WHERE TRANSLATION STUDIES
LOST THE PLOT
ANTHONY PYM
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)
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
FI
China
UK
HR
PL
AUS
US
FR
ES
DE
EF PROFICIENCY INDEX (2012)
3.5
3
1
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
FI
China
UK
HR
PL
AUS
US
FR
ES
DE
EF PROFICIENCY INDEX (2012)
3.5
3
1
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
FI
China
UK
HR
PL
AUS
US
FR
ES
DE
EF PROFICIENCY INDEX (2012)
3.5
3
1
3
2.5
5
4
FR
ES
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
FI
China
UK
HR
PL
AUS
US
DE
EF PROFICIENCY INDEX (2012)
3.5
3
1
2
2.5
5
4 2?
FR
ES
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
FI
China
UK
HR
PL
AUS
US
DE
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
TRANSLATION SOLUTIONS
 Bally
 Vinay & Darbelnet
 Fedorov
 Loh
 Levý
 Popovič
 Kade
 Chesterman…
A history of non-binary
© Intercultural Studies Group
TRANSLATION SOLUTIONS
© Intercultural Studies Group
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.
•
•
•
•