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Greetings translators far and wide! Today in the UK has dawned sunny & warm, & I'd like to start a thread talking about teaching translation. I started out as a literary translator & have been lucky enough to work on some incredible writers and with some amazing publishers. Then,
about 7ish years ago, I was asked to cover for a friend teaching UG translation at a university in London, which was a baptism of fire, but which set me on a path I'm really glad to remain on - that of not only getting to translate things I love, but also to talk about that work
and that love with students. I always swore I would never be a teacher (my mum was a primary school teacher & I saw how hard and unrecognised it was as a job), but I guess you always turn into your parents, so here I am! One of the things I love most about teaching is the fact
you always learn something. I have been humbled and inspired by my students time & time again, and I always emerge from every classroom with something new under my belt (and I don't just mean the whiteboard markers I've swiped) - it's a dialogue and one that (ideally) benefits
both pupils & teacher equally. There are of course many factors that complicate this: in my time teaching at 3 different institutes of higher education I've seen first-hand how the neoliberal university model has forced both staff and students into a very narrow vision of what
learning is; and of course, not every class goes well. Sometimes you leave the classroom feeling that the incredible plan you made with learning objectives, whizzy powerpoints & hilarious Youtube clips just hasn't landed right at all, and that can be disheartening (not to mention
the uniquely horrifying realisation that the cultural references you've put into your talk all took place at least 10 years before any of your students were even born...). BUT: in general, teaching is a wonderful space for shared conversation and knowledge creation, and I feel
very privileged to have been able to do it. I thought I would share some teaching ideas/resources/approaches that I've found helpful and perhaps anyone else following this account who has taught (or been taught well!) could share their own, too. In no particular order...
1. MEMES. Now, I am aware that using these in my classroom risks making me look sad and out of date, but one of the best lessons I have learned from teaching is that... there is no point worrying about this: you will ALWAYS look out of date to UG students, there's no point trying
to remain relevant to The Youth. This is good practice for anyone planning on having kids. I started to relish the baffled, slightly embarrassed-for-me looks students would give me at times - I was like a terminally uncool parent! Bring on the cringe. OK, first up (a fave):
A regular in my Spanish classes (a brilliant student at Warwick shared this with me - see what I mean about the learning going both ways?). Anyone fancy translating this for the non-Spanish speakers?
Another Spanish class fave
('antes' means 'before,' and 'después' means 'after' :) )
I set up a mini project with students where at the start of term I asked them all to keep an eye out for 'translation fails' and share them via twitter using the hashtag #translationfail (altho in general I think it's more interesting to talk about when translations are good,
asking students to seek out bad ones can be a great way to encourage a conversation about how all translation is open to scrutiny and get them to see that, 9 times out of 10, they can do a better job than Google Translate). Here are a few of those #translationfail egs:
This one is great because as well as a 'fail,' it also shows how pronunciation plays a huge part in language: the Spanish 'espera' (a command meaning 'wait') is often shortened in spoken language to ''pera', which also means pear
I love this one: 'hex' (which I assume here is short for 'hexagon') has been taken to mean the verb 'to hex' (to put a curse on), and translated as 'el mal de ojo' (evil eye) and used to modify 'rubber' (caucho), while 'mats' (the plural noun) has been rendered as a verb
('to mat') (enredarse). There's so much going on here in terms of language and it makes for a great discussion about translation. I'm aware this is not a meme... more memes coming up!
Please share your own in this thread!
