Translation Competence In A Multilingual Class: Approaches Applied And Problems To Be Solved

Abstract

Translation competence in multilingual classes requires several teaching strategies and approaches to be taken into account. Students obtaining Master’s degree are mainly interested in developing their English for Academic and Scientific Purposes (EASP) as the students have to publish and share their research results with the global academic community. It is a regular practice to create multilingual groups in RUDN where Russian-speaking students are mingled with their peers from different world countries. The students can speak some languages including their mother-tongue which is not necessarily Russian. Generally, Russian and English are two languages serving the educational purposes at RUDN. Students from different countries (both Russian and non-natives) learn EASP and study in one group when they acquire their Master’s degree. Teaching and learning English in the multilingual and multicultural class start from comprehensive analysis of the students’ multilingualism. Theory and practice of translation from/to English/Russian is trained and could be applied in some cases to other pairs of languages. Translation competence builds to scientific text comprehension. A teacher should be aware of students’ multicultural background as well as of their English and Russian CEFR level to train translation competence in EASP. Academic and scientific varieties of European languages, including Russian, possess a lot of common characteristics which facilitate the teaching process. However, it is the teacher’s task to tailor the course to achieve educational goals. Translation competence bridges other disciplines due to the scientific and academic lexis operating in different scientific discourses, and is related to the scientific integrity.