ELT and the role of translation in developing intercultural competence

ABSTRACT

As the main technique of grammar-centred teaching, translation apparently has no use in communicative teaching. However, this contradicts the idea that both translation and language teaching share the common goal of communication. This article argues that the underpinnings of translation coincide with the mediation skills promoted by CEFR and match the intercultural communicative objectives of EFL. The theories concerning the communicative and intercultural nature of translation will be contrasted with the CEFR guidelines. These results will be analysed to understand the translation-related techniques effectively used in the EFL classroom and discuss the role of translation in task-based intercultural communicative teaching.

La traduzione, in quanto tecnica principale del metodo grammatico-traduttivo, non sembra avere immediata utilità nell'approccio comunicativo, contraddicendo però il fatto che traduzione e didattica delle lingue abbiano nella nella comunicazione un comune obiettivo. In questo articolo i discuterà di come i principi basilari della traduzione coincidano con gli obiettivi del QCER (CEFR) e gli obiettivi interculturali della didattica dell'inglese come lingua straniera. Le teorie sulla natura comunicativa ed interculturale della traduzione verranno confrontate con gli obiettivi del QCER, e i risultati analizzati per comprendere come la traduzione sia impiegata nella didattica dell'inglese e per discutere del ruolo della traduzione nell'approccio comunicativo ed interculturale e nella didattica per task.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation
• intercultural communication
• communicative approach
• EFL
• mediation

KEYWORDS (IT):

• Traduzione
• comunicazione interculturale
• approccio comunicativo
• EFL
• mediazione

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Eleonora Fois is PhD in Philological and Literary Studies and Fellow Researcher in English Language and Translation at the University of Cagliari. In addition to translator training, her research involves the analysis of the processes of cultural negotiation and adaptation closely associated with the translation of languages. Among the cultural domains analysed is theatre translation, with specific studies on Italian translations of Shakespearean plays and contemporary playwrights, and literary translation, with studies on English translations of Grazia Deledda's focused on the cultural rendition of foreign landscape.

Notes

1 Textbooks are also connected to the sidelining of the L1. As Carreres (2014, p. 129) points out, the English-only policy has favoured those publishers producing EFL books written solely in English. It has also contributed to fostering the native speaker myth, namely the belief that only a native speaker of a given language can competently teach that language (Cook, 2009, p. 114). The greatest advantage of L1 in the classroom, however, lies not only in the contrastive analysis of particular structures (Topolska-Pado, 2010, p. 13) but also in helping students develop communicative strategies based on code-switching and translingual exchanges. Speakers’ bi/plurilingual repertoires are recurrent in communicatively effective strategies, but textbooks rarely include practice on the matter (see, for instance, the study on ELT textbooks for Italian upper secondary school by Vettorel, 2018). The L1, then is one of the many tools at the teacher’s disposal. As such, it should not be demonized but selected when needed.

2 Research is perfecting the idea of communicative competence by contrasting it with the notion of communicative performance: the actual demonstration of knowledge in real second language situations and for authentic communicative purposes (Carroll, 1962; Brieke, 1971; Canale & Swain, 1980). Teaching methodology must then address not only communicative competence but also communicative performance (Allwright & Hanks, 2009, p. 49).

3 A key to developing ICC is Intercultural Sensitivity (IS): the individual’s ‘ability to develop emotion towards understanding and appreciating cultural differences that promotes appropriate and effective behaviour in intercultural communication’ (Chen & Starosta, 1997, p. 1).