5. Your Mother Tongue does Matter Translation in the Classroom and on the Web by Jarek Krajka2004-4, JĘZYK ANGIELSKI, ...

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//-->YOUR MOTHER TONGUE DOES MATTER!TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM AND ON THE WEB [1]byJarek KrajkaDepartment of Applied Linguistics,Maria Curie-Sklodowska University,Lublin, Polandjarek.krajka@wp.plIntroductionLooking back at the history of foreign language teaching, one can notice that there are few issuesthat have raised as much controversy as the use of L1 in the classroom. Within the GrammarTranslation Method, the mother tongue played an extremely prominent role, and very oftenstudents learned about the target language in the source language, with translation being the mostimportant language learning activity. On the other hand, the Direct Method almost forbade theuse of L1, as the teacher's job was to immerse students in the target language, to use L2 in allsituations, obviously, facilitating comprehension with gestures, demonstrations or visuals. Otherlanguage learning methods of the past and the present can be situated somewhere between thesetwo extremes, shifting the focus from Teacher Talking Time (usually in the target language) toStudent Talking Time (not only in the target language, but also in the mother tongue).It seems that in the contemporary classroom there is an important role to play for the mothertongue, and its conscious use by students, orchestrated by the teacher, can lead to significantbenefits in terms of the learning goals. In this context, the present article will be devoted to theissue of translation and its computer applications as part and parcel of the teaching process.With L1 or without it?What is L1 in the classroom? Prodromou (2002) provides a set of metaphors illustrating themeaning of the mother tongue in the language classroom. According to him, L1 is:"1. a drug (though with therapeutic potential, it can damage your health and may becomeaddictive);2. a reservoir (a resource from which we draw);3. a wall (an obstacle to teaching);4. a window (which opens out into the world outside the classroom; if we look through itwe see the students’ previous learning experience, their interests, their knowledge of theworld, their culture);5. a crutch (it can help us get by in a lesson, but it is recognition of weakness);6. a lubricant (it keeps the wheels of a lesson moving smoothly; it thus saves time)."To start with, one could consider some of the reasons why learners decide to use L1 in theclassroom, despite the teacher's efforts to encourage them to communicate in the target languageonly. Harmer (2002) claims that very often learners resort to the mother tongue when the choiceof task is not compatible with their L2 level; as it is natural for them to use L1 to communicate,while the teacher does not create situations that would make it natural for them to use English;since the teacher does not use too much TL and, consequently, Ss feel comfortable to use theirmother tongue as well; finally, as there are different learning styles and abilities that allow someSs to use the TL more easily. Bawcom (2002), in her study on using L1 in the classroom, foundout that in the group of learners under investigation, 36% used the mother tongue for affectivefactors (e.g. sense of identity, security, social interaction); 41% as a way of implementinglearning strategies (e.g. checking comprehension, going over homework); for 18% of learners itwas an example of expediency (e.g. translation of directions for activities and passivevocabulary), while the remaining 5% was unintelligible.In the light of the above, it seems necessary for teachers to channel the mother tongue use intotranslation activities, helping to improve linguistic competence of students, and exploiting thepower of mother tongue and target language use by drawing greater attention to linguisticaccuracy.Translation in a foreign language classroomTranslation is a complex process, and especially some of its aspects needs to be highlighted atthe moment. Meaning is paramount, and the translation should accurately reflect the meaning ofthe original. Moreover, it is the form which should also correspond, of course, often it needs tobe translated as well. The register and style are to be retained, with the translator not influencingthe meaning by often unintentional choice of language structures. What is more, the influence ofthe source language, especially in the area of translating idioms and collocations, has to becontrolled and limited.Despite strong arguments for not using L1 in the language classroom (see Atkinson, 1993, Duff,1989: 5), translation can be a vital resource for a language class, since its limited use can have apowerfully positive effect on many learners, especially if their previous experience has had verylittle L2 use and they have to be introduced gradually to the target language environment. Also,as Deller (2003) adds, the mother tongue should be used as a resource to notice differences andsimilarities between the two languages; to let learners develop and produce their own materials,including their own tests; to encourage spontaneity and fluency; to have a beneficial effect ongroup dynamics and to receive ongoing and meaningful feedback from learners. Duff (1989)adds that translation helps to better understand the influence of one language on the other, it isnatural for people to translate in real life, translation activities invite speculation, discussion andevaluation of answers (of which there are rarely 'right' and 'wrong' ones), finally, help developaccuracy, clarity and flexibility of expression in the language. Finally, providing the rationale forthe introduction of translation into the teaching process, Owen (2003) says that it is useful toincrease learner awareness, not only of grammar but also of the pragmatic and stylistic devicesand their effects. In this way, learners are empowered with a fuller understanding of what the L2is capable of, in what ways it is similar to, or different from, their own language. Rather than anobstacle to real language use, translation might be viewed as a way of fine-tuning the language tobe used in given situations and conditions.In order to make a translation activity a purposeful element of a language lesson, there are somenecessary precautions to be taken (after Duff, 1989: 9):••••all students should be equally involved in the task;the activities ought to contain as much oral translation as possible, with writing to be usedas individual follow-up;the material needs to be short and varied, with longer texts reserved for out-of-class workon higher levels of learning;there