Teaching Translation at the Undergraduate Level

an Approach Based on Translation Studies

Abstract

Teaching translation at the undergraduate level is a burgeoning field, but it is challenging partly because of lacking in precedent teaching models. Compared with interpreting training which has increasingly flourished recently among foreign language teaching programs in Japanese universities, translation education has yet to be fairly treated with insights of contemporary linguistic theories. Since rendering one language into another on a written basis tends to be regarded as an old fashioned method in the pedagogy of foreign languages as opposed to a communicative approach, teaching translation itself seems to have been somehow stagnant and underdeveloped. This paper explores a new perspective of teaching translation based on the theory-oriented translation studies by presenting a case study of my translation class at a university in Japan.