Pedagogical uses of translations

Translation may be needed to facilitate communication between speakers of different languages or acquaint speakers of one language with literary works written in another, or to disseminate information originally produced in one language to speakers of many other languages.

Translation can be looked at from different points of view, and can operate at different levels of languages.

Another important purpose is pedagogic: translation has been proposed as a means for learning and teaching a foreign languages.

Arguments against translation

The use of translation provoked fierce opposition in the latter half of the nineteenth century by members of so-called Reform Movement.

Opponents of the use of translation in foreign language learning claimed that translation into the foreign language interfered with the natural process of learning.

Interference was also thought to occur when learners translated from the foreign language into their native tongue.

On the contrary, theories of how languages are learnt, stored, and recalled suggest that it is natural and normal to switch into bilingual mode, where the two languages are active at the same time, and where it is perfectly natural to switch from one to another.

The use of translation from the foreign language as a means of explaining words and phrases was also rejected because it was thought to promote mostly passive knowledge about the foreign language.

Arguments against translation

Translation per se was claimed to be not only an unnatural activity but a highly specialized one, which far from being a help was hindrance to the desired development of the four basic skills: listening, speaking, reading, an writing.

Arguments against translation

Translation was seen as a special fifth skill, to be used only after learners had acquired a superior knowledge of the foreign language.

Audio-lingual method was mainly based on the assumption that proficiency in oral communications is the primary purpose of all language learning.

Arguments for translation

Translation can be viewed in a new light as an activity with a number of advantages:Translation helps in the development of proficiency by economically and unambiguously explaining the meaning of foreign language items.In exploiting their knowledge of a language they are already familiar with translation activities, learners increase their confidence and motivation to learn.Translation promotes explicit knowledge about foreign language and helps develops awareness of differences and similarities between the native and the foreign language systems.Language awareness enhanced by translation has also broader educational benefits since it promotes cross cultural understanding.

Arguments for translation

Translation activities can be used to develop communicative competence in a foreign language

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

Learners start from function of a text in accordance with this function as well as on the basis of other information characterizing the content of the text and the three register dimensions field, tenor, and mode that contribute to the given text function.

Translation as a intercultural communication

Translation is both a linguistic and a cultural activity involving communication across cultures. In this sense, translation is necessarily an example of intercultural communication.

The nature of intercultural communication differs in overt and covert translation.

In covert translation, a «cultural filter» is applied in order to adapt the source text to the communicative norms of the target culture.

In overt translation, intercultural transfer is explicitly present and so likely to be perceived by recipients. They are presented with aspects of foreign culture dressed in their own language, and are thus invited to enter into intercultural dialogue.

The nature of the translation process

Thinking aloud or introspection.- One method used in this internal or process approach to translation is to ask translator what they are thinking while they are translating.

Retrospection.- ask translators immediately after they finish translating about difficulties, reasons for hesitations and delay, a particular choice of word, and so on.

Verbal reports also known as thin-aloud protocols.- elicited from translator are usually taped, transcribed, and often also presented to the translator at some later stage for comment and evaluation.

Corpus studies in translation

A corpus.- is a collection of texts, selected and compiled according to specific criteria. The texts are held in an electronic format that allows different kinds of software to be used to analyse them in various ways.

Corpus methods also allow us to focus on a combination of lexical, syntactic, and discoursal features while comparing large numbers of translations into different languages by different sociocultural settings, and across different time frames.

Corpus methods are useful for analysing translations as parallel corpora. These consist of a set of text in one language and a set of their translations into another language.

A major aim of work with comparable corpora is to establish patterns that are either restricted to translations or occur with different frequency in them.

Another use of corpora in translation studies is to compare texts translated into a given language with original texts in that language (non-translations)

One of the benefits of work with parallel or translation corpora is that is helps identify the type of routine translation shifts by comparing instances of lexical or syntactic structures in both source and target text using so-called “concordancing software”.

Corpus studies in translation

Translation and globalization

Globalization processes have not only had an impact on world economy and international politics, they have also dramatically altered the role of translation in the modern world.

Translation plays an important role in multilingual news writing and in the provision of tourist information worldwide, where text are retrieved from many different sources, and where the process of translation needs to be extremely fast.

Contemporary processes of information distribution via processes of translation now rely heavily on new information technologies such as the internet.

Localization is arguably the field in which the translation needs generated by modern information technology in global markets is most visible and most influential

It lies at the heart of the global economy in that it tailors products to meet the needs of a multitude of specific local markets in what is now often called glocalization.

The demand for glocalization is the cause of a continuous growth in translation, particularly in the world market for software and web localization.

The development of the World Wide Web has spread the need for translation activities into e-commerce glocalization, another field of growing importance.