Language Learning and Translation

Copyright 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses
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Language learning and translation

Kirsten Malmkjr
The University of Leicester
While language learning or acquisition1 is an obvious prerequisite for translation, the part
that translation might play in language learning and acquisition has been the subject of
debate in both Translation Studies and language pedagogy in the West.2 Here, after the dismissal by proponents of so-called natural methods of language teaching and learning of
the grammar-translation method, very few experts in language pedagogy have felt inclined
to recommend translation as a fruitful method of or aid in language pedagogy, particularly
at the primary and secondary levels of the education system even though many teachers
have continued to find it beneficial. For example, Harvey (1996: 46) describes the situation
in France as follows:
Until a few years ago, the use of L1, whether for the purposes of translation or grammar
explanations, was officially outlawed in the classroom, although a number of teachers
continued to engage in undercover translation The so-called mthode directe was
made compulsory by ministerial guidelines back in 1950, but was not actually applied
until many years later. The fact that the ban on translation was condemned back in
1987 by the APLV (Association des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes) in a special issue
of Les langues modernes points to [a] gap between teachers faced with the dayto-day reality of the classroom, and official policy makers.
In many university language programmes, translation also forms a part; translation into
the language being learnt is used to test the learners productive ability in the language
being learnt, while translation out of the language being learnt is used to test their comprehension of the language being learnt, but it is rare that either bears any resemblance to
what goes on in translation classrooms, where people practice and study translation as a
1. I mean by language learning, learning of one or more additional languages, aided by instruction in more or less formal contexts, by an individual who has already progressed a good way along
the process of acquiring their first language(s). I mean by language acquisition, the learning of one
or more languages from birth or from an individuals very early life. In this article, I concentrate on
the role translation might play in language learning only, for reasons of space limitations.
2. Or, rather, in language pedagogic contexts influenced by Applied Linguistics as developed in
English speaking countries. For example, while translation is excluded from language teaching and
learning contexts in most of India and Pakistan, it is widely used in language teaching and learning
in much of China.
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186 Kirsten Malmkjr
skill in its own right, to be used in conveying meaning to people unable to derive this from
a text in its original language (see in particular, Vienne 1994).
1.The dismissal of translation from the European modern foreign

language classroom
1.1 The grammar-translation method
A number of scholars have rehearsed the reasons for the dismissal of translation from the
language classroom by the Reformists, pointing out that what was being dismissed was the
grammar-translation method of language teaching, which bears no resemblance to translation proper, concentrating, as it does, on practice in the translation of individual sentences
constructed to illustrate clearly and progressively particular features of grammar. As Howatt (1984: 131) explains, the grammar translation method was developed in Prussia in the
early eighteenth century and became the standard European method of modern foreign
language teaching for secondary school pupils, for whose group-based lessons the scholastic method of individual study of full foreign language texts aided by a grammar book and
a dictionary was inappropriate. The reasons are discussed here, nevertheless, since some
of the arguments are relevant to other forms of translation too, when employed in the
language classroom.
1.2 Arguments against using translation in language pedagogy

The arguments raised against the use of translation in modern foreign language teaching
and learning need to be seen against the background of three features which characterised
the Europe-wide Reform Movement, which can be said to have begun with the publication
of Vitor (1882), and which also included, among others, Henry Sweet and William Henry
Widgery in Britain, Felix Franke and Hermann Klinghardt in Silesia, and Otto Jespersen
in Denmark, namely, as Howatt (1984: 171) expresses them, the primacy of speech, the
centrality of the connected text as the kernel of the teaching-learning process, and the
absolute priority of an oral methodology in the classroom. Individual, specially constructed
sentences for written translation were never going to be a hit in such a context.
Drawing on Berlitz (1907), Lado (1964) and Gatenby (1967), Malmkjr (1998: 6)
lists the arguments made against translation in language teaching as follows: Translation is independent of and radically different from the four skills which define language
competence: reading, writing, speaking and listening, and it takes up time which could
have been spent learning them. Translation is also unnatural, and it misleads students into
thinking that there is one-to-one correspondence between languages. Translation encourages students to keep their native language in mind, so it produces interference and interrupts thinking in the language being learnt. Translation is a very bad way to test language
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Language learning and translation
skills (see Section 1 above), because you cannot compose freely and naturally in L2 if L1 is
constantly there in the form of an ST. In fact, translation exercises ought to be confined to
the translation teaching classroom.
2. Are the arguments against translation in language teaching sound?

