The translation turn: a communicative approach to translation in the language classroom

Abstract

What is it? Translation, explicitly or implicitly, has been a constant presence in the teaching and learning of languages throughout the ages. It may therefore seem surprising that it should find a place in a report on innovative pedagogies. While translation has indeed been used for centuries for the purpose of language learning, there is no doubt that recent approaches in the area of language and translation pedagogy have helped re-conceptualise – and re-operationalise – translation in radically new ways. For decades, translation had been identified with the grammar translation method, and decried as incompatible with a communicative approach. In the last two decades, however, we have seen a thorough re-examination of the role of translation in language teaching and learning. A range of factors have contributed to this trend, among them, the questioning of the monolingual principle in language pedagogy, extensive developments in the area of audiovisual translation, exciting innovations in the field of professional translation didactics, the huge success of translation-based digital platforms such as Duolingo, and, crucially, the introduction of the notion of mediation in the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR, 2001), later expanded in the Companion volume (CEFR, 2018).