Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

The content of the translation lessons

While 3rd year students were introduced to the interlingual stage and, to a lesser degree, to the cultural stage in all their aspects, 4^th year students were introduced to the interpretive stage only. The teaching lessons for the latter stage covered the discursive points in Hatim’s multi-stage translation curriculum design, namely, text type, genre and discourse. They also covered register analysis. For each of these points, appropriate source texts were carefully selected. Many of these texts came from Hatim’s book (1997b) English / Arabic / English Translation: A Practical Guide and Working with Texts (1997) by Carter, et al.
Following is a tentative course curriculum, which illustrates the content of the translation lessons used with 3^rd and 4^th year students, along with the teaching method pursued. This course curriculum should be regarded as a synthesis of the illuminating proposals made by Reiss (1976), Chau (1984), Hatim & Mason (1990) (1997), Holmes (1972),
Baker (1992), and House (1997).
Underlying this synthesis and presentation is a strong desire to present to the student material that is cumulative, meaningful and confidence- building.

1. 
   Translation course curriculum: 3^rd year level.
   

1. 
   Pre-translation activities:
   

x Definitions of translation
x Introduction to translation studies: theoretical, descriptive and applied
x Reading efficiency training: comprehension processes.
x Précis-writing

2. 
   Interlingual content:
   
   1. 
      Aim: to develop bilingual competence through an understanding of the nature of human language, the special features of English and Arabic, the lexical and grammatical similarities and contrasts between English & Arabic.
      
   2. 
      Content:
      

x General linguistics
x Special features of English & Arabic (writing system, historical linguistics…)
x Contrastive grammar (English / Arabic): parts of speech, word order…
x Word level translation:
. lexical meaning: referential, expressive, presupposed and
evoked meaning
. semantic fields
x Above word level translation : collocations , idioms and fixed expressions

3. 
   Teaching method: three-stage objectives:
   
   1. 
      A preparatory stage: introducing the content items above
      
   2. 
      A developmental stage: learning to translate rationally ( lexico-grammatical translation strategies)
      

. translation equivalence
. borrowing, paraphrasing, explaining
. translating and semantic fields
. translating idioms and fixed expressions

3. 
   An application stage: practising the techniques used in the developmental stage through:
   

. comparing translations
. assessing translations
. translating words in sentences
. translating collocational phrases and idiomatic expressions

3. 
   Intercultural content:
   
   1. 
      Aim: to develop bicultural competence through raising students’ awareness of cultural differences between language communities and sensitizing the student to the relation between culture and language and its relevance to translation.
      
   2. 
      Content:
      

x Language and culture
x Cultural meaning
x Sapir-Worf hypothesis
x Cultural distance and overlap between Arabic and English:
. ecology
. religious thinking
. customs

3. 
   Teaching method: three-stage objectives
   
   1. 
      A preparatory stage: introducing the content items above
      
   2. 
      A developmental stage:
      

x Learning to deal with cultural equivalence through some techniques:
. cultural substitution
. omission
. explaining
. adapting
x Distinguishing dynamic vs. formal translation and overt vs. covert translation

3. 
   An application stage: practising the techniques used in the developmental stage through
   

x Comparing translations
x Criticizing translations
x Translating words in sentences x Translating cultural collocations x Translating proverbs

2. 
   Translation course curriculum: 4^th year level Interpretive content:
   

1. 
   Aim: to develop students’ competence in interpreting the communicative, pragmatic and semiotic factors in the ST and re-employ these factors in the TT.
   
2. 
   Content:
   

x Register
x Text types

x Genre
x Discourse

3. 
   Teaching method: three-stage objectives
   
   1. 
      A preparatory stage: introducing the content items above
      
   2. 
      A developmental stage: learning to use House’s text analysis model and Hatim & Mason’s contrastive discourse model.
      
   3. 
      An application stage: translating texts using House’s text analysis model and Hatim & Mason’s contrastive discourse model.
      

6.