Some Insights into the Teaching of Translation

Abstract

In the last few years, great attention has been paid to the field of translation. In fact, Translation Studies has been fully established as a discipline in its own right. However, professionals in translation have not been overly concerned with the actual teaching of translation. The didactics of this discipline has mainly consisted in the mechanical manipulation of a variety of texts, together with boring grammar practice. In most cases a structural and/or a contrastive approach has been adopted and translation as an act of communication and a cognitive process has been almost disregarded. Consequently, the results obtained and the areas covered are relatively limited. This paper starts first by considering the nature of translation and its role in the Spanish educational system and then goes on to present and describe in detail a series of activities, which have already been tried out with a group of first year English Philology students, as simple examples of creative translation teaching.