Dr. Johan Vandewalle is the head of the Turkish section at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University in Belgium. After receiving his master’s degree in Civil Engineering and Architecture in 1983, he earned an undergraduate degree in Slavonic Languages and a master’s degree in Oriental Languages in 1985, followed by a postgraduate degree in General Linguistics in 1986, all at Ghent University. He conducted research for the Ministry of Education on the acquisition of Dutch as a second language by migrant children in Belgium, taught Turkish at the Language Centre of Ghent University and worked in the field of Computer Assisted Language Learning in a private company. In 1994, he founded, together with his wife, Orientaal vzw, Centre for Oriental Languages and Cultures, where he taught Turkish and Arabic. They developed a teaching method for Turkish, which was published as Haydi Türkçe Konuşalım 1 & 2. He was awarded several prizes for Turkish Language Teaching and for his extensive knowledge of languages. Before joining the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication in 2006, he ran his own translation bureau and worked as a sworn translator. In 2013, he completed his Phd in Linguistics at Ghent University with a dissertation on motion verbs in Russian, Turkish and Uzbek. He currently teaches Turkish Language Practice and Translation from Turkish to Dutch at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University, and conducts research on intralingual translation from Ottoman Turkish to Modern Turkish.
