LINGUIST List 15.496

Fri Feb 6 2004

Review: Translation: Baer & Koby (2003)

Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <naomilinguistlist.org>

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  • Abdelgawad T. Mahmoud, Beyond the Ivory Tower: Rethinking Translation Pedagogy

    Message 1: Beyond the Ivory Tower: Rethinking Translation Pedagogy

     Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 23:14:30 -0500 (EST)
    From: Abdelgawad T. Mahmoud <atmahmoud4yahoo.com>
    Subject: Beyond the Ivory Tower: Rethinking Translation Pedagogy


    EDITOR: Baer, Brian James; Koby, Geoffrey S. TITLE: Beyond the Ivory Tower SUBTITLE: Rethinking Translation Pedagogy SERIES: American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series xii PUBLISHER: John Benjamins YEAR: 2003

    Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-3112.html

    Abdelgawad T. Mahmoud, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Assiut University, Egypt.

    SYNOPSIS

    This book consists of three sections. The articles in the first section explore various pedagogical interventions that are focused on translation as process. The articles in the second section discuss approaches to translator training that deal with translation as product, raising issues of assessment and text revision in both professional and academic settings. The articles in the third section address some of the pedagogical opportunities and challenges raised by developments in translation-related technologies.

    Section one begins with Donald Kiraly's discussion of process-oriented pedagogy. In an attempt to displace the traditional objectivist approach to translator, Kiraly proposes the incorporation of an innovative social-constructivist approach. He also calls for the redefinition of translator competence in order to address the disparity between what is learned in the classroom and what is practiced in the field.

    In her article, ''Towards an empirically-based translation pedagogy'', Sonia Colina addresses the issue of communicative translational competence. According to Colina, the aim of communicative translational competence is to encourage a more sense-oriented approach to translation by focusing on the textual and pragmatic considerations, which traditional approaches to translation ignored.

    In her article, ''Think-alouds as a pedagogical tool'', Judy Wakabayashi explores the effectiveness of using Think-Aloud Protocols in the classroom in order to highlight the differences between the processing performed by novices and that of translation professionals. In so doing, she emphasizes the role of the psycholinguistic research in the development of translation pedagogy.

    Alexander Gross's article, titled ''Teaching translation as a form of writing'', aims at improving the student's self-image as a translator. Gross argues that by drawing attention to the similarities between the work of journalists and that of translators, translation can be presented as a form of target language writing.

    Section two begins with Julie Johnson's ''Learning through portfolios in the translation classroom''. In this article, Johnson explores the ways in which portfolios can be used as an assessment tool in order to make the translation classroom more learner-centered. She argues that the proper use of portfolios can contribute to the preparation of translators who are skilled, intuitive, and self-reflective.

    In their article ''Assessing assessment..'', Fanny Arango-Keeth and Geoffrey Koby address the disparity between student evaluation in translator training and quality assessment as practiced in the translation industry. They report on a survey of such practices that they conducted in early 2002, and argue for greater harmonization and coordination between the two settings.

    In his article ''Teaching text revision in a multilingual environment'', Jonathan Hine discusses the challenges of teaching the important but often neglected skill of text revision within a multilingual environment, offering a case study of one such course.

    Maier's article ''Gender, pedagogy and literary translation'' continues the discussion of translation as product. In this article, Maier explores the various ways in which the comparative study of translation can help literary translators become more sensitive to issues of class, gender, race, religion and ethnicity in their work.

    The main objective of Natalia Olshanskaya's article is how to improve the student's communicative competence. Olshanskaya argues that linguistic competence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for translation adequacy. She also suggests an important role for translation criticism in the teaching of translation competence. She concludes that ''communicative competence can be achieved only through a well-balanced combination of linguistic and cultural information.''

    Section three begins with Lynn Bowker's article, titled ''Towards a collaborative approach to corpus building in the translation classroom''. In this article, article Bowker explores the pedagogical possibilities opened up by new technology, specifically for the building of the corpora.

    In their article ''Task-based instruction and the new technology'', Geoffrey Koby and Brian James Baer explore some of the challenges posed to translation pedagogy by the development of new technologies. Koby and Baer suggest that ''task-based Instruction may be an appropriate methodology for teaching translation-related technologies in that it increases student motivation, replicates real world situations and engages higher-level cognitive processing''.

    In their article ''Building a curriculum for Japanese localization translators..'', Takashi Kosaka and Masaki Itagaki address general pedagogical issues related to the teaching of software localization, as well as specific problems involved with localization between English and Japanese. They suggest that the dearth of qualified localization instructors can be remedied through a social- constructivist approach to teaching.

    CRITICAL EVALUATION

    It is true that much of what has been written about translation is drowned out by endless debates over theory versus practice. As a result, translation practitioners and teachers of translation see little value in academic theorizing on translation. What is unique about this book is that the contributors have combined both theory and practice by offering discussions of pedagogical models as well as practical techniques and guidelines. The book also focuses on the pedagogical issues typically ignored within the theory vs. practice debate. In particular, it calls for a more process-oriented, learner-centered approach to translation training. I think that the book is a unique contribution to the area of translation pedagogy and training.

    Especially valuable in this book is the focus on translational communicative competence and the relevance of pragmatic and socio-cultural factors to translation as process and product. The analyses and arguments presented in this book bring new insights to a very important area within translation studies: translation pedagogy. I believe that this book is a useful reference and is an asset to any library. In particular, I would recommend it for teachers of translation, translation trainers, and graduate students of translation.

    However, I have two brief comments. Firstly, I think that the linguistic component of translation and its impact on translation pedagogy should have received more emphasis. In particular, in such a valuable volume, I would expect more elaboration on the role of contrastive macro-linguistics (text-linguistics) in translation training. (For details on this issue, see Basil Hatim (1997) and Daniel Gile (1995), among others). Secondly, I wonder if the pedagogical implications and techniques explored in these articles should have been related to some of the linguistic notions relevant to translation (e.g. the notion of cross-linguistic interference) to see how these notions would be handled within such pedagogical implications and techniques.

    REFERENCES

    Hatim, Basil. 1997. Communication Across Culture: Translation Theory and Contrastive Text Linguistics. Exeter: Exeter University Press.

    Gile, Daniel. 1995. Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

    ABOUT THE REVIEWER

    Abdelgawad T. Mahmoud has obtained his Ph.D. degree in Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1989. Currently, he is the Chairman of the English Department and the Director of the English Language Center and the Translation Center at the Faculty of Arts, Assiut University, Egypt. He has worked for ten years as Associate Professor of Linguistics and Translation at King Saud University. He has published a number of articles on Arabic and English Linguistics (e.g. The Syntax and Semantics of Middle and Unaccusative Constructions, Locative Alternations, Psych-Verbs, Lexical Incorporation and Resultative Predication and Implicit Objecthood). His current research interest is the relevance of Lexical Semantics to Arabic/English translation.