Translation in the Business English Classroom

1. Translation in the Business EnglishClassroom Maurice Claypole Best of BESIG, Paris, June 2008

2. The traditional mind set ”For 6 days and 23 hours of the week, our students live in a Japanese world. For only one hour a week, they should have an English intensive lesson. It may be their only opportunity to hear a native English speaker, so why should that native English speaker use Japanese when they could be hearing perfect English?” (cited by Klevberg 2000)

3. Translation is ... • “the poor relation of language teaching” (Maley) • “the last refuge of the foreign language teacher” (Nott) • “the most important channel of intercultural dialogue (Abboud)” • “the task of communicating across cultures” (Krieger)

4. On Grammar-Translation 1 ”The Grammar-Translation Method focuses on developing student appreciation of the target language’s literature as well as teaching the language... Class work is highly structured, with teacher controlling all activities… Most interaction is teacher-to-student; student-initiated inter-action and student-student interaction is minimal.” (Snow 1992)

5. On Grammar-Translation 2 • ”The danger with the grammar-translation is that it teaches people about the language and doesn’t really help them to learn the language itself.” (Harmer, How To Teach English, 1998) • " " (Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching 2001, 2007

6. Types of translation • Equivalent • Natural • Literal • Primary • Secondary • Localisation • Assisted • Automated • Screen translation • Administrative • Loan translation • Substitutional • Through-translation • Legal • Literary • Medical • Scientific • Technical • Financial • Legal • Academic • Commercial • Pedagogical • Interpretive • Situational • Cultural • Didactic • Transferential • Transcriptive • Referential • Written • Oral • Generic • Internal • External • Decoding • Retentive • Assumed • Self-referential • Semantic • Communicative • Cognitive • Pragmatic • Transpositional • Metaphorical • Interlinear • Literal • Contextual • Descriptive • Condensing • Paraphrasing

7. Translation-related skills • Substitute cultural equivalent • Omit superfluous information • Expand for clarification • Explain incongruities • Adapt content • Check and correct • Verify suitability for purpose • Establish main purpose • Understand fine detail • Infer meaning from context • Extract key information • Decode source language • Resolve ambiguities • Reformulate information • Demonstrate general understanding • Demonstrate mastery of idiomatic usage • Balance accuracy against coherence

8. Milestones in ELT • 1783: First formalised G-T course (Prussia) • 1878: Direct method (Berlitz) • 1950s: Audio-lingual (Skinner) • 1960s: Generative grammar (Chomsky) • 1970s: Systemic functional linguistics (Halliday) • 1981: The Acquisition-Learning Distinction (Krashen)

9. Krashen 1 Krashen claims his theory is “consistent with the way thousands of people have acquired second languages throughout history, and in many cases acquired them very well. They acquired second languages while they were focused on something else, while they were gaining interesting or needed information, or interacting with people they liked to be with." (Krashen, D. Principles of Second Language Acquisition, 1981)

10. Krashen 2 “… acquisition differs from learning in two major ways: acquisition is slow and subtle, while learning is fast and, for some people, obvious.... ” (ibid.)

11. Key questions • WHO are the learners? • WHY are they learning a language? • WHERE am I teaching? • WHAT should I be teaching? • HOW should I teach? • WHO WHY WHERE WHAT --> HOW

12. On current teacher training 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.” (Owen 2003)

13. The monolingual fallacy “The monolingual fallacy ensures that speakers of centre-based Englishes can market themselves as teachers in periphery communities without having acquired any proficiency in the local languages.” (Canagarajah 1999)

14. Points to remember • Translation is a valuable resource. Not to use it would be extremely wasteful. • Students do it all the time. • Translation is a real-life skill.

15. What makes a good translation? • A translation must give the words of the original. • A translation must give the ideas of the original. • A translation should read like an original work. • A translation should read like a translation. • A translation should reflect the style of the original. • A translation should possess the style of the translation. • A translation should read as a contemporary of the original. • A translation should read as a contemporary of the translation. • A translation may add to or omit from the original • A translation may never add to or omit from the original. • A translation of verse shold be in prose. • A translation of verse should be in verse. (T. H. Savory, The Art of Translation, Cape 1968)

16. ‘Pedagogic’ translation “Teaching English is closely tied to teaching translation methods ... when students translate, they unconsciously follow three steps: analysis, transfer and restructuring.” (Petrocchi, 2006)

17. Reasons for using translation • What the students think and feel is important • Translation helps develop reading skills • Translation is a conscious process of learning • Translation is a communicative activity • Translation is a useful evaluative technique

18. Translation is ... • a communicative activity • lexical in nature • suited to task-based exercises • ideal for discovery learning

19. The teacher’s challenge • Who am I? • What skills do I have? • Am I aware of my hidden talents? • Am I aware of my limitations?

20. Basic techniques • Use pre-translated materials • Exploit peer-group teaching • Employ back translation (translating from one language into another and then back into the original language)

21. Translation is compatible with... • Face-to-face teaching • Online tutoring • Blended learning • Community interaction • Virtual learning environments • Second Life

22. Basic suggestions • When an exercise involves translating into English, tell your students that you are using translation as a teaching aid, that the goal is not to produce a perfect translation but to learn from the activity. • When translating into the Students’ L1, focus on the notion of decoding as an aid to understanding English.

23. Summary Translation is a valuable resource. It is a highly a communicative activity. It favours a lexical approach, is compatible with task-based and discovery learning and is ideally suited to incorporation in a blended learning course.