Loubna Bilali

Loubna Bilali is an Assistant Professor of Translation Studies. She is originally from Morocco. Loubna holds a Ph.D. in Translation with a focus on localization from Kent State University, a Master’s degree in Translation (French-English) also from KSU, and a Master’s Degree in Cross-Cultural Communication and Translation (English-Arabic/French) from Chouaib Doukkali University in Morocco, where she also completed her undergraduate studies in English Linguistics. Loubna teaches translation technology courses in the MA in Translation Studies and intercultural communication courses for the Bachelor of Science in Translation. Loubna has been involved in online course development for the new Online MA program in Translation. She has also served as the coordinator of Arabic Lower Division courses within the MCLS department. Loubna is an English-Arabic grader for the American Translators Association (ATA). Her research interests include localization training, terminology management, corpus-based research, translation pedagogy, and online education. Her academic research focuses on localization training and particularly on ways to bridge the gap between academia and industry by expanding the scope of translation pedagogy and teaching beyond the classroom while developing interdisciplinary curricula that address the particularities and challenges of translation-related professions.

In addition to her academic work and teaching experience, Loubna’s experience working as an in-house translator, editor, and project coordinator provided her with a deeper understanding of the language industry. She has worked both on the buyer and seller sides in the areas of pharmaceutical, IT, educational and commercial translation. She has also served as a freelance Lead Linguist/Terminologist for software localization projects and Linguist Quality Manager of machine translation-driven projects. Such industry experience has brought new perspectives to her teaching, which prompted her to reflect on ways in which training could be more aligned with the expectations of the language services market.