CAUT Policy Statement

1
Francophone academic staff at post-secondary institutions are frequently called upon to perform extra duties. This can entail translating documents from French to English (and sometimes from English to French), and it can also include interpretation, representation and communication, among other duties. These requests for additional work come not only from a variety of administrative and departmental sources, but from academic staff associations as well. Such work receives no official recognition and moreover there are significant issues of fairness since Anglophone academic staff are not usually assigned these extra duties. This presents an equity problem for Francophones.

2
To support the work of their academic staff post-secondary institutions should have a translation service for both official languages. If translation work over and above their official duties is taken on by francophone members of the academic staff, it should be recognized in their workload or should be remunerated¹.

3
Additional work of a linguistic nature in research, knowledge dissemination, instruction and/or pedagogy such as written or oral translation or review, French language representation, or interaction with institutional constituents should be counted as an academic contribution and taken into consideration when applications for tenure or promotion are assessed and in every allocation process based on evaluation of a file (for example, for internal research grants, requests for sabbatical leave, etc.).

Approved by the CAUT Council, November 2012.

Endnote
¹ This is to recognize the work of CAS who work on contract and for whom this work falls outside their paid duties.