A N T H O N Y PY M

WHERE TRANSLATION STUDIES LOST THE PLOT

MEET DAVID NUNAN

His ELT textbook series "Go For It!" is the largest selling textbook series in the world with sales exceeding 2.5 billion copies.

JAMES S HOLMES (1972)

An area for “extensive and rigorous research to assess the efficacy of translating as a technique and testing method in language learning”.

GIDEON TOURY (1991)

?

INSTITUTIONALIZATION

Growth in translator-training institutions Alliance with the translation professions Modeling of an independent translation

competence Independent faculties Special language education for translators and

interpreters (PACTE) Virtually no interest in the place of translation

in language teaching and no serious research.

COOK (2010)

For just at the point when the trajectory of ideas should have led to investigation of the effects of TILT [Translation in Language Teaching], the scientific principle seems to have failed, and for some reason the research has not been done. In SLA [Second Language Acquisition] in particular, the notion that translation is not helpful to acquisition seems to have become so firmly established that it has hardly been investigated at all. (Cook 2010: 87-88)

JAMES S HOLMES (1972)

In regard to that last policy question, since it should hardly be the task of translation studies to abet the use of translating in places where it is dysfunctional, it would seem to me that priority should be given to extensive and rigorous research to assess the efficacy of translating as a technique and testing method in language learning. The chance that it is not efficacious would appear to be so great that in this case it would seem imperative for program research to be preceded by policy research. (1972: 78)

EUGENE NIDA (1972)

• Teachers too often require their students to make literal translations of foreign-language texts into their mother tongue. […]. But the result of this insistence on literal translating is that the students almost inevitably acquire a false concept of the foreign-language text. Because it comes out in such a crude manner in the mother tongue of the student, the second language is judged to be awkward, difficult, and hopelessly complicated.

EUGENE NIDA (1972)

In addition the students may acquire a perverted feeling for their own language. Word-for-word renderings inevitably mutilate one’s mother tongue, with results that are aesthetically disastrous as well as intellectually unrewarding. […] In the schoolroom, correctness has been judged as practically synonymous with literalness, so that any idiomatic departure from that norm has been looked upon as dangerous.

GRAMMAR TRANSLATION

Formulated in Prussia in late 18th century Sentence translation in order to illustrate and

confirm grammatical differences Opposed by the Reform Movement in the late

19th century: focus on speech, texts, and a monolingual classroom

ZARATE (2004)

Translation is “a reformulating activity that obscures all the challenges to intercultural communication which conceal the dysfunctions of a type of communication between partners based on different value systems.”

(This is a very literal translation from French!)

EVIDENCE OF TRANSLATION

Mental translation by adult learners. Use of online translation tools. Translation as one of the applications of

language learning.

THE CONCEPTUAL PROBLEM

• “Translation” is the opposite of “language learning.”

ERIC PICKLES

If you translate for immigrants, they will not learn English.

Stopping the automatic use of translation and interpretation services into foreign languages will provide further incentive for all migrant communities to learn English, which is the basis for an individual’s ability to progress in British society. It will promote cohesion and better community relations. And it will help councils make sensible savings, at a time when every bit of the public sector needs to do its bit to pay off the deficit.

PYM ET AL. (2012)

• A survey of 878 language teachers from 10 case-study countries. • Translation generally

unpopular, but it is used. • Very few language

teachers have thought seriously about how it can be used.

© Intercultural Studies Group

PYM ET AL. (2012)

TRANSLATION IN CLASS (2012)

FI China UK HR PL AUS US FR ES DE0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

EF PROFICIENCY INDEX (2012)

FI China UK HR PL AUS US FR ES DE0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5 1

EF PROFICIENCY INDEX (2012)

FI China UK HR PL AUS US FR ES DE0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5 1 3

EF PROFICIENCY INDEX (2012)

FI China UK HR PL AUS US FR ES DE0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5 1 3 445

EF PROFICIENCY INDEX (2012)

FI China UK HR PL AUS US FR ES DE0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5 1 2 445 2?

IN GERMANY

• We don’t use translation – we use mediation (Sprachmittung). • CEFR (2001): Speaking, listening, writing,

reading, plus: • “Learners are also enabled to mediate, through

interpretation and translation, between speakers of the two languages concerned who cannot communicate directly.” Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2001).

WHERE WE REALLY WENT WRONG

• Cicero 46 CE: ut interpres vs. ut orator• Horace: • Schleiermacher 1813: verfremdend vs.

verdeutschend• Nida 1964: formal correspondence vs. dynamic

equivalence

© Intercultural Studies Group

TRANSLATION SOLUTIONS

A history of non-binary Translation Studies

Bally Vinay & Darbelnet Fedorov Loh Levý Popovič Kade Chesterman…

© Intercultural Studies Group

TRANSLATION SOLUTIONS

REBRANDING TRANSLATION

• Communicative translation • The primacy of spoken communication • Failure analysis instead of competence• Full range of translation solutions (breaking the

binarisms)• Translator training for all language learners, not

just would-be professionals. • Pedagogical use of online translation tools

(TM/MT)• Renegotiate the pact with the professions.