“Who polluted the Potomac?” The translation and implementation of a US environmental story in Brazilian and Turkish classrooms

Abstract

In this study we examine how elementary teachers in Brazil and Turkey approached the translation and subsequent classroom implementation of an instructional activity that promotes environmental awareness through a combination of student role playing and teacher oral delivery of an environmental story about river pollution. A discourse analysis showed that translation into Portuguese was literal, an approach that fostered a classroom implementation that emphasized detached transmission of knowledge (the teacher frequently interrupted her delivery to provide textual, contextual and recontextualizing information to students). In contrast, translation into Turkish was free, that is, with many modifications that led to a decontextualized and detached text. Implementation of this text was focused on the creation of student involvement, being dominated by oral strategies such as religious analogies (heaven and hell), and parallel repetitions of statements of shared guilt. Based on these findings, it was concluded that neither translation promoted an equivalent form of environmental instruction (i.e., involved transmission of environmental knowledge). Furthermore, an argument is made that effective translation requires that original and translated curricula foster analogous levels of involvement (or detachment) as well as equivalent forms of classroom relationships and social roles (pragmatic equivalence).