Teaching Translation in a Changing Environment: A Few Introductory Remarks

Dr K M Sherrif Reader, Dept. of English University of Calicut.

Translation is one of the most prolific human activities today. Multilingualism is becoming a way of life, even if the immediate reason for it is the facilitation of market forces and not an affirmation of faith in cultural plurality. Multilingual computer operating systems are being developed at tremendous pace. The net is also turning multilingual in a large way. The European Union is already operating with twenty three official languages. 1 It is quite likely that in India too, at least the major languages (those which have been included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution) 2 will be declared official languages at the national level as in the European Union, besides English and Hindi, in the near future. Multilingualism as official policy has created the need for a large pool of translators who can effectively handle the increasing demands of translation. English teachers in India, often being bilingual in the classroom out of the demands of their profession, are in an ideal position to develop the translation skills of their students. In some states in India undergraduates are already required to take up translation exercises as part of their requirements, sometimes even for papers/courses in their first languages. Thomas Carruthers dictum that a teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary is gaining wide acceptability today. The role of the teacher is being increasingly limited to that of a facilitator or counselor. Developments in educational and communication technology have tended to marginalize the teacher further. Traditional classroom teaching, which posits the teacher as an omniscient mentor and the students as empty vessels or blank slates, is on its way out, even in societies which are yet to accept social constructivist theories on learning. To say that translators are born, not made is not different from saying that doctors and engineers are born, not made. Translation skills have to be developed and perfected like any other. Even perfectly bilingual or bicultural translators have to hone their skills by tuning in to the rapidly changing usages in various discourses, as well as the play of subtle ideological nuances in the source and target cultures. In the new learning environment the teacher does not teach these skills but facilitates their learning. A few basic requirements for both learners and teachers of translation today may be named here. The first being the conviction that all languages are equally complex and equally expressive in a fundamental way. This is in line with the widely accepted current theories on universal grammar and compatibility of languages. The second being an awareness, however rudimentary, of current theoretical debates on such fundamental theoretical propositions like equivalence and translatability. The third, if the aim is the creation of a pool of practicing translators, is the assurance that the subjects possess the kind of linguistic creativity which is basically not any different from the one which writers possess. Ultimately, as it is being increasingly recognized, translation is only a form of rewriting.

Today the Internet often comes to the aspiring translators rescue. With the availability of broadband connectivity audio and video clips of chosen material can be downloaded in a matter of seconds. Facilities like video-conferencing can be used for exposure to language in its natural settings as well as for translation exercises. The transformation of the net into a fully operational multi-lingual medium has opened up vast avenues of opportunity before the learners. The role of the teacher here, as well as in the selection of traditional reading material, is limited to that of a counselor and, later, to that of an evaluator of the students performance. But, however limited the actual physical presence of the teacher is in the classroom, the teachers tasks become more demanding in the collection, analysis and classification of study materials as well as in the diligent, precise evaluation of the students performance. No smart classroom can completely obliterate the teacher. In translating texts, both oral and written, the teacher has to shoulder the demanding task of sensitizing the students to cultural relativity, the differences in the ideological parameters fixed by different cultures, as well as the subtleties of the contending ideologies espoused by the different sub-cultures within the same culture. This, of course, involves an ideological consensus between the teacher and the students, which cannot be imposed from above, but has to develop spontaneously in a given social context. Although it is generally accepted that there can be no universally applicable set of rules for translation, translators would know from experience that there is a large area of convergence in the strategies employed to translate texts which have broad ideological and/or aesthetic affinities. The notion that the ideal translator should be bi-lingual and bicultural is still valid. But knowing a language is one thing; knowing something about it is another. Similarly one can live in a culture/society as a fully participant member, yet know very little about its dynamics. The confidence of the native informer breaks down as soon the queries move from instinctive awareness to abstract categories of language or culture. A translator cannot do without an in-depth awareness of the dynamics of the source and target cultures, and of how they organize language in their various discourses. This applies even to translators who specialize in particular discourses or subjects (e.g., literature, advertising) because discourses in any culture are not watertight compartments, and intrude into one another randomly. To put it in simpler terms a translator needs to have an exceptionally high level of general knowledge. There are a few texts like Peter Newmarks Approaches to Translation3 and Douglas Robinosons Becoming a Translator: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Translation4 which ought to serve as basic learning/teaching material in the classroom. Even Eugene A Nidas Towards a Theory of Translation,5 its outdated theoretical basis not withstanding, can be a useful text in todays translation classroom. With the availability of smart classrooms, the notion that translation software is high funta stuff has to change. Besides the use of multidimensional online dictionaries and translation memory software, curriculum planners cannot shy away from introduction Computer Aided Translation, at least in rudimentary forms in the classroom. Jokes about the howlers produced by computers set to translate texts have become stale.

Yorick Wills estimates the accuracy of computer aided translation (before post-editing) to be 70% or more.6 The Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci remarked that all men are philosophers.7 One can say, perhaps with more justification, that all men (and women too) are translators. If language is an innate human faculty, as Chomsky and other rationalist linguists claim, so is translation. Few people who use more than one language have not taken, at some point in their lives, the role of a translator. Children in immigrant families act as interpreters between their parents and sons/daughters of the soil. Learning to translate longer and formally constructed texts is only to hone the skills one possesses innately, although, as with other skills, all of us cannot hope to become expert translators. Notes

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http://ec.europa.eu/education/languages/languages-of-europe/doc135_en.htm. May 8, 2009. Language in India. Vol 2: 2 April 2002. http://www.languageinindia.com/april2002/constitutionofindia.html 3 Peter Newmark. Approaches to Translation. New York: Pergamon, 1981. 4 Douglas Robinson. Becoming a Translator: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Translation. 5 Eugene A Nida. Towards a Science of Translation. Leiden: E J Brill, 1964. 6 Yorick Wills. Machine Translation: Its Scope and Limits. New York: Springer, 2009. 7 Antonio Gramsci. Culture and Ideological Hegemony. Jeffrey C Alexander and Steven Seidman (Ed.) Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. P.47.