Beyond the Ivory Tower: Rethinking Translation Pedagogy (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Beyond the ivory tower: Rethinking translation pedagogy ed. by Brian James Baer and Geoffrey S. Koby Shaoxiang Wang Beyond the ivory tower: Rethinking translation pedagogy. Ed. by Brian James Baer and Geoffrey S. Koby. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003. Pp. xvi, 259. ISBN 158811399X. $132 (Hb). Although recent years have witnessed a tremendous growth in the literature on translation, the area of translation pedagogy, described by Jean-René Ladmiral (‘La traduction dans le Cadre de Institution Pegagogique’, Die Neueren Sprachen 76.489–516, 1977) as performance magistrale, remains a somewhat underinvestigated field within the now full-fledged translation studies (TS). Beyond the ivory tower: Rethinking translation pedagogy offers to remedy the situation by providing fresh insights into the ways of establishing close links between theory and practice in translation teaching. The volume consists of twelve papers organized into three parts. The first part centers on translation as process, the second focuses on translation as product, and the last highlights the opportunities and challenges brought about by translation-related technologies. Part 1 begins with Donald Kiraly’s proposed replacement of the traditional teacher-centered, transmissionist approach to translator education with a student-centered socio-constructive one in order to foster translator competence. With a similar goal in mind, Sonia Colina illustrates the need for a research-based teaching model to facilitate communicative translational competence. Judy Wakabayashi explores the pedagogical potential of think-aloud research by applying it to the translation classroom as a diagnostic device and trouble-shooter. In his paper, Alexander Gross suggests that translation should be taught as a form of target language writing. The first article in Part 2 is Julie Johnson’s discussion of the advantages of portfolios as an assessment tool in the translation classroom. Fanny Arango-Keeth and Geoffrey Koby’s article draws our attention to the gap between the evaluation standards and procedures used in academic settings and the workplace [End Page 669] respectively by presenting an analysis of the results of a survey they conducted in 2002, arguing for greater harmonization and coordination between the two. Jonathan Hine documents a multilingual text revision course and shares his findings and experiences by elucidating the structure of the curriculum. With three illustrative workshops, Carol Maier explores the best way to sensitize students to the issue of gender and encourages translators to reflect on and discuss the working of gender in translation practice. Through comparative text analysis, Natalia Olshanskaya compellingly shows one of the many possible ways to teach communicative translation competence. Beginning Part 3, Lynne Bowker demonstrates the possibilities of developing a collaborative approach to translation corpora-building in the classroom setting by drawing on her own experiences. Geoffrey Koby and Brian James Baer endeavor to integrate task-based instruction (TBI) in a translator training program by offering a number of task-based learning modules for use in teaching software localization. Recognizing the disparity between the growing demand for localizers and the availability of relevant translator training programs, Takashi Kosaka and Masaki Itagaki describe two courses for training Japanese localization translators as the models for building a market-driven localization translation curriculum. Touching upon many of the phenomena that currently affect translation pedagogy, this volume provides a valuable opportunity for translation educators to reconceptualize their mission. As such, it makes a significant contribution to translator education. Shaoxiang Wang Fujian Teachers University Copyright © 2006 Linguistic Society of America