Towards a transcultural pedagogy for language & translation education

The revival of translation as a legitimate and effective language teaching method can be traced back to the late 1980s, when Alan Duff published the Duke of Edinburgh Award winning volume Translation, a resource book for teachers who wish to use translation as a language learning activity, just as they might use literature, drama, project work, conversation, role play, writing, or class readers for language practice and improvement (Duff 1989:8, author’s emphasis). Since then, the merits of translation as a language learning and testing tool have been considered by language educators (Sewell and Higgins 1996), applied linguists (Campbell 1998) and translation studies scholars (Malmkjær 1998). However, it is only in the last decade or so that translation has begun to occupy its rightful place in pedagogic practice (Gonzáles Davies 2004; Malmkjær 2004; Gavioli 2005; Cook 2007, 2009; Witte et al. 2009). This paper takes stock of this important, welcome development and aims to make a contribution to the current debate about the future direction of translation in the theory of English language teaching. To this end, I will examine the theoretical underpinnings of an envisioned pedagogy for language and translation education that is conceived within a transcultural conceptual framework. Firstly, I will outline the main features of the ‘holistic approach to cultural translation’, as put forward by Maria Tymoczko (2007) in translation theory. Secondly, I will introduce the concept of ‘symbolic competence’ as elaborated by Claire Kramsch (2006, 2008; Kramsch and Whiteside 2008) in the theory of foreign language education. In the third and last part I will go into more detail about the convergent similarity between holistic cultural translation and symbolic competence as principles of good pedagogic practice in the contemporary globalized world.