Translation and Language Teaching

For at least a century, attitudes to the use of translation in language teaching have been predominantly negative, the deprecators of the methodology having been particularly vocal at the turn of the 20th century and again in the 1960s and 70s. Yet, for all of this time, translation has remained a significant component in the teaching of many languages in many parts of the world, and the 1980s saw a revival of support for the practice among a number of applied linguists. Language teaching for translators has been rather less contentious. It has always been assumed that translators must know their languages thoroughly, but little has been written about how they, as a special group, might be taught their languages. In the final quarter of the 20th century, attention among translation scholars and pedagogues has turned so decisively away from linguistics that even teaching translators about their languages and how they can be put to use has been frowned on in many quarters. This book takes a fresh look at both issues. Part One addresses the question of the place and nature of language teaching in translator training programmes. Part Two deals with the issue of how translation might best be used as a teaching and testing methodology in language classes. Finally, the papers in Part Three address the relationship between translation and language teaching from the somewhat divergent points of view of the translator trainer and language teacher.