APPLIED LINGUISTICS for BA Students in English
LANGUAGE SKILLS
Classification of language skills
Productive Skills
Translation
Translation is said to belong to the so-called fifth skill, it is one of the complex skills. Its aim is to mediate between two languages, to comprehend the message or information in one language and to communicate the same content in the target language. Unfortunately, translation is not very popular with language teachers because they think it to be boring and a non-communicative activity. This way of thinking can be observed in the Hungarian examination system because more and more monolingual exams are introduced to the detriment of bilingual exams. In the new GCSE exam introduced in 2005 translation skills are not tested at all though in international cooperation and especially in the European Union the role of translation keeps increasing.
1. Arguments against translation
According to certain colleagues, translation is not popular because it is text-bound and confined to only two skills – reading and writing –; it is not a communicative activity because it involves no oral interaction. They argue that it is not suitable for classroom work because the students must do the writing on their own; it is also time-consuming and wasteful. Usually it is associated with ‘different language’, with literary and scientific texts and it is not suitable for the general needs of the language learner. The widespread use of literary-type texts for translation seems to us both an anachronistic and wasteful activity. While teaching translation the teacher is supposed to use the mother tongue and this is not desirable and as a last argument it is said to be a boring activity.
In this volume we would like to give the counterarguments to the statements above. Translation does not have to be a lone, pointless struggle between the student and the text. A lot of other approaches are possible. Translation can be introduced purposefully and imaginatively into the language learning program. Translators will always be necessary, without them there would be no summit talks no cooperation in science and engineering, no international law, no Olympic Games and no translated versions of famous pieces of literature.
2. Some arguments for translation
By making students translate texts teachers can develop their communicative competence. While learners are comparing two languages they can discover a lot of linguistic rules, they will discover the appropriate use of certain words and expressions. Their reading and writing skills will develop as well and even speaking skills can be improved by setting a good warm-up activity before translation and if teachers organize translation as group- or pair work, students will learn how to cooperate with each other as well. All these facts are to prove the fact that translation develops the grammatical competence of learners.
From a text to be translated language learners can acquire a lot of pieces of information either about the target culture or about their own culture. For example, the City in London refers to the downtown so it cannot be translated into ‘város’. Translators are supposed to be aware of the cultural backgrounds of a text so this way learners’ socio-linguistic competence will be developed as well. People translating various authentic texts must be familiar with the various styles and registers. This knowledge will also support their socio-linguistic competence and language awareness. Where the features of communicative language teaching were analyzed we mentioned that communicative language teaching must be intercultural. Translation also meets this requirement as during translation translators keep in counter with the intercultural aspects of the target language. A good translator has to be aware of various discourse markers, linking words and the ability of structuring a text. This way language learners’ discourse competence will also be developed through translating. The fourth component of communicative competence is strategic competence which means that students are supposed to find the necessary and most suitable synonyms, antonyms and circumlocutions. While translating a text the students’ strategic competence will also be developed. As through translation we can develop all the four components of communicative competence and we can make language teaching intercultural, holistic, experiential by using translation tasks we can state that translation is a communicative activity.
3. How to teach translation
First of all, teachers are supposed to select texts which are age-relevant, meet the learners’ fields of interest, which are useful and manageable by the students. In a lesson devoted to translation the warm-up activity must be devoted to the topic in the text to be translated. Teachers can start a lesson with a joke or a humorous story so as to lower students’ anxiety and to give prompts for brainstorming about the topic in question. After this lead-in phase, students are expected to get familiar with the complete text so that they can understand the context as a whole. Teachers are supposed to focus on the problem bits of the text to explain the difficult structures, expressions and phrases occurring in it. The preparatory work is organized as a frontal activity so that students can get the same input. The lockstep stage is followed by groupwork in which each group is given a paragraph of the text to be translated. The groups are supposed to complete the task which is translating the given paragraph in a limited period of time. Time limit must be set so that students should not waste a lot of time. While working in groups they will learn how to cooperate with each other and how to accept their mates’ ideas and suggestions. This way group cohesion and team spirit are also developed. Students will also learn how to cope with a challenging task which will develop their metacognitive strategies. In the next stage of the lesson groups are supposed to compare their versions and to make the text coherent by linking the paragraphs with the necessary discourse markers. This way, they will learn how to structure a text which is usually a weak point of a language learner. After this stage students are supposed to talk about the content of the text already translated.
If teachers follow the recommended steps of making students translate, the lesson devoted to developing translation skills will not be boring and will develop the communicative competence of the students.
