The translation turn: a communicative approach to translation in the language classroom

Abstract

What is it? Translation, explicitly or implicitly, has been a constant presence in the teaching and learning of languages throughout the ages. It may therefore seem surprising that it should find a place in a report on innovative pedagogies. While translation has indeed been used for centuries for the purpose of language learning, there is no doubt that recent approaches in the area of language and translation pedagogy have helped re-conceptualise – and re-operationalise – translation in radically new ways. For decades, translation had been identified with the grammar translation method, and decried as incompatible with a communicative approach. In the last two decades, however, we have seen a thorough re-examination of the role of translation in language teaching and learning. A range of factors have contributed to this trend, among them, the questioning of the monolingual principle in language pedagogy, extensive developments in the area of audiovisual translation, exciting innovations in the field of professional translation didactics, the huge success of translation-based digital platforms such as Duolingo, and, crucially, the introduction of the notion of mediation in the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR, 2001), later expanded in the Companion volume (CEFR, 2018).

Audio description and plurilingual competence: new allies in language learning?

“…Within this paradigm, a growing number of scholars have explicitly explored the use of translation as a pedagogical approach (Cummins, 2007;de Pietro, 2014), an area that has witnessed a renewed interest over the past few years, as well as a surge of research activity. The huge potential of translation in language learning has been acknowledged by many scholars over the past few years (Cook, 2010;Laviosa, 2014) with some authors even arguing the existence of a "translation turn" in language pedagogy (Carreres & Noriega-Sánchez, 2021). According to Carreres and Noriega-Sánchez (2021: 84) the emphasis placed on translation as a real-world communicative activity is one of the key factors that have contributed to the popularity of translation in language learning.…”