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Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 1; January 03
Where's the Treason in Translation?
David Owen, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
1. Introduction
2.Why did EFL give up on Translation?
3.For and Against Using Translation
“Learning to talk is learning to translate” (Octavio Paz).
Many of us will have heard the old Italian expression “Traduttore traditore” (translator: traitor). There are those who take this to mean that translators somehow betray the original they work from because their new version fails to adequately capture the myriad complexities of the source text, or because it interprets rather than 'carries over' the original, or even (as, for example, with fundamentalist criticism of much religious translation) because it perfidiously attempts to render the Truth into the unexalted tongues of the faithless. Or perhaps, as another interpretation would have it, looking beyond the written and spoken word into the cultural consequences of these things, translators are deemed treacherous because they reveal to outsiders the hitherto impenetrable world of a given culture. And though they may build the bridges of communication, they do so only by dismantling the very walls constructed to separate Us from Them.
So much for what this treason may mean in the wider world. In our own world of language learning and teaching, however, I would say that some notion of “treason” is also attached to the idea of translation, or more precisely, to the use of translation in class. For although it is true that recent years have brought about a largely positive reassessment of translation in EFL, one senses that - along with issues such as the validity of the non-native teacher - this reassessment has taken place far more within the realms of academic research and discussion than in the corridors and classrooms of our language schools. Why, for example, do so many teachers still feel ill at ease with translation? Why is there still that lingering sense of having done something wrong when, as teachers, we make use of translation in our classes? Do we really short-change our students' sense of autonomy when we point them in the direction of translation? Are we, in reality, betraying our sense of good teaching practice (whatever that might be) when we choose to make use of our student's L1 in the L2 classroom? The purpose of this discussion is to try to provide some answers to questions such as these and, in doing so, to suggest that translation, rather than being what Alan Maley aptly termed the “poor relation in the family of language teaching techniques”, should be seen as capable of occupying a far more central role in the EFL classroom.
One final introductory comment: some day in the not-too-distant future, our teaching congresses will perhaps, together with the usual fare, regularly offer us talks along the lines of “20 Great Translation Activities for Intermediate Levels” or “Getting Question Tags Right through Translation”. That is, the whole issue will have normalised itself and, feathers unruffled, we'll be able to take it or leave it as suits our inclinations and requirements. In the meantime, however, there is still the need to tackle the bread-and-butter question of whether we teachers, as a whole, can be dissuaded from seeing translation as a cheap way out of our obligations and be persuaded, instead, to look on it as a highly effective way in to a better understanding of our students' problems and learning processes.
First, a short section suggesting the possible reasons for which EFL rejected the use of translation. This is followed by a contrastive presentation, in table form, of the opinions and rationales held by practising teachers with respect to using translation in their own classes. Leading on from this, and as a kind of conclusion, is a re-definition of translation in an EFL context, in an attempt to suggest its particular communicative suitability to language learning and teaching. But let me come clean right from the start: my main aim here is to chip away a little at what I see as a largely unthinking refusal to accept translation, as a language-teaching tool, on an equal footing with all other means of helping our students become more effective L2 users and communicators.
2. Why did EFL give up on translation?
The use of translation, as a moment's reflection will confirm, has been a fundamental part of language teaching since the very beginning. Indeed, it must be the oldest language-teaching tool of all. What concerns me, however, is the fall from grace that translation, as such a language-teaching tool, underwent from the 1950s onwards. And it concerns me because, on the one hand this has almost certainly affected the views of all subsequent generations of teachers, and also because the rejection of its use in EFL that has largely held since then seems to me (though I recognise that I have an axe to grind here) to be based on a limited, partial understanding and application of translation that has singularly failed - or hasn't even tried - to exploit its full communicative potential. Of the various factors that may have seen translation fall into disrepute, here are a few likely suspects:
- Translation has been over identified with the Grammar Translation Method, whose ideas regarding language teaching (remember your Latin classes?!) were rejected both by the Direct Method – the DM's opposition to Grammar Translation in fact originally dates back to the nineteenth century - and later by the communicative approach. As these approaches and methods became predominant in language teaching, the two basic elements of the now-supplanted Grammar Translation Method, grammar and translation, were consequently tainted by association.