Clearly, these contentions, if true, would be good arguments against the use of any form
of translation in language teaching. Malmkjr (1998: 8) argues that they are not true of
(simulations of) properly briefed, functional translation for a purpose: It is not possible
to produce a translation that is fit for purpose unless much reading and writing has taken
place, and often also speaking and listening to commissioners and clients; so translation is
not independent of the fours skills, and is not necessarily a waste of time. Nor is it obvious
that translation is unnatural. Harris and Sherwood (1978), for example, have argued that
it is a skill innate in bilinguals, and since more people in the world are bi-lingual than are
monolingual, an innate skill of theirs can hardly be classified as unnatural. Translation,
properly understood, will soon illustrate to its practitioners that there are few simple oneto-one relationships between their languages, so far from misleading them in this regard, it
is likely to heighten their awareness of it. There is no doubt that translation produces interference, but learning to cope with interference is extremely valuable for language learners;
and since a number of language learners end up as translators, there is no reason why the
skill of translating (properly understood) should not have a place in the language learning
classroom. In recent years, very many scholars have argued in favour of translation, of various forms, in language classrooms (see for example Cook 2010 and the papers collected
in Witte, Harden & Harden 2009). However, there has been little empirical testing of any
uses of translation in language teaching; in particular, tests of the use of properly situated
translation tasks are sorely wanted.
3. Tests of the arguments

