Translation

Studies on translation
and multilingualism
1/2013
Translation and language learning:
The role of translation in the teaching
of languages in the European Union
Summary
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Luxembourg: Publications Ofce of the European Union, 2013
Manuscript completed in July 2013
ISBN 978-92-79-30901-4
doi:10.2782/13232
European Union, 2013
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Translation and language learning:
The role of translation in the teaching of languages in the European Union

A Study
15 July 2013


Executive summary

This study asks how translation, both written and spoken, can contribute to the
learning of a foreign or second language (L2) in primary, secondary and higher
education. It is based on questionnaire surveys that were responded to by a total of
963 experts and teachers; the qualitative research process further benefited from
input by 101 contributors. The study includes case studies of the institutional and
pedagogical relations between translation and the preferred language-learning
methods in seven Member States (Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Poland, Spain
and the United Kingdom) and three comparison countries (Australia, China and the
United States).

The general finding is that L2 teachers, in Europe and elsewhere, prefer
communicative teaching methodologies but often do not see that translating is a
communicative act. In many cases translation is frowned upon in the L2 classroom,
along with the use of L1 generally. If stakeholders believe that L1 should be excluded
from the L2 classroom, in tune with ideals of immersion and the teacher as a native
speaker, then translation activities are automatically excluded as well. Translation
nevertheless remains present as scaffolding to help learners initially, as a traditional
means of checking on acquisition, and in learners mental translation processes,
when they internally relate L2 to L1 even when L1 is not used in class. The
predominant ideologies of language learning can create a sense of guilt associated
with the use of translation it is something teachers and learners do, but they feel
they should not be doing and there may even be a sense of translation as a
retrograde pedagogical activity, a remnant of the nineteenth-century grammar
translation method.

However, we have found no strong empirical evidence that communicative uses of
translation in the L2 classroom have a detrimental effect on language learning,
whereas there is empirical evidence that translation can enhance the learning of an
L2, particularly writing skills in both L1 and L2. A number of countries where
translation is used with relatively high frequency in the L2 class have very high levels
of L2 skills, whereas some countries where translation is used rarely have low levels
of L2 skills. A number of studies also show high levels of student motivation in
classes where translation is used as a communicative activity. Further, there is
growing theoretical and research interest in the relation between communicative
translation and language learning, as indicated in a spectacular rise in the number of
publications on this issue since 1990.

In view of this, it is unfortunate that translation has a marginal status in language
learning at present. In the ten-year period from 2002 to 2012, none of the European
Union policy documents on language learning mentioned translation as a way of
teaching or testing a language. In the same period, the policy documents on
multilingualism recognised the importance of translation for the maintenance of
diversity but did not relate translation to improving language learning. Translation is
instead presented as an opposite of language learning, as something done when
members of society generally do not know an L2. The result is that language learners
and trainee translators are seen as belonging to quite separate worlds. Nevertheless,
the only policy document that does relate translation to language learning in any
systematic way is of considerable importance: the Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages (2001) recognises that all language learners are also
enabled to mediate, through interpretation and translation, between speakers of the
two languages concerned who cannot communicate directly (2001: 43; emphasis
ours). In keeping with this trend, in most countries translation is not explicitly
mentioned in the official curricula for teaching L2, although the term mediation is
occasionally borrowed from the Common European Framework. Translation is not
generally seen as a language-learning method in itself; it is at best combined with a
number of general teaching approaches.

As a supplementary learning activity, translation can be used as scaffolding in initial
L2 learning and as a complex communicative task at higher levels. These two kinds
of activities are quite different and have different relations to language learning.
Translation tends to be used less in primary education (where it is mainly used as
scaffolding), more in secondary, and even more in higher education (as a complex
communicative activity), although there are variations between countries. We have
found no systemic relation between the use of translation and the bilingual or
multilingual nature of the surrounding society: translation is used with some
frequency in bilingual Finland, for example, but far less frequently in bilingual
Catalonia or Spanish-English regions of the United States, where immersion policies
enjoy political prestige. In Germany, where the reported use of translation in
secondary and higher education is particularly low, the data are complicated by the
use of mediation as a term that covers translation, interpreting, gisting and
explaining information in another language. Some teachers in Germany note with
irony that they now legitimise the use of translation in class by calling it mediation.

Across Europe, there are quite different concepts of what the term translation
means, both in research and among teachers. Some practitioners and theorists see
translation as a sentence-level search for equivalence, useful mainly for checking on
grammar learning and perhaps to explore the differences between languages, but
not to gain intercultural competence or to communicate messages in interactive
situations. Others agree that translation is a fifth language skill (in addition to
speaking, listening, writing and reading), but only in the sense that it is a separate
skill developed exclusively for professional translation services, after the other skills
have been learned. Similar numbers of teachers nevertheless agree that translation
brings the other language skills together, which would suggest that translation can
contribute to language learning in a dynamic way, with skills that have been learned
while engaged in one activity subsequently being applied to other fields (for example,
in the way translation can help develop writing and communication skills in both L1
and L2). The notion of translation as a set of transferable skills nevertheless remains
without firm empirical evidence and is an area that deserves to be explored further.
In general, the more the operative concept of translation involves communication
and intercultural competence, the more favourable the attitudes to it tend to be,
among both researchers and teachers. Many sterile debates could thus be resolved
by carefully defining what the term translation means in each case.

The arguments used against translation in the L2 class, both in the literature and in
the responses by teachers to our questionnaire, revolve around presuppositions
concerning the overall aim of language learning. It is commonly assumed that the
objective of L2 learning is to become like a native speaker, a mythical creature who
knows an L1 perfectly. On this view, translation is often understood as an additional
activity that does not contribute to the main learning objective but instead takes
valuable time away from the more essential language skills lack of time is indeed
one of the main reasons given by teachers for not using translation. This argument
errs not only in its false assumption that L1 speakers know their language perfectly
and that L2 is learnt like L1 (there is abundant evidence of mental translation in L2
learning), but also in its view of what learners will eventually be doing with their L2s:
if there are already 500 million or so L1 speakers of English in the world, for example,
the aim of learning English as an L2 is perhaps not so much to add to their number
but to produce people who can move between English and other languages,
producing and working with multilingual resources in ways that go well beyond the
systemic nature of any one language, any one language skill, and any one
communication medium. On this second view, translation skills would be involved in
the numerous ways people use languages without requiring full fluency in entire L2
systems, whether it be grasping information with the help of online machine
translation (where it helps to know the limits of machine translation), processing
military intelligence, enhancing the symbolic status of threatened languages, or
simply constructing everyday life in a multilingual environment. That is, translation
skills could be involved in most of the ways in which people actually use L2.

Remarkably few experts in English as a second or additional language were willing to
respond to our detailed questions about translation. Most assumed that the issue
was settled everyone knows translation is detrimental to language learning, so
why go back to that? However, the current research and discussion, coupled with the
changing landscape of the way language resources are used in multilingual societies
and social media, indicates that the question is far from settled, and that the
communicative use of translation has much to offer the L2 learner.

It would thus be desirable for steps to be taken to foster a view of translation as a
goal-driven communicative activity and to encourage the creative use of translation
in the classroom, in all communication media. This should involve giving L2 teachers
at all levels access to a communicative and interactive view of translation, through
publications, online materials or short training courses.