Translation description and prescription in academic translation teaching

In many countries, the teaching of translation institutionally vacillates between an academically based education and a mainly practically oriented translator training. With the introduction of the new Bachelor-Master structures, the authorities in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) have clearly opted for an academic Master that will be fully integrated in existing university structures. The development of Translation Studies in the last decades has offered many instruments and approaches for safeguarding the academic basis and diversity of translation teaching. One of those instruments is translation description. Most students think in a very normative way about translation. Especially in a teaching situation, they ask for a prescriptive approach and want to know what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’. Translation description surpasses this dichotomy and opens up a narrow black-and-white thinking. It thus reveals the great variety of strategies and techniques actually used by translators. On the basis of a two-way comparison of the texts (source-target as well as target-source), the descriptive analyses made by the students precede the evaluation. This working procedure sharpens the analytical skills of the translation students. Existing description models as well as terminologies and (online) bibliographies of Translation Studies can be used as tools to provide this translation description with a solid background.

ISBN:9954-0-1184-6

Jaar van publicatie:2008