As with all language activities in the classroom, you need to consider what it is that you would like your students to achieve with the particular activity that you have chosen. So, before introducing a translation activity, you should ask yourself the following:

• What do I want to do? What are the aims of the activity?
  • To test/develop students' command of the foreign language (FL)?
    • lexis (terminology, puns, false friends, acronyms, etc);
    • grammatical knowledge;
    • written conventions, registers, etc;
    • socio-cultural knowledge.
  • To test/develop students' aural/oral skills and their ability to communicate in a particular context?
    • different accents;
    • different genres/registers;
    • communicative strategies.
  • To test/develop students' reading skills in the FL?
    • acquire reading strategies;
    • identify text types/genres/linguistic variations;
    • develop a critical attitude.
  • To test/develop students' writing skills in L1/FL?
    • identify written conventions;
    • produce different text types.
  • To test/develop students' ability to move between L1 and the FL?
    
    
• What do I want the students to achieve?
  • Demonstrate command of a particular aspect of the FL?
    • vocabulary/grammar/syntax?
    • textual conventions.
  • Demonstrate awareness of linguistic/cultural differences?
  • Demonstrate understanding of an FL text?
  • Communicate effectively in the FL?
  • Be creative in the FL?

Once you have defined your objectives and the learning outcomes (what you want your students to do/achieve by the end of the task/programme), it will be easier to choose appropriate texts and activities. It will also be easier to assess your students' work according to your initial objectives. It is important to remember here that translation exercises should not be considered as an end in themselves but as a medium, a process towards the achievement of the particular outcome(s) you have defined for the task. This means that emphasis should not be on the production of a 'correct' text but on the process. Why did the student manage/not manage to produce a satisfactory text? What were the problems? What went wrong and why? This type of activity will therefore be student-focused and will help to raise their awareness of linguistic, textual and cultural differences between L1 and the FL.

It is important that the student knows about the purpose of the translation she/he is about to do. The translation brief is therefore crucial for the production of a functionally relevant text, a text which is going to fulfil the customers' needs. The same applies in a classroom situation.

Here are some examples:

For beginners:

A friend of yours, who is travelling to Spain, wants to book a hotel using an Internet site. All the information is in Spanish and your friend cannot understand it. Read the information and tell your friend about the facilities that this hotel offers.

For intermediate/advanced levels:

A Spanish chain of hotels wants to advertise abroad. Write an ad for the hotel to appear in a tourist brochure in the UK.

For advanced levels

You are a reporter for a local paper. You have seen this interesting/controversial article in a foreign (Spanish/French/German, etc) newspaper. Produce an English version of the article to appear in your paper.

Reflective Task 4

Activity 8

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