Carreres (2006) undertook a survey of thirty one Spanish language students at the
University of Cambridge. They all thought that translation should be taught as part of a
modern languages undergraduate degree, and on a scale of 0 (lowest) to 5 (highest), the
average score was 4.6in response to the question, How useful is translation from English
into a foreign language as a means of learning the foreign language (Carreres 2006: 8).
Over half of the students (54%) thought that translation was a more effective method than
other methods, although it was not uniformly popular among them.
The feeling of the Cambridge students that translation is the best way of learning a
foreign language is not, however, unequivocally confirmed by empirical studies such as that
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187
188 Kirsten Malmkjr
by Kllkvist (2008), who undertook a longitudinal study over thirteen weeks in which two
groups of randomly assigned advanced-level [Swedish] learners of English were given two
different types of form-focused exercises, only one of which involved translation (Kllkvist
2008: 183). The course taught was a grammar course with a focus on individual forms, so
the translation exercises employed were not of the situated types discussed in the previous
section. Rather, the students who were exposed to translation exercises translated whole
or parts of sentences, while the other group of students carried out gap filling and transformation exercises on the same sentences. A third group of learners was also studied,
who received only meaning focused instruction (reading fiction, discussing it, and writing essays on which they were given feedback), but these were high-school students, not
randomised, and taking other subjects as well as English, and Kllkvist (2008: 189) points
out that therefore any differences in results between [this group] and the two experimental
groups give rise to further hypotheses rather than conclusions. There were three research
questions: (Kllkvist 2008: 186 and 188):
1. Do students who have been exposed to translation exercises for a substantial period
of time perform equally well on morphosyntactic accuracy in English as students who
have done exercises in the L2 only (but targeting the same structures) when (a) translating writing from Swedish into English and (b) [sic] writing directly in English?
2. Are some learners able to do equally well in both types of task, regardless of
exercise type?
3. Do students who have had input through extensive reading and writing in English as
an L2, but no explicit instruction in the use of morphosyntactic structures, perform
equally well as students who have had translation exercises or target-language-only
exercises on morphosyntactic accuracy when (a) translating writing from Swedish
into English, and (b) writing directly in English?
All the students were pre- and post-tested using a multiple choice test, a translation test
(Swedish into English) and a written re-telling task, in that order (Kllkvist 2008: 190).
The two groups that had been exposed to form-focused exercises showed greater accuracy
gains in the post-tests than the third group did, which suggests that form-focused exercises,
including translation exercises, are more effective means of teaching grammatical accuracy
than meaning based work alone (Kllkvist 2008: 197). For the other two groups there were
no statistically significant differences between their accuracy gains from pre- to post-test
in the multiple choice and translation tests, and a portion of learners are capable of performing well in form-focused tests regardless of exercise type (Kllkvist 2008: 198). The
study, therefore, does not provide support for form-focused courses for advanced learners
that involve translation only (Kllkvist 2008: 199). The learners who had been exposed to
form-focused exercises involving no translation did better in the re-writing task than the
students who had been exposed to translation exercises, whereas the translating students
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Language learning and translation 189
did better than the non-translating students on the translation task. Kllkvist therefore
concludes that (2008: 199):
If we expect and aim for our learners to be able to use the L2 well when communicating
in situations in which they are required to translate and in situations in which they
need to express themselves directly in L2, it seems fully reasonable that we provide
them with exercises and rich, varied, and enhanced input of either kind.
It would be valuable to have results of studies examining the use of properly situated translation and even interpreting tasks in language classrooms, since the translation and interpreting professions are a major destination point for language learners,3 and it would be an
advantage if some of their classroom time could be spent preparing them for that destination. The issue of whether a special form of language pedagogy should be used with trainee
translators is not addressed in this article, but readers can consult the papers collected in
Malmkjr (1998 and 2004) for a selection of views.
References
Berlitz, Maximillian D. 1907. The Berlitz Method for Teaching Modern Languages. New York: Berlitz.
Carreres, Angeles. 2006. Strange bedfellows: Translation and language teaching. The teaching of translation into L2 in modern languages degrees; uses and limitations. Sixth Symposium on Translation, Terminology and Interpretation in Cuba and Canada. December 2006.
Canadian Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters Council (online). http://www.cttic.org/
publications_06symposium.asp [Accessed 7 April 2010].
Cook, Guy. 2010. Translation in Language Teaching: An Argument for Reassessment. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Gatenby, E.V. 1967. Translation in the classroom. In ELT Selections 2: Articles from the Journal English Language Teaching, W.R. Lee (ed.), 6570. London: Oxford University Press.
Harris, Brian & Sherwood, Bianca. 1978. Translation as an Innate Skill. In Language, Interpretation
and Communication, David Gerver & H. Wallace Sinaiko (eds), 155170. New York & London:
Plenum Press.
Harvey, Malcolm. 1996. A translation course for French-speaking students. In Teaching Translation
in Universities: Present and Future Perspectives, Penelope Sewell & Ian Higgins (eds), 4565.
London: Association for French Language Studies and Centre for Information on Language
Teaching and Learning.
Howatt, A.P.R. 1984. A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford & New York: Oxford University
Press. Part Three, Language teaching in the nineteenth century.
3. The UK-based University of Leicesters web-based 2010 undergraduate prospectus declares

that A substantial number of [language] graduates each year go into postgraduate training to
become interpreters and translators.
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190 Kirsten Malmkjr

Kllkvist, Marie. 2008. L1-L2 translation versus no translation: A longitudinal study of focuson-formS within a meaning-focused curriculum. In The Longitudinal Study of Advanced L2
Capacities, Lourdes Ortega & Heidi Byrnes (eds), 182202. London & New York: Routledge.
Malmkjr, Kirsten (ed.). 1998. Translation and Language Teaching: Language Teaching and Translation. Manchester: St Jerome.
Malmkjr, Kirsten (ed.). 2004. Translation in Undergraduate Degree Programmes. Amsterdam &
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Lado, Robert. 1964. Language Teaching: A Scientific Approach. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Vienne, Jean. 1994. Towards a pedagogy of translation in situation. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 1: 519.
Vitor, W. 1882. Der Sprachunterricht muss umkehren! Ein Beitrag zur Uberbrdungsfrage. Heilbronn:
Henninger. Under pseudonym Quousque Tandem.
Witte, Arnd, Harden, Theo & Harden, Alessandra Ramon de Oliveira (eds). 2009. Translation in
Second Language Learning and Teaching. Oxford, Bern etc.: Peter Lang.
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Copyright 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved.