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THERE was a time not so long ago when fluency, with the increased sense of humanistic values it implied, was reason enough to seek competence in a second language. It was also a time when translation was virtually anathema to foreign language instructors, because of its association with discarded methodologies, and also to the general public, who pretty much ignored it as an invisible literary activity. That time is well past. A glance at the current course offerings by foreign language programs in the United States shows that some form of translation course is present in many of them. Now that students, parents, and the general public expect training in a foreign language to prepare students for specific careers by providing them not with fluency but with proficiency—in other words, with marketable skills that can be assessed when students graduate—foreign language instructors have been required to begin thinking about developing multiple competencies as a way of meeting societal demands (Bernhardt 14). From this standpoint, translation is gradually being valued more highly, because of the translator's ability to communicate better (i.e., more profitably) in situations based more on business needs than on personal ones.
As the proliferation of translation courses offered in foreign language programs indicates, many foreign language instructors have apparently assumed that foreign language instruction can be enriched—in the sense of being made more profitable—through translation: if translation is understood in a new, more practical way, it will provide students with a competence besides fluency, thus enabling them not only to communicate in a second language but also to translate between two languages. The extent to which fluency in a foreign language and the ability to translate are interrelated and the question of whether or not one employs the same pedagogical methodologies to foster them both have been little explored.
As a teacher of foreign languages who is also a teacher of translation, I am increasingly concerned by the assumptions foreign language teachers make about translator training. My own experience and ongoing research by others in translation pedagogy show that there are areas of overlap between foreign language competence and translation competence but that they involve significantly different skills, which are best taught by using different methodologies. Consequently, my purpose here is (1) to outline some principal differences between foreign language instruction and translator training and offer some cautionary words about placing too much emphasis on and faith in the simultaneous acquisition of multiple competencies and (2) to suggest seven guidelines that might encourage foreign language teachers to focus on areas of overlap between foreign language instruction and to think about preparing students to become competent translators instead of trying to prepare them be be translators.
Speaking first as a foreign language teacher, I would point out that the use of translation in foreign language classes does not necessarily foster communicative skills. Students work mostly on their own when they translate, and usually they engage in translation practice outside of class, when they attempt to transfer the “content” of a text intact from one language to the other, proceeding from the assumption that such a transfer and the equivalence it implies are possible. If they communicate with others as they translate, it is not in the presence of another, living speaker, whether a classmate or an instructor, but most probably with an instructor who will scrutinize their translations against an original and grade them for accuracy (i.e., look for mistakes). Furthermore, when students translate they must use their first language extensively, which prevents them from having the fullest possible contact with the language they are trying to learn. Since their attention is focused on their translations, they are not likely to explore the factors—for example, the cultural or situational factors Christiane Nord has described—that might make it impossible for one text to “behave” in a different context, nor are their instructors likely to reward them if they do.
Speaking now as a teacher of translation, I would agree that of course one does not teach a foreign language by teaching translation, and I would argue, with other translator trainers (e.g., Colina; Godayol; Kiraly; Nord; Pym; Rose; and Shreve), that this is because translator training has its own goal, which is to prepare students to become translators. Students' proficiency in a foreign language is expected, which means that language acquisition has already occurred. In addition, even when translation is presented as activity or process, students are being trained to produce “products” for clients whose expectations differ greatly from those of their foreign language instructors. Accuracy and equivalence take on different meanings, because their translations are prepared not with the thought of a single instructor but for many potential readers or for a hypothetical client whose needs for a translation include dissemination in some form. Consequently, accuracy here refers not only to appropriate word choice but also to appropriate “behavior” in English on the part of the foreign language. Equivalence must be understood in terms of a translation's function and not merely as an exact line-by-line or word-for-word equivalence between copy and original, as Gunilla Anderson points out with respect to lexical equivalence and vocabulary acquisition and use (48–53). Just as important is the fact that a translator's principal language requirement involves the native rather than the foreign language. Indeed, many translators contend both that students can translate only as well as they can write in the language they know best, implicitly the one they knew first, and that fluency in a second language is only one of the many skills needed for translation competence. For all those reasons (and despite the existence of various approaches to translation), translator training involves first and foremost the training in the procedures and strategies that foster language acquisition. Not a few translator trainers would elaborate on those differences and argue that students should have a good command of a foreign language when they enter a translation program (Pym 107), and some translator trainers would assert that by offering translation courses, foreign language departments and translator trainers have, albeit inadvertently, impeded the development of both translator training and translation studies as a discipline.