- Translation was a principal resource used in the 1950s and 1960s as part of language-teaching programmes based on contrastive analysis/CA (an application of structural linguistics to the teaching of languages), related to conduct-based views of language acquisition. When the latter fell into academic disrepute, particularly through Noam Chomsky's “Review of 'Verbal Behaviour' by B.F. Skinner” (1959), CA and translation, as key elements in this approach, were also negatively affected; both were then substantially abandoned by the EFL teaching world.
- The results of findings by important researchers have had significant consequences on teachers' views of translation. In 1982, Heidi Dulay, Mariana Burt and Stephen D. Krashen asserted that L1 errors in L2 accounted for a mere 5% of errors produced overall; they also claimed that the influence of L1 on L2 was almost irrelevant (!), and that the use of translation actually complicated the learning process, as it brought transference errors to language production.
- Exclusive class use of L2 (in this case, English) obviously favours the 'linguistic imperialism' both of commercial EFL interests and of many native-speaking teachers' attitudes (see related work by Braj B. Kachru, Alistair Pennycook or Robert Phillipson, for example). On a less cynical note, the great influx of new native EFL teachers from teaching programmes such as the RSA Preparatory Certificate courses has added legions of Direct Method practitioners to the teaching world. In fairness to the Prep. Cert. and other similar qualifications, the decision to point new teachers towards such a method is surely based, in no small part, on the great difficulty of knowing where and in what circumstances such teachers will end up teaching; the Direct Method is robust enough to help them get through the first few months' classes. In this way, novice teachers' immediate needs are met and methodological fine-tuning can be allowed to come a little later, once they've found their feet. The downside to this, however, is that a considerable number of inexperienced teachers, having been discouraged from using their students' L1, develop and maintain an almost visceral view of translation as 'something that must not be done', perhaps without having seriously weighed up the issues involved.
- This is the backdrop against which many language teachers (and perhaps most native EFL teachers) initially come into contact with translation as a teaching tool, and which in many senses determines the character of their subsequent attitudes towards its use. Let us now take a look at the views of experienced, practising teachers, and attempt to gain a picture of what such attitudes are made up of.
A preliminary word of caution, however, about the opinions and rationales set out in section 3: whilst they are all “real”, in the sense that they have been collected in discussions held over a number of years in a variety of language schools both in England and Catalonia, this article is not an academic research paper: there was no questionnaire and there is no statistical analysis of respondents' answers, suitably broken down into various categories. Nevertheless, I would strongly maintain that these comments closely reflect the essential points for which the use of translation is either criticised or defended in EFL. The order in which the various items are listed is entirely random.3. For and Against Using Translation
Rationale against Using Translation Rationale in Favour of Using Translation Talking about the language is not using the language (“If not now, then when?”) Overt focus on the component elements of language (specific verb forms, prepositional collocation, etc), such as that which may well be an inherent part of using translation, fails to engage students in direct 'exclusive' L2 use. The classroom needs to be a place of as much practice as possible, given the dire shortage of real-language contact that most EFL students experience.
An average adult uses L1 for about 120 hours per week; a non-intensive language course offers contact with L2 at the rate of perhaps 3-4 hours per week. Translation obliges learners to share their precious L2 use time with the L1: this is not a productive use of the opportunities given by the class.
Increasing learner awareness, not only of grammar but also of the pragmatic and stylistic devices and their effects, actually 'empowers' students, providing them with a fuller understanding of what language (and the L2 in particular) is capable of, and in what ways this is similar to, or different from their own language. Recent research in pragmatics suggests that greater awareness of L1 helps in the more effective communicative use of L2. Translation is a means by which both languages can be assessed. Rather than being seen as an obstacle to real language use, translation might more effectively be viewed as a way of fine-tuning the language to be used in given situations and conditions.
Translation is text-bound, non-interactive and remote from learners' real needs Text-based work focuses on only two of the four skills. This approach is not fully communicative, as it involves no oral interaction. With the exception of ESP, learners' real needs are unlikely to correspond to the language approach used, nor necessarily to the contexts considered by in-class translation.
