Educational Terminology as a Translation-Oriented Communication Challenge:
A Qualitative Needs Analysis
Abstract
The internationalization of higher education has fostered multilingual academic environments where international students face unfamiliar educational systems and institutional practices. While earlier research addressed academic language needs, educational terminology has received less attention. This study investigates educational terminology challenges from a translation-oriented perspective, identifying communication needs and conceptual barriers to institutional meanings in a multilingual setting. Employing a descriptive qualitative design informed by needs analysis, data were collected via semi-structured interviews with 50 Iraqi international students across TEFL, Business Management, and Computer Engineering (B.A. and M.A. levels) and nine staff members at Imam Reza International University in Mashhad, Iran. The findings indicate that terminology difficulties transcend lexical unfamiliarity; educational terms encapsulate institutional procedures, practices, and concepts. Consequently, effective meaning transfer demands simultaneous attention to linguistic form, conceptual content, and institutional context rather than mere lexical substitution. This study contributes to translation and higher education research by demonstrating the utility of needs analysis in identifying institution-specific terminology issues faced by international students.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Hanieh Halimi-Sarbalayi, Mohammad Yazdani, Aida Firooziyan Pour-Esfahani
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Copyright Licensee: Iranian Journal of Translation Studies. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0 license).
