TRANSLATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING: FROM A SUB ROSA PRACTICE INTO A BEDROCK OF GLOBAL EDUCATION POLICY

Abstract

Ever since the Grammar Translation Method has been outlawed in mainstream language education policy, translation as a tool for language learning and teaching has been ostracized for a variety of reasons other than pedagogical. However, with the currently growing multilingualism and multiculturalism, there is an ideal opportunity to engage in true cultural dialog and democratic citizenship. The translation is justifiably an essential step in the process of global identity construction. Today, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages with its Companion Volume with New Descriptors for Mediation provides a blueprint for installing mediation as a proxy for translation in the learning and teaching of English as a foreign language. In this regard, mediation is conceived of as a set of translatorial skills that are highly required by today's world citizens in day-to-day life situations. Therefore, the foreign language classroom has to provide for the development of language learners as social agents whose mission is to establish and maintain communication across linguistic and cultural barriers. Within this perspective, this paper joins the initiative to close the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological divide between translation studies and foreign language learning and teaching methodologies. In doing so, it purports to reassess the validity of translation as a pedagogical activity in the foreign language classroom in light of the mediation descriptors provided by the Council of Europe in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL).

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