This generalised view is based on a common misapprehension of translation as 'bookish'. In an EFL context, translation can certainly be said to cover 'interpretation' (therefore working on speaking/listening), and even text-based approaches can be made suitable to inter-task activities (reading for speaking, etc). The interpretation skills required for high-frequency communicative contexts and the translation skills needed in L2 reading and writing can hardly be said to be remote from real world needs. As a means to greater and not less communication, it is anything but non-interactive.
It encourages the false hope that L1-L2 cognates can be established Most areas of language cannot be rendered directly into an L2. Such an approach may give learners a false sense of security, encouraging them to see L2 production as a simple act of transference. Students should be helped to think in the given L2
Or we might say that, in addition to indicating areas of true cognates, it can also indicate exactly where and how such connections fail, and what to about it when they do so (false cognates, collocation, the limitation of synonyms). In any case, all students naturally look for such connections, it seems perverse to deny this natural inquisitiveness.
Can students think in L2?! This is a thorny issue that takes us into the realms not only of psycholinguistics but also of neurology and neurolinguistics. We have no option but to disregard anecdotic evidence (“after five years in France, I now think directly in the language”) as being of little or no scientific value, since, however 'true' we may feel it to be, it simply cannot be demonstrated. Native speakers' sporadic difficulties in accessing L1 lexis after living abroad for some time, or the unwitting use of Spanglish or Franglais (for example) that sometimes characterises “ex-pat speech” may simply correspond to frequency of use rather than to significant changes in thought processing. Unmonitored speech production of long-term foreign residents speaking their preferred L2 can reveal underlying L1 structures, suggesting that it is difficult to escape the patterns laid down by our first-acquired language. Hi-tech research (cerebral spectrographs , etc.) appears to suggest that thinking directly in L2 is unlikely. And even if it were a real possibility, it seems reasonable that this could only occur after a very considerable and unbroken exposure (years, perhaps decades, certainly not weeks or months) to the L2.
It prevents students developing coping strategies Coping strategies are an essential part of communicative competence. The ability to negotiate meaning is a skill that has to be developed from the earliest stages. Translation simply 'provides' meaning: students who have not had to develop coping strategies will be seriously disadvantaged when translation aid is not on hand.
Student autonomy should be encouraged from the very outset and, although a restricted amount of one-to-one translation (simple lexical groups, for instance) may be of limited help for beginners, teachers should be careful to discourage their students' use of these props as soon as possible.
Alternatively, it allows students to identify their own L1 strategies to determine why these may be successful, and to try them out in L2. Do they work exactly? How should they be modified? What limitations might these strategies come across? How are these to be overcome?
Student autonomy should indeed be encouraged from the very outset. One way is to make constructive use of students' irrepressible, wholly natural tendency to establish equivalences between L1 & L2 by channelling this need for translation into far broader areas of language awareness. It's not just about vocabulary; it's not only of use to low levels. We should tailor our approach to its application in class in accordance with the conditions that affect all our other teaching decisions (amongst which, in no particular order, are: level, intensity of course, language area being studied, student's background, students' needs, place and time of study, number in class, etc, etc.).
It is “irresponsible teaching” It fails to provide for students' likely needs (see above)
Other teachers may not use this approach in subsequent/parallel courses
It often goes against training-course guidelines
(See above)
Should we be limited by other teachers' choices/abilities/ inclinations? Shouldn't students have access to a range of teaching styles?
How many 'pure' Direct Method teachers are still around anyway?! As for training-course guidelines, of course they are important. But we should recognise that such guidelines are essentially a means by which teachers can begin to explore the many and varied potentials of their role within language teaching. In no case should these be taken as fixed, immovable dogma.
It is de-motivating: how many people really have the bilingual skills to do it well? Only students of a particular aptitude and ability/level can successfully use translation.
Students who do not have this ability/level will be frustrated in their attempts to recreate their (fully-formed) L1 in terms of their (imperfect) L2
What does bilingual really mean? Bilingual language users rarely (if ever) have an absolutely equal ability in both languages. In fact, some researchers argue that bilingual simply means a certain ability to make use of two languages. Once we move away from seeing bilingualism as an elite notion, beyond the reach of the average language user, we can start to more fully exploit the very wide range of possibilities in using both L1 & L2, in spite of the obvious difficulties represented by limited levels of ability. In this sense, we all have bilingual skills.