must be time-limits set, in order to prevent students from getting stuck and to allowthe time for discussion and feedback.Translation opportunities on the NetNowadays, language learners, be it children, teenagers or adults, are more than likely to havecontact with the target language out of class when surfing the Web. Thus, what they need to beprovided with is a set of language tools that would help them make the meaning out if theydesperately need it. For that purpose, one of many online translation services can be used, whichtake the message typed in, connect to an online dictionary site and produce a translated version.Of course, what learners must be made aware of (for instance, in a sample in-class activity) isthat such online machine translators will not produce a perfectly accurate text, but rather comeup with a piece of language that will allow a learner to make out the meaning on their own. Thus,they cannot serve as models for language work or as suitable homework help, and must besubject to human polishing in order to produce a text of satisfactory quality. When the sourcelanguage and the target language are as substantially different as English and Polish, a machine-translated text may produce the output which is barely comprehensible, with problems ofinflections, multiple meanings, idioms and multi-word constructions. On the other hand, suchrough output can be useful to give students practice in editing, correcting, deciding onappropriate lexis use or inflections choice, which can be demonstrated in the activities givenbelow.The examples of services translating English-Polish or Polish-English are PoltranTransNow/Polish/transnow.htm).On the other hand, with students learning two foreignlanguages such as English and German, French or Spanish, there are a number of other servicesproviding automatic translation within these language pairs: Altavista's Babel Fish translatorworldlingo_translator.html)similar services, go toAt the same time, the services provided above allow users to translate not only individual words,sentences or blocks of text, but also entire websites. This can be done by going to one of theservices given above (Babel Fish, Dictionary.com, Free Translation, World Lingo or iTools),finding a "Translate a Web page" box (or similar), typing the URL of the page one wants totranslate, selecting the from and to languages and pressing "Translate". In order to facilitate theprocess, it is advisable to have two windows of the Internet browser open, go to a translationservice in one and the page to be translated in the other, then copy the URL of the page and pasteit to the translation service. Another reason why both the source page and the target page shouldbe open is that due to the fact that the translation is automatic, non-contextual and prone togrammatical inaccuracy, there may be the need for the source text to be used as reference inorder to make the meaning out.letting surfers view websites in the language of their choice, machine-translated from a sourcelanguage to a target language, however, without the need to use two windows to translate thepage with the help of some online translator. When going to the pagebin/tsail(orand clicking "T-Sail"), one types the starting page in the"Start Sail'n at" box, then chooses a language combination from the drop-down box below,finally presses "T-Sail". The page will be machine-translated, and then the user can click links onthe translated page with the next pages also automatically machine-translated. Of course, it mustbe kept in mind that since the process demands connecting to a translation service, processing thewebsite and giving back the result, it can take a while to have a page translated.Adding translation opportunities to a website is another possibility for enriching the languageclassroom (see, for instance, Altavista's Babel Fish atand click "AddBabel Fish translation to your site" at the bottom of the page, but NOT "Add translation to yourpersonal or business site" on the right). Thanks to that, surfers visiting the website can translatepassages of text or entire websites among many languages without the need to connect to anonline translation service. Another functionality is that users are able to translate the webpagevisited with just one click. In order to enable that, one should copy a code given on the pageopen the class website in a webpageeditor, add a code, save the page and upload it to the server.Translating emails is another language opportunity provided on the Web (e.g., WorldLingo'semail_translation.html),which enables one to send and receive email messages (in this case, in12 languages with Polish, unfortunately, not being one of them). Thus, to test the service andhave one's email message translated from English to, for instance, Chinese, Dutch, German,Greek or Italian, go toemail_translation.html;type in the relevant fields in the form provided (your name, email andlanguage, recipient's name, email and language, subject and message), finally, click "Send". Inorder to evaluate the translation capacity, it is advisable to send an email from one email addressto the other the teacher has.A similar email translation service is T-Mail E-Mail (go tothen click "T-Mail" again). This is a standard Web-based email service, which provides users with free-of-charge email accounts accessible on the Web after inputting the login and the password,however, apart from sending mail one can choose the language the message will be translated toand sent to a recipient. Thus, to use the service, go to(orand then click "T-Mail"), click "Registered Users: Login" if you havealready set the account up, then log in with your login and password; or click "New Users: T-Mail" to register for this free service. Once logged in, create a message, put in the addressee,then choose the target language and the source language. A good thing to do is to include yourown email address in the "Cc:" field (Carbon Copy – send a copy to somebody else), so that youcould see the translated output as it goes to the addressee.Going one step further, learners practising other languages through English could use theopportunity of machine-translated chat. In this case, a user enters a real-time language translatingchatroom, and can have their message translated to the language that other user/s speak in thechatroom (see Babelchat,or Word2Word Translating Chat,orand then choose"Word2Word Translating Chat" in the box and click "Take Me To"). In the latter case, onentering the chatroom by clicking either of the two chat entrances, one needs to adjust the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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