“Sprinkling Death”: Using the Subversive Humor of Mock-Translation in the Classroom

Abstract

Four students in the third-year undergraduate course CHN 3003: Reading and Translating Chinese at the University of Malta worked together to create a mock-translation of a fast-food menu. This article examines this collaborative task and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses against the theoretical framework of mock-translation, while also taking into account the socio-cultural particularities of the Maltese context. Malta is a small island nation in the Mediterranean and a former British colony. Students at the University of Malta, including those who study Chinese, are often bilingual in English and Maltese (a Semitic language) or another European language. Instructors working in the Chinese-English translation classroom may find the collaborative translation exercise a useful tool for getting students to consider the intersection between theory and practice.