Translation exercises in the classroom setting

Abstract

Translation studies, despite some fifty years of educational practice and research on translation, has yet to come up with systematic, empirically supported methods for the education of professional translators. This article briefly outlines a "constructivist" approach to translator education, ilustrated by its application to an experimental translation practice class at the University of Mainz, Germany. The social constructivist approach taken here, based partly on the work of Lev Vygotsky, sees learning essentially as an active process of meaning-making, carried out through collaboration with other members of a community. The implications of this alternative epistemological perspective include the need for a change in the role of teachers: away from the authoritarian transfer of knowledge toward the supportive assistance of a facilitator for students' personal knowledge construction through collaborative, situated interaction. Links are drawn to the deconstructionist approach propagated by Rosemary Arrojo in Brazil, with a view toward fomenting international cooperation in the development of situable systematic approaches to translator education.