DIDACTICS OF TRANSLATION & INTERPRETING STUDIES 2nd year MA

R. Bontil

Lead-in activities
Argument: 1. Translation CAN become one good way of learning/teaching critical thinking, on condition you
show students that (1) decision-making in terms of word choice, linguistic structure, register, etc. can also be trained; (2) judgment bases on (a) criteria, (b) self-correction, (c) sensitivity to context (see Lipman, M. 2007. Education for Critical Thinking. Curren R. (ed.), Philosophy of Education. An Anthology. Blackwell).

2. In order to make students reason logically about the task in hand, and finally come to grips with it,
you must devise activities that are suggestive of (1) criteria in-building; (2) self-correction dimensioning; (3) context sensitivity display.

Criteria in-building refers to: clear guidelines, directions, parameters, conventions, principles,
assumptions, presuppositions, definitions, aims, goals, evidence, observations, policies, measures.

Self-correction dimensioning refers to: determining students to identify erroneous thinking with
each other; disentangling ambiguous expressions in texts; clarifying vague expressions in texts; demanding for criteria/reasons provision; dismissing preconceived ideas; pointing out fallacious assumptions or invalid references in text; questioning validity, evidential warrant and consistency of criteria/ directions/ observations offered.

Context sensitivity display refers to: sensitizing students to connotations stemming from
cultural differences; alerting students about personal/social/political/gender perspective differences; learning to contest accuracy of translation/ method/evidence; recognizing discourse features/ differences in terms of genre/ target audience/ gender/ intentionality/ emphasis. Examples of in-building translation skills exercises

(a) Identify textual devices informing the writers decisions as to how some things may be made (b)
(c) (d) prominent or left as background. Check for: cohesive links; word-order; tense; aspect; reference pointing; cleft constructions. Note and single out ways in which new topics are brought into being (i.e. ways of topicalizing entities; pronoun management; topicalization shift) Divide the text into discourse segments (i.e. paragraph structures) so as to evince how reference distance (between full noun phrase and pronoun) enhances or diminishes prominence. What distinctive spoken/written mode features you detect in the following writing? What kind of audience does the text assume? What shared knowledge does the text count on? See to ways in which the writer achieves interpersonal management, e.g. the negotiation between themes (information containers) and tails (final-position elements). Come with clear arguments which, according to you, have informed choice of tense and aspect in the text (think of: author/reader relationship; topic intricacy; evaluation of topic/agency/degree of involvement; focalization; focus-shift). Identify genre conventions in the respective text and detail on how they confirm/disrupt textual intentionality. Comment on the (un)predictability of textual prominence devices (grammatical patterning, register type; informativity; deviance; clustering; clefts; intertextuality; etc.) Enumerate the ways in which the writer understands to involve/detach the reader (at all levels of expression: lexis, grammar, discourse contextually motivated linguistic behavior). Explain how different actualizations of modality [modals, modal words (possible probable, etc.), tense, aspect, modal phrases, discourse markers (sort of, like, etc.)] contribute to clarifying textual functions, genre type, textual conventions. Account for the criteria which informed your choice from a lexical field (ideological/cultural/ register/ jargon constraints). Single out idiomatic expressions in the text and explain their contribution to the overall understanding/effect/intention of the text.

(e) (f) (g) (h) (i) (j) (k)

(l)

DIDACTICS OF TRANSLATION & INTERPRETING STUDIES 2nd year MA

R. Bontil

(m) Explain how the identified idioms are a barometer of the readers cultural competence (the encoding
of beliefs/ common lore of a people/ generation/ community).