Table Of ContentTranslator and Interpreter Training
and Foreign Language Pedagogy
American Translators Association Scholarly
Monograph Series (ATA)
As of 1993 John Benjamins has been the official publisher of the ATA Scholarly
Monograph Series. Edited by Françoise Massardier-Kenney, under the auspices
of the American Translators Association, this series has an international scope
and addresses research and professional issues in the translation community
worldwide. These accessible collections of scholarly articles range from issues
of training, business environments, to case studies or aspects of specialized
translation relevant to translators, translator trainers, and translation researchers.
Managing Editor
Françoise Massardier-Kenney
Kent State University (Kent, Ohio)
Editorial Advisory Board
Marilyn Gaddis Rose
Binghamton University NY
Peter W. Krawutschke
Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo)
†Marian B. Labrum
Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah)
Marshall Morris
University of Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras, P.R.)
Sue Ellen Wright
Institute for Applied Linguistics, Kent State
University (Kent, Ohio)
Volume III
Translator and Interpreter Training and Foreign Language Pedagogy
Edited by Peter W. Krawutschke
Translator and Interpreter Training
and Foreign Language Pedagogy
Edited by
Peter W. Krawutschke
Western Michigan University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
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© 2008 John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia ISSN 0890-4111
Published 1989 by the University Center at Binghamton (SUNY)
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American Translators Association Series
TRANSLATOR AND INTERPRETER TRAINING AND FOREIGN
LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY STRATEGY
Volume III 1989
Contents
Introduction
PETER W. KRAWUTSCHKE 1
Politics of Interpreter Education in Academia
WILHELM K. WEBER 6
Must Translator Training Remain Elitist?
MARILYN GADDIS ROSE 18
Pendulum Swings in Language Teaching and Translation
DAVID BOWEN 26
Some Polemic Aspects of Translation in Foreign Language
Pedagogy Revisited
GEORGANNE WELLER 39
Language Learning Before Translator/Interpreter Training
MARGARETA BOWEN 51
Teaching Conference Interpreting
DANICA SELESKOVITCH 65
Topical Issues in Translator Training at Universities
WOLFRAM WILSS 89
Translated by Jeffrey B. Gardiner, assisted by
Shelley M. Reid
Standards and Evaluation in Translator Training
GABRIELA MAHN 100
Translator and Interpreter Training as Part of Teacher
Training at the Institute of English,
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland
ZBIGNIEW NADSTOGA 109
A Translation-Specific Writing Program:
Justification and Description
INGRID MEYER 119
Learning Translating and Interpreting Through Interlanguage
HENRY NIEDZIELSKI AND MANFRED KUMMER 132
Isotopy and Translation
KLAUS MUDERSBACH AND HEIDRUN GERZYMISCH-ARBOGAST 147
Contributors 171
Call for Proposals: Interpreting—Yesterday, Today
and Tomorrow 173
Corporate Members 174
Institutional Members 176
American Translators Association
Officers and Board of Directors, 1988 178
Introduction
PETER W. KRAWUTSCHKE
Are they doctors? So am I. Are they learned? So am I. Are they
preachers? So am I. Are they theologians? So am I. Are they de
baters? So am I. Are they philosophers? So am I. Are they dialec
ticians? So am I. Are they lecturers? So am I. Do they write books?
So do I.
Martin Luther, 1530
On Translating: An Open Letter
The ambitious title of this little volume, the third in the ATA
series, does promise a comparative discussion, delivered with consid
erable interdisciplinary respect, about two disciplines dealing with for
eign languages which are not usually placed side by side; i.e., translation
and interpretation and foreign language pedagogy. Of course, some
alert readers will immediately object to the above ménage by pointing
out that translation and interpretation are separate if at times some
what related disciplines—and, of course, they are right. Others will
dispute the labeling of translation and of interpretation as identifiable
disciplines in the academic sense—and, of course, they are wrong.
That this volume did come about in this country—the European
continent has long passed this developmental stage in the growth of
the two disciplines—is no small matter. It is due to a number of iden
tifiable individuals and organizations: Royal Tinsley, Marilyn Gaddis
Rose, Patricia Newman; ATA, Monterey, Georgetown, and Bingham-
ton. Their quiet and relentless efforts over many years have brought
about the foundations of self-awareness, worth, and recognition so im
portant for emerging disciplines.
2 D Introduction
Incidentally, for those readers who noticed: Luther was not in the
habit of writing in English when he distinguished his work from that
of the foreign language establishment of his time. The translation from
the German is by Charles M. Jacobs and was revised by E. Theodore
Bachmann. (By the way, the growing awareness and printed recog-
nition that a translator is present when we read foreign language texts
in English is also the result of considerable efforts and good will by
many individuals and organizations.)
Few of us who are involved in the field of translation or interpre
tation professionally at colleges or universities in this country came
to these disciplines through academic programs or preparation. That
is and will be changing. Some of us came from linguistics or compar-
ative literature, most of us came from foreign languages by accident,
few by design. I remember being told some twenty years ago by a pro
motion committee chair that a half-page book review would have
demonstrated more clearly my worth for promotion than a few hun
dred pages of translated text in psychology. That the translation had
a strong undercurrent of German syntax and considerable lexical un
certainties probably increased its worth to the field of psychology. I
called Professor Tinsley, then president of the ATA, and he patiently
explained to this ignoramus the working relationship between trans
lation and foreign language teaching at American universities. His ar
ticles on this topic, by the way, still make good reading today.