Isn't communicative effectiveness a motivating factor (even if the forms produced are not perfect)?It is unsuitable to classwork: students have to work alone. Similar to the first and second objection (above). Translation is essentially an individual language task; it does not encourage student interaction and wastes class practice time.
Again, this is based on the false idea that translation involves a lonely slog against an incomprehensible foreign text. In fact, there are no methodological reasons, per se, dictating that students should work alone when using translation. As with any multi-skills work, all imaginable combinations of pairs and groups are open to its use.
It is unsuitable to multi-lingual classes. There can be no place for translation in groups such as these A teacher's limited Italian might be of some use to the three Italians in her group, but what about the Germans and Japanese, Thais, Venezuelans or Finnish? Teachers can hardly be expected to provide reading/listening/speaking/writing work for all these languages at the same time.
It would be foolish to pretend that differences in the linguistic circumstances and characteristics of a monolingual group with respect to those of a multi-lingual class can be swept aside as being irrelevant. They are fundamental, as any teacher who has been involved in working with both class types could tell you. But translation can nevertheless be effectively used in such groups, and at all levels, by activities such as work in language-family groups, class discussion of students' L1 pragmatics and its similarity/differences with L2, various types of dictionary work and in multi-task activities in which, for example, a range of different L1 texts on a monographic issue (or news event, etc.) are taken from the net, translated and compared through class discussion. The teacher's role, and particularly her position as “arbiter” is probably very different (and is perhaps even nullified) in comparison with the monolingual group teacher, but that, of course, may be no bad thing…
4. Redefining translation in an EFL context
In light of the opinions set out above, I would suggest that there is a clear need to re-define what we understand by translation in an EFL context. Such a redefinition should aim to capture the communicative core of the process by which people can overcome the linguistic barriers that otherwise impede their ability to either effectively express their ideas or to negotiate the meanings that suit their circumstances and requirements. But beyond this, and especially within the framework of our own teaching, this definition should aim at encouraging both students and teachers to leave behind their misconceptions of what translation means, in order to begin seeing it as something infinitely more useful (and indeed more powerful) than what many preconceptions of largely meaningless, endlessly boring text-based activities might have suggested. And once we recognise its value, it becomes far harder for us to drag our heels about making use of it. Here's a tentative re-definition that at least goes some way towards bridging the gap:
“Translation is a process involving at least one mediator with certain bilingual abilities, in which an attempt is made to transfer the meanings established in one language into an oral or written expression, which conveys an equivalent message, framed within a second language”
In other words, it is the process by which all our students attempt to re-establish in the L2 those meanings that they have already established in their own language, ranging from the simplest of exclamations through to the most pragmatically complex of utterances. As teachers, by making use of this process, we are simply tapping into the natural need that all language users have to get their meaning across the barrier of incomprehension. Can that really be described as failing to address our students' needs? Where's the treason in that?
David Owen
Barcelona
November 2002Notes
Foreword to Alan Duff's Translation, (Resource Books for Teachers, OUP 1996).
In the sense that this discussion is aimed primarily at clearing up conceptual misunderstanding, it is not really the place to provide a list of practical activities in which translation can play a central role; however, for those who may be tempted to consider the ways in which it might be of use, Alan Duff's Translation (OUP 1989) is an obvious source to become familiar with. Maria González Davies' recent article in HLT (Humanising Translation Activities, July 2002) is also very worthwhile taking a close look at.
For fuller information, see A.P.R. Howatt's A History of English Language Teaching (OUP, 1984).
Language 35: 26-58 (1959).
In Language Two, (OUP 1982)
For instance: Linguistic Imperialism (Phillipson, OUP 1992); The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (Pennycook, Addison Wesley 1995) and World Englishes: Approaches, Issues and Resources. Language Teaching 25 (1), (Kachru, 1992).
See John Edwards' chapter on Bilingualism (Ch.3) in Multilingualism (Penguin, 1994).
