Pedagogical uses of translation &Current issues

Sixto Jesús Flores Romero

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Pedagogical uses of translation Translation has been proposed as a means for learning and teaching a foreign

language.

Opponents of the use of translation in foreign language learning claimed that translation into the foreign language interfered with the natural process of learning a FL and vice versa.

However, it is natural and normal to switch into bilingual mode (L1 and L2 being active at the same time).

The misleading belief of an existent one-to-one correspondence in meaning between lexical items in the two languages was regarded as a negative influence in its use.

Translation was claimed to be a highly specialized activity being a hindrance to the development of basic skills.

With the advent of the audio-lingual method, translation became largely irrelevant since it was a skill involving written language.

It was believed that translation produced compound rather than coordinate bilingualism. Compound bilingualism: the lexicons of the two are stored jointly in the mind.

Coordinate bilingualism: they are kept separate.

Translation is a key feature in the grammar-translation method.

If language learning is regarded as a cognitive process, it naturally involves mental comparison between the formal and functional characteristics of native and foreign languages.

Advantages of translation: It helps in the development of proficiency by explaining the meaning of FL items

economically.

Learners increase their confidence and motivation to learn a FL.

It promotes explicit knowledge about the FL and helps develop awareness of differences and similarities between L1’s and L2’s language systems.

Language awareness with broader educational benefits due cross-cultural understanding promotion.

Translation activities can be used to develop communicative competence in a FL.

Communicative translation activities can also involve the production of original source texts.

Stimulating translation activities will induce the problems of overcoming obligatory marking of linguistic phenomena in one language and not in the other.

The role of translation in different language learning approaches has varied greatly over the last few centuries.

Broader uses of translation can promote learners’ cognitive-communicative competence and improve their awareness of linguistic and cultural similarities and differences.

Using translation as an aid to communicative competence and as a powerful consciousness-raising procedure might counteract interference from the mother tongue, unlike the strongest argument against translation states.

Current Issues: Translation as Intercultural communication

In covert translation the intercultural perception is absorbed by the translator but denied to the recipients of the translation.

In overt translation, intercultural transfer is explicitly present and likely to be perceived by recipients.

In recent decades there has been a shift in translation studies from a linguistic to a cultural orientation. Today, translation is a process of intercultural change rather than a kind of cross-linguistic substitution.

Translations function as ‘interventions’ and as a legitimate ways of removing perceived social and political injustices.

In conflict areas, translators may be engaged in building bridges between

different cultures rather than contribute to a continuous ‘war of cultures’.

The nature of the translation process The term translation is ambiguous.

In order to suggest strategies and skills useful in translator training it is necessary to find out differences between experienced and inexperienced translators’ work by: Thinking aloud (introspection).

Retrospection.

Think-aloud protocols.

Process of translation: a complex series of problem solving and decision making operations.

It remains extremely difficult to establish what really goes on in human beings’ mind.

Corpus studies in translation The use of corpora as a tool is becoming one of the fastest growing and

most promising areas of empirical translation work.

Corpus is a collection of texts, selected and compiled according to specific criteria held in an electronic format for further analysis using software.

It allows us to focus on language.

They also allow us to focus on a combination of lexical, syntactic, and discoursal features while comparing large numbers of translations.

Corpus methods are useful for analyzing translations as parallel corpora.

It helps identify the type of routine translation shifts.

Working with comparable corpora establishes patterns either restricted to translations or occur with different frequency in them.

Translation and globalization Globalization processes have dramatically altered the role of translation in the world.

Translation plays an important role in multilingual news writing and in the provision of tourist information worldwide.

An area of substantial growth in the demand for translations is software ‘localization’.

Localization lies at the heart of the global economy as glocalization, allowing products to be tailored to meet the needs of a multitude of specific local markets.

Globalization has led to an explosion of demand for translation.

It has also generated forceful anti-globalization movements protesting against a new type of colonization.

To date, we know little about the long-term effect of massive translation from English to other languages.