As Anthony Pym has remarked, however, if those of us who teach translation, whether in foreign language departments or in translation programs, required students to have a very good command of a foreign language before enrolling in our courses, “we'd soon be teaching to practically empty classes” (107). Pym is referring to the situation in Spain, but his comment rings true for the United States also, where even graduate students often lack the level of proficiency needed for translation competence. This lack indicates that an overlap between foreign language acquisition and translator training may be at least a necessary evil that instructors of both skills would do well to explore and, in the best sense, exploit. Since we as instructors are just beginning to initiate such an exploration, I want to offer seven suggestions for working translation into the foreign language curriculum and by doing so increase students' competence in a foreign language and at the same time familiarize them with translation as a profession and prepare them to begin translator training.
Have Clear, well-defined goals. Know what you want from translation and recognize the pitfalls in the attempt to teach foreign language skills and prepare students to become translators at the same time. One can use translation profitably but not train students to become translators. There are numerous ways in which activities involving translation can be used to foster language acquisition. Alan Duff, for example, has filled an entire book with them, and they are not all written exercises. Introductory translation courses can also be offered, but as courses that truly introduce students to the field of translation. As Sonia Colina explains in the description of a course she designed and taught at Indiana University (“Introductory Course,” “Role”), the goal of such a course is not to teach students to be translators but to introduce them to translation as a profession and to teach them what “translation is all about” (“Introductory Course,” 352). Such courses, Colina points out, differ significantly from specifically translator-training courses, although they are not incompatible with them (352).
Make your goals explicit to the students. It must be clear to them that such courses will introduce them to a professional field and enhance certain of their foreign language skills, but the courses will not prepare them to be translators. Indeed, an important goal of those courses would be to make students aware of the demands on a professional translator, the importance of foreign language skills, the value of the proficiency they have already acquired, and the steps they can take to prepare themselves further.
Focus on the use of translation as an activity that can foster foreign language acquisition. Don't work with (or toward) translations as something the students make but with translation as something they do. Use short assignments that present linguistic challenges that might seem pertinent to translation—for example, the cultural differences embedded in languages—and have students prepare several solutions. Such preparation can occur in either English or the foreign language, and texts to be translated can be discussed in the language of the text. Students can also be assigned out-of-class work in the foreign language—consulting with native and heritage speakers who serve as “informants,” for example, or communicating with one another by e-mail.
Have students use monolingual dictionaries, parallel texts, and electronic resources in addition to or in place of conventional bilingual dictionaries. Ask them to discuss words as they are used in specific contexts and in entire texts; do not encourage them to focus on sentence-bound definitions.
Ask students to evaluate the usefulness of the sources they used (from suggestion 4) for both translation and foreign language acquisition.
Require students to translate from English into the foreign language, as well as into English. This will be more difficult for native speakers of English, but if translation is presented to them more as an activity than as a product, they are “freed” to make errors in an effort to engage in and learn about the activity. Assignments from English can be similar to assignments for work into English, although the level of difficulty will have to be determined according to the needs of the students. For classes that include native speakers of the foreign language, native speakers of English, and heritage speakers, translation out of English can be particularly dynamic and interactive, especially if the native speakers of the foreign language have different nationalities or backgrounds. With any group, though, translating in both directions will destabilize the definition of native speaker that Claire Kramsch has recently discussed, prompting students to evaluate their own skills in each language and familiarizing them with the importance of strong language skills for work in translation, but it will also show them that it is possible for nonnative speakers to translate competently.
Use published translations to involve students more actively in texts, especially literary texts. There are many ways to do this, but I will offer just two examples.
First, study multiple versions of published translations in English or in the foreign language. Although comparisons between the versions will be inevitable, do not discuss the versions' errors or degree of “correctness.” Look instead at where significant differences might correspond to particularly difficult or complex passages in the original. Discuss the challenges the text would present to a translator and have students prepare their own versions and explain the thinking that guided their work (see DuPlessis and Maier).
Second, study the reception of published translations in English or in the foreign language. Have students gather reviews and articles about the history of a particular writer's work in translation—the work of Gabriel García Márquez or Rabindranath Tagore in English, for example, or Proust in Spanish, Poe in French, or Walt Whitman in Russian. Ask them to investigate the role translation played as both product and activity in the formation, reinforcement, and also disruption or even deformation of literary canons, whether those of the translated literature or the literature that has been translated (see, e.g., Dingwaney and Maier; Payne; Rostagno; and Venuti). Student research and discussions need not be limited to conventional literary analysis but can focus on the historical context of translations or on translator's afterwords, forwards, and notes or can involve the comparison of promotional materials and book covers.
