In recent years, there has been an unprecedented reappraisal of the role of translation in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning. Underpinning this reappraisal are largely the beliefs that languages are more easily learnt in association with one’s mother tongue rather than separately from it and that the ability to move between one’s mother tongue and other languages represents a core component of a language user’s communicative competence in our increasingly multilingual societies. In this light, translation activities can be seen as having considerable import.

 

The paper will focus on translation teaching in university foreign-language curricula and will discuss an approach based on the concept of ‘transferability’: this approach tries to go beyond the dichotomy between translation as a means for foreign-language teaching and testing, and translation as an activity with a considerable professional dimension. Finally, the project of an accompanying classroom textbook will be presented.

 

Dr Mirella Agorni, who is on a teaching exchange from Ca' Foscari University of Venice, is an expert on translation and on women translators in the eighteenth century.