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BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF TEACHING TRANSLATION AND INTEGRATED
ENGLISH:
PROBLEMS, CHALLENGES AND PRACTICES
Bozorov Zokir,
Teacher of the Samarkand State institute of Foreign Languages
Key words
: competitive personnel, talented young people, young scientist, scientific
research, CEFR, translation studies, descriptor.
Globalization has become a synonym
for commoditization of work, including
knowledge
work.
In
this
framework,
universities should be the place for continuing
education,
incubators
of
new
ideas,
approaches and solutions. Unfortunately, in
our experience as students first, then as
professional translators and localizers, and
finally as trainers and teachers, we observed
that, especially over the last few years,
translation schools in some countries have
become sterile conservatories for accepted
ideas, and the level of expertise offered by
graduates is far from the realities and
requirements of the workplace. This does not
mean that translation schools should churn
out instantly productive professionals like so
many human widgets, yet we believe that
students should not be considered only
diploma products.
The development of new information
and communication society influences an ever
changing translators‘ professional reality that
requires
almost
constant
updating
of
knowledge and skills. The survey of
practicing translators concerning the realities
of their work and their training at the
universities has indicated that after graduating
university almost two thirds of the skills
needed for work in this profession are being
acquired by them using the method of trial
and error. Thus, the proper understanding of
professional competence of translators and its
components
are
very
important.
The
professional competence of a translator
should be determined on basis of the legal,
regulatory, certifying documentation and
professiogram analysis.
Having analyzed different approaches to
the translator‘s professional competence
definition and given the modern society
demands to a translator, we have defined the
professional competence of a translator as a
multicomponential structure consisting of a
number
of
professionally
determined
competencies,
namely
linguistic,
sociocultural, information and technological,
operational,
psychological,
intellectual,
pragmatic, text forming, semantic, projective
and the main competency – the translation
one. [1,1].
Thus the translators‘ training programs
should be focused on formation and
development
of
professional
translator
competence through the development of all
the professionally important competencies
determined by the peculiarities of a profession
and modern information and economic
society demands.
The teacher teaches students how not be
at loss in real life situations, and helps them to
build strategies to deal with whatever comes
their way. The class changes from a teacher-
fronted passive mass to a place of activities.
Instruction has its goal to make the student a
self-sufficient problem-solver. Students are
discouraged to be passive receivers of the
information transmitted to them from the
teacher or the textbooks. They will otherwise
end up focusing only to the exam, trying to
devise strategies to pass it with the minimum
effort and maximum profit.
Gaming is a fundamental ingredient in
learning, and to help students achieve a
professional-like level of autonomy and
expertise they should go through experience
by being involved in the collaborative
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undertaking of authentic translation projects
for real customers. Nevertheless, while
newspaper texts are actually rare on the
translation market they are still the all-but-
exclusive practice material in classes. [1,2].
The results achieved so far confirm the
soundness
of
the
approach,
and
the
accomplishment of the educational goals: the
rate of abandonment is next to zero; students
are mostly enthusiastic in their comments in
the questionnaires they are asked to fill
anonymously at the end of courses, and the
placement rate is largely satisfactory.
Computer-assisted
translation
is
increasingly made the object of study
nowadays. The computer-assisted translation
course is aimed at introducing students to a
working methodology different from ―Word
and dictionary‖ and based on translation tools
as an integral and indivisible part of the
translation process. [1,3]. Therefore, it is
important for students to learn about the
industry, understand and evaluate their
working environment, mature a teamwork
attitude, and meet the deadlines, while getting
accustomed to identify the technical aspects
and skills to develop. In this way, students
can face a non-traumatic impact with the ―real
world‖, while a first-time approach to
computer-assisted translation can help the
teacher take advantage of a total absence of
habits and prejudices affecting long-time
translation professionals. This makes it
possible to integrate translation tools in the
working process, and develop an unbiased
view of a project.
The first step is to encourage students
not to be in awe of and suffer from computer
and software tools, possibly for poor
rehearsal. Therefore, it is pivotal to foster a
collaborative approach by setting up working
groups
whose
members
are
able
to
compensate each other for weak points, and
exploit the little time available at best. The
working strategy comes from the experience
in training the translators where being
acquainted with each other helps cooperation,
and cooperation helps initiative and learning.
Teamwork cannot be taught, but is more and
more widespread in the workplace. Individual
skills should therefore be used and students
should be invited to rely on each other to
solve the problems in the classroom positively
moving the focus from the teacher to the class
team.