Finally, as a way of summing up and synthesizing my suggestions, imagine two book covers, one in English and one in Russian. Several North American students are discussing, in Russian, the cover of a 1997 translation of War and Peace and comparing it with that of the nineteenth-century original, referring to parallel texts and electronic resources. This collaborative activity is a far cry from the product-oriented work of isolated students poring over their dictionaries, preparing word-for-word translations and memorizing word lists. I believe that that far cry exemplifies the possible rapprochement between foreign language acquisition and translation I have outlined here.
The author is Professor of Spanish and Graduate Coordinator in the Department of Modem and Classical Language Studies at Kent State University. This article is based on her presentation at the 1997 MLA convention in Toronto, Canada.
My thanks to Sonia Colina for sharing and discussing her work, some of which had not yet been published at the time; to Larry Venuti for his helpful suggestions; and to the members of both audiences who offered comments to earlier versions of this essay.
Anderson, Gunilla. “The Word Is My Oyster.” Words, Words, Words: The Translator and the Language Learner. Ed. Gunilla Anderson and Margaret Rogers. Clevedon: Multi-Lingual Matters, 1996. 41–55.
Bernhardt, Elizabeth B. “Victim Narratives or Victimizing Narratives? Discussion of the Reinvention of Language Departments and Language Programs.” ADFL Bulletin 29.1 (1997): 13–19. [Show Article]
Colina, Sonia. “An Introductory Course in Translation: Methodological and Pedagogical Practices.” Encuentros en torno a la traducción II: Una realidad interdisciplinar. Ed. Carmen Valero Garcés Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, 1996. 45–51.
———. “The Role of a Translation Course in a Non-translation Program.” Vistas. Proc. of the Thirty-Fifth American Translators Assn. Ed. Peter Krawutschke. Medford: Learned Information, 1994. 351–55.
Dingwaney, Anuradha, and Carol Maier. “Translation as a Method for Cross-Cultural Teaching.” Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts. Ed. Dingwaney and Maier. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh UP, 1995. 303–19.
Duff, Alan. Translation. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989.
DuPlessis, Rachel. “Copying.” Sulfur 33 (1993): 257–72.
Godayol i Nogué, Pilar. “La traducció a la didàctica de llengües?” Las lenguas en la Europa Comunitaria II: La traducción. Diálogos Hispánicos 20. Ed. Mercè Pujol Berché and Fermín Sierra Martínez. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997. 89–99.
Kiraly, David C. Pathways to Translation: Pedagogy and Process. Kent: Kent State UP, 1995.
Kramsch, Claire. “The Privilege of the Nonnative Speaker.” PMLA 112 (1997): 359–69.
Maier, Carol. “Teaching Literature through Translation: A Proposal and Three Examples.” Translation Review 46 (1994): 10–13.
Nord, Christiane. “Teaching Translation without Languages? Some Considerations on the Structural Aspects of Translator Training.” Basic Issues in Translation Studies: Proceedings of the Fifth international Conference . Kent Forum on Translation Studies. Ed. Albrecht Neubert, Gregory M. Shreve, and Klaus Gommlich. Kent: Inst. for Applied Linguistics, 1995. 283–91.
Payne, Johnny. Conquest of the New World: Experimental Fiction and Translation in the Americas . Austin: U of Texas P, 1993.
Pym, Anthony. Epistemological Problems in Translation and Its Teaching: A Seminary for Thinking Students . Calceit (Teruel), Spain: Caminade, 1994.
Rose, Marilyn Gaddis. “The Plague Bacillus Never Dies. Institutional Background and Attitudes vis-à-vis Translation.” Proceedings of the ATA's Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference . Ed. Muriel Jérôme-O'Keeffe. Alexandria: Amer. Translators Assn., 1997.395–402.
Rostagno, Irene. Searching for Recognition: The Promotion of Latin American Literature in the United States . Westport: Greenwood, 1997.
Shreve, Gregory M. “Cognition and the Evolution of Translation Competence.” Cognitive Processes in Translation and Interpreting . Ed. Joseph H. Danks, et al. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997. 120–36.
Venuti, Lawrence. “Translation and the Pedagogy of Literature.” College English 58.3 (1996): 327–44.
© 1998 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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