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Article published In: Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts
Vol. 4:2 (2018) ► pp.223–247

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Stepping into others’ shoes

Beginner students as cultural mediators

 | Akita International University
Published online: 26 April 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ttmc.00011.gyo
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine possible uses of translation in language teaching in the beginner-level language classroom. In particular, it analyses students’ performance in the translation of e-mails of refusal from Japanese to English before and after a series of five study sessions. The results show a significant change in students’ performance before and after the sessions. Before the study sessions, students largely focused on the transfer of the referential meanings of words and syntactic structure. In contrast, after the sessions, students took into consideration a range of the factors at stake in translation, including the relationship between the writer and reader, the nature of e-mails, and the writer’s intentions/feelings. Based on these results, this paper argues that (1) translation activities enable beginner students to act as cultural mediators between the writer of the source text and the reader of the target text, by mitigating potentially offensive acts to the reader; and (2) they encourage students to be more conscious of their choice of words and of the consequences of those choices.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Translation in language teaching and the beginner level language classroom
  • 3.Current study
    • 3.1Research question, participants, and setting
    • 3.2Data collection and analysis
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Changes in translation
    • 4.2Changes in translation process
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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