The next step consists in reviewing a
ready-made work with a translation tool. The
translation is chosen from those done during
the course of specialized translation. Pros and
cons of computer-assisted translation are
discussed, together with the texts that are best
suited for processing with translation tools.
Working strategies are finally evaluated that
would have been faster and convenient. At
this stage the development of term bases,
translation memories, and specialized corpora
is also suggested.
To be a successful and efficient
translator nowadays means not only to
possess
linguistic
and
translational
competence. The advents of technology and
the new forms of translation which have
emerged in the past twenty years have
transformed the way translator‘s competence
should be understood.
In our experience, the need for a
course book which would cover the most
important areas of translators‘ preparation for
their future profession was so urgent that the
decision was taken to create an experimental
book to teach students written translation on
the selected texts belonging to different areas
of human activity so that students could
acquire necessary practical skills to translate
such texts faithfully in a short time.
As the English language is considered
an international language, great attention is
paid to learn it in all parts of the world, in
particular
Uzbekistan
is
performing
significant attempts on the improvement of
English as a second language at universities.
To be more precise, the Presidential Decree
#1875 (2012.)
―Measures
on improvement of
learning foreign languages‖ makes essential
progress on the teaching the English language
in all educational directions of Uzbekistan.
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Moreover, on the fulfillment of
resolution PD #1875 ―Measures on
improvement of learning foreign languages‖
(2012) several works are being carried out in
the Uzbek State World Languages University
providing that creating fully English speaking
atmosphere inside and outside the class,
supporting lessons with methodological
requirements and needed materials and etc. In
addition to this, since CEFR (The Common
European Framework of Reference) aims to
encourage language learners to think about
what they do when communicating, to think
about what they can do to help themselves
and others to learn a language better and
claims that how effective it is to check
students‘ knowledge, a demand achieving C1
level is set for the graduates of the USWLU.
As a result, students‘ motivation and
anticipation on learning English has increased
more significantly than before.
Like other testing systems, all CEFR
levels include four major skills which are
listening, speaking, reading, writing and the
development of these four skills is one of the
main necessities in learning English. But
sometimes these skills are not developed
enough because of some factors such as the
number of students per class, the lack of
learning resources and not enough teaching
facilities. As a result, students face some
problems, specifically in oral communication.
When they begin to express their opinions,
they often use isolated non-academic words
and disconnected sentences make their speech
poor and meaningless. As speaking skill
requires performing the ability of expressing
speech with fluency, accuracy and demanding
use of academic vocabulary, most students
find it rather challenging.
To meet this challenge, first of all, the
reasons of abovementioned problems‘ causes
should be identified. The first concern is that
students use English more frequent only
inside the class and less outside the class.
Furthermore, students have limited time to
learn English in class and they still do not
have enough encouragement to practice
English outside the class to get familiar with
English. And this leads to problems that make
students come across hurdles to communicate
in English. The second concern to be
mentioned
is
that most teachers
get
accustomed to exaggerating more grammar
focused
approaches,
translation
based
exercises and learning new words instead of
adopting
students
to
implement
their
knowledge to interact one another in English.
Doctor Brown says: ―In interaction students
can use all they possess of the language, all
they have learned or casually absorbed in real
life exchanges‖( Brown, D. Teaching by
principles: An interactive approach to
language pedagogy). This quote addresses
that interaction is an important clue to
improve students‘ speaking skills and it gives
them the opportunity to demonstrate what
they can do in English.
It is obvious that interaction is the
basis of human communication and all
elements of communication are involved.
Therefore, in order to avoid problems
emphasized above and achieving long-lasting
progress on improving students‘ speaking
skills, it is essential for teachers to create
positive environment to encourage language
learners‘ interaction so that they can share
their ideas, opinions without feeling afraid of
making mistakes. In this way students can
carry out communicating tasks in an effective
way as well. As Willis states: ― Creating a
low stress atmosphere and using the language
for real purposes are ways to get meaningful
communication
and
through
interaction
learners have the chance to acquire discourse
skills, the essential conditions for effective
language learning, such as exposure, use and
motivation. With this view of language, task-
based learning offers many advantages and
the development
and improvement of
speaking skills‖.
While
teaching
speaking
at
universities, we aim to apply task-based and
interactive learning on students. When
conducting speaking lessons that we teach at
university we try to design lessons that will
motivate students to speak without stopping
and hesitating as it is an essential requirement
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in the process of speaking. To be more
accurate, we accomplish this task by
presenting different methods such as group
work, pair work acting role plays, engaging
them in argumentative class discussions and
debates, providing students appropriate films
in English origin, giving various presentations
to present in front of audience. All these
approaches let students develop a set of
discourse strategies such as opening and
closing a conversation introducing a topic,
sharing opinions and creating natural English
speaking environment. Also, students have
the opportunity to interact in different
situations in different groups and audiences.
