paper presents a comparative analysis of employability policies in the UK and Spain in the field of languages, translation and interpreting training. Furthermore, a series of employability strategies are presented and analysed in order to assess their effectiveness. As a conclusion, a number of different initiatives and proposals to improve employability among language, translation and interpreting graduates are presented.