Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

Kiraly’s approach

Having covered Kussmaul’s pedagogic model, Kiraly’s approach (1995), which constitutes the second main process-oriented translation pedagogy method, will now be examined. Kiraly also defends the need for a translation pedagogy that is descriptive (based on a description of translation processes) while taking into account the pragmatic aspect of translating. For Shreve, p. XII in Kiraly 1995:

Translation is both an observable social-communicative and a hidden cognitive activity. A great deal of what goes on in translation occurs hidden away; translation processes are not available for direct scrutiny. We have based much of our current translation pedagogy on incomplete, and in many cases incorrect understandings of translation. We desperately need to understand these hidden processes. (XII in Kiraly 1995)

Kiraly ascribes the problems which beset translation teaching to the existence of a “pedagogical gap” in translator education. He, thus, proposes a two-dimensional social and cognitive approach to translation activity and combines this with the results of a case study that uses Talk- Aloud Protocols (TAPs). His main purpose in all this is to develop “a model of translation processes to serve as a frame of reference for translation instruction.”

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