Communication in the classroom was
the
practical
implication
for
both
perspectives. But, if we focus only on the
communicative perspective on learning, we
may draw the conclusion that involvement in
communication is sufficient in itself for
learning and that we shouldn‘t make any use
at all of traditional techniques such as
explanations, drills or question- and- answer
practice. This has often been called the
‗strong‘
version
of
communicative
perspective on language, on the other hand,
still leaves open the possibility that teachers
might present and practice individual items in
a communicative context before or after
students use them for communication. This
has often been called the ‗weak‘ point of
communicative language teaching.
Changes in policy and rhetoric are of
course easy to formulate, but the practical
changes which they entail are often more
problematic. Within a short period, teachers
have been expected to develop new practical
skills for classroom teaching change how they
evaluate students, develop the ability to adopt
textbooks, use modern technology and
improve their own language proficiency. To
implement these new practical demands, they
have had to make major changes in attitude
and approach: to change their conceptions of
their own role from that of a transmitter of
knowledge to that of a multirole educator and
to change their conception of language
learning from one based on knowledge
acquisition to
one
based on holistic
development of competence. There are some
problems which are related especially to the
domain of communicative activities in which
student exchange messages which the teacher
or with each other, and include:
-
Classroom management is demanding,
especially with large classes, and teachers
may fear losing control. Unpredictable
communication may take excessive demands
on the language skills of teachers who
themselves have had limited experience of
communicating in English.
-
Pair or group work requires teachers to
develop new organizational skills and adopt a
less overtly dominant role in the classroom.
-
In such work, without contrast monitoring
students may communicate in the mother
tongue or use only minimal English, rather
than extending their English competence.
These conceptions also support the traditional
view of teachers as transmitters of knowledge
rather than as facilitators who try to develop
learner independence. Teachers often face a
contradiction between an official public
policy which advocates CLT and a pencil-
and-paper examination system which tests
discrete items.
-
As a result they often face resistance both
from students and from parents, for whom
examinations results are understandably of
paramount importance.
These and other accounts together
with experiences such as those mentioned in
the previous section, indicate that as a ready-
made package of ideas and classroom
techniques which applied anywhere, CLT has
now experienced the same fate as the
proclaimed ‗best methods‘ of the past.
However, it still provides a conceptual
framework centered on the need to orient our
teaching toward learners communicative goals
to design meaningful experiences which lead
toward these goals. Also the specific ideas
techniques that it has generated have enriched
the repertoire that teachers can draw as they
develop their own context sensitive pedagogy.
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References
1.
Постановление Президента Республики Узбекистан И.А.Каримова от 10.12.2012
года «О мерах по дальнейшему совершенствованию системы изучения иностранных
языков».
2.
Barkley E., K. P. Cross and Major C. Howell. (2008)Collaborative Learning Techniques:
A Handbook for College Faculty, Jossey-Bass.
3.
International Reading Association and National Council of Teachers of English. (1996).
Standards for the English language arts.Newark, DE: International Reading Association and
Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
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Popp, M. S. (1997). Learning journals in the K–8 class-room: Exploring ideas and
information in the content areas. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
5.
Markham T. (2008)Project Based Learning Handbook, Buck Institute for Education.
6.
Razmjou, L. (2009). To Be a Good Translator. Translation Journal, 8(2). Retrieved March
15, 2012, from
http://translationjournal.net/journal/28edu.htm
Бозоров З. Основные принципы обучения переводу и английскому языку: проблемы,
задачи и практики.
Широкомасштабные достижения в системе образования как части
национальной программы, является обучения переводу и английскому языку. В статье
рассматривается проблема применения европейской системы обучения иностранным
языкам (CEFR).
Бозоров З. Таржима ва инглиз тили таълимининг асосий тамойиллари:
муаммолар, вазифалар ва амалиѐт.
Таълим жараѐнида эришилган кенг муваффақиятлар
таржима ва инглиз тили таълими жараѐнида яққол кўзга ташланади. Мазкур мақола
таълим ва таржима соҳасини ўргатишда чет тилларини ўқитишда Европа таълим
тизимига хос мезонларни (CEFR )татбиқ этиш масаласи ѐритилган.