In the early seventies those of us interested in these fields would com
pare our experiences: booklength, printed translations of literary or
philosophical texts were consistently found not to be of merit in terms
of their consideration for promotion, they were regarded as not being
original efforts, lacking in research, or not contributing toward ac
ademic recognition. In an audio-lingual world the mere word "trans
lation" was cause for rejection. Much of that has changed. The ATA
through the effective work of Patricia Newman has created vehicles
to publish research in these two disciplines. We are beginning to see
more and more faculty members gaining institutional support to ob
tain the time to do research and write about their work in translation
and interpretation simply because these vehicles exist now. Yet much
needs to be done; more theoretical work needs to be presented in both
disciplines; we need to "intellectualize," as Wilss (and his translator)
so aptly put it, our disciplines.
At a time when the generation of Americans whose language, the
PETER W. KRAWUTSCHKE D 3
American English of the Ml, was accepted and successful anywhere
in the world is slowly passing on the affairs of state and of business
to younger generations who are learning that the world enjoys and
functions quite well in a multitude of languages; we, as the foreign
language professionals involved in preparing them for this changed
environment, need to be knowledgeable about our respective roles,
about the functions, the limits, and the potentials of our disciplines.
To this, those who have participated in the creation of this little vol
ume wish to contribute.
Wilhelm K. Weber, dean of the translation and interpretation di-
vision at one of the leading institutions involved in the education of
interpreters and translators, outlines some of the perceptual problems
interpretation (many of his comments apply to translation as well) fa
ces in academia—the problems are essentially based on ignorance —
and offers quite sensible solutions. His perspective is influenced by his
considerable practical and administrative experience on two continents.
While Weber argues for a separate but equal arrangement of the dis
ciplines of interpretation, translation, and foreign language education
within the framework of higher education, Marilyn Gaddis Rose's ques
tion "Must translator training remain elitist?" gives an indication as
to how far this discipline has progressed in the past twenty years in
this country in terms of self-perception. U.S. born and U.S. educated,
Professor Rose has not only made SUNY-Binghamton a focal point
for translation studies in this country but she has been one of the ma
jor forces in the United States involved in bringing academic recog
nition to the discipline of professional education in translation.
Laudable is that both authors offer numerous suggestions on how to
describe and explain translation and interpretation to foreign language
educators.
The interaction between learning foreign languages, translation, so
cial, political, and cultural forces and attitudes during most periods
of our Western civilization and the resulting indistinct delineation of
disciplinary borders is described in David Bowen's witty article.
That these disciplinary border crossings continue to add to the
difficulty in translation's definability seems to be indicated by
Georganne Weller's contribution. She suggests translation exercises,
particularly back-translation, as viable foreign language teaching de
vices.
By now, it has become an accepted academic standard in this coun-
4 Introduction
try, too, that excellent foreign language skills are the tools a student
of interpretation or translation must have mastered prior to com-
mencing his or her professional studies and training. Why this is gen-
erally accepted practice, except by the few uninformed, is the topic
of the essays by Margaret Bowen and Danica Seleskovitch. Professors
Bowen and Seleskovitch are and have been for a long time eloquent
spokeswomen on the international level for their disciplines. In ad-
dition to delineating the disciplinary boundries between teaching for-
eign languages and interpretation and translation, Professor
Seleskovitch gives an overview of the essentials of interpreter educa
tion and training.
Wolfram Wilss, on the other hand, outlines the present and future
elements that need to be contained in an appropriate program of ed
ucation for translators. An authoritative advocate for quality and so
cietal responsibility in translator training, Professor Wilss not only warns
of the difficulties involved in incorporating, unexamined, translator
training techniques into foreign language education but also sees a need
to "intellectualize" translator training. Of particular interest and lead
ing to renewed discussions should be his suggestion that writers of cer
tain types of texts learn to write in syntactical norms agreeable to
machine translation systems.
The desirability to document what a translator training program
accomplishes during a given period of time and to establish suprain-
stitutional norms of proficiency in translation similar to ACTFL/ETS
Proficiency Guidelines led at SUNY-Binghamton to the development
of BEST (the Binghamton Evaluation Scale for Translation) which
is carefully described by Gabriela Mahn. Clearly, instances of the ap
plication of BEST in programs across the country should yield cor
roborative research results.
Potential relationships with other university "turfs" are described in
contributions by Nadstoga and Meyer. That aspects of translator and
interpreter training can be successfully involved in foreign language
teacher training ought to raise more than eyebrows among our for-
eign language methodologists. Zbigniew Nadstoga's essay demonstrates
that translation as a discipline quite naturally reaches into other ac
ademic domains. Equally controversial ought to be Ingrid Meyer's sug
gestion for a separate "translation" writing program in the native
language. Her well-founded contribution appears at a time when a num
ber of schools are attempting to bring their field-specific writing cour-
