The place of translation in Language Teaching

For a long time the pivotal point of foreign language teaching, translation has been banned from the language classroom for quite a while. Moreover, it has been a frequent object of ridicule by those eager to demonstrate their uncompromising allegiance to modern ways. Nevertheless, it has displayed a remarkable resilience (whether this was necessitated by hard facts of real life, or is the result of the resistance to changes is another matter which deserves to be studied on its own). Translation was abandoned as an option in ESL situations, but not in the state education in many countries. It seems now that the general attitude towards translation has begun to change: those who discuss it in their studies argue that translation is a legitimate pedagogical tool especially in an EFL environment, and claim that it deserves to be rehabilitated (Widdowson 1978:18, Harmer 1991:62, Ellis 1992:46, Bowen, Marks 1994:93; Ur 1996:40). However, they provide little methodological guidance as to how to translate translation into pedagogical practice. The literature on translation deals either with translation theories or translatior’s training and contains only part of relevant information. Only a small number of works are devoted to translation as an aid to teaching and learning (Duff 1989, Atkinson 1993, Edge 1986, Ulrych 1986, Nadstroga 1988, Urgese 1989, Eadie 1999). The aim of this paper is to draw attention to this void and consider the hows and whys of incorporating translation in regular courses in the light of insights contributed by SLA research, language theories and new psychological perspectives on language learning.