1 Looking Back: Translation in Language Teaching

The unpopularity of translation in world language teaching traces back to the grammar translation method, which was popular through the end of the nineteenth century. This method focused almost entirely on teaching grammar and vocabulary to read Greek and Latin texts–in other words, the goal of language acquisition was never for students to be able to speak. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, language-learning goals started to shift towards communication, and the method fell out of favor (Cook, 2001). In the vacuum left by the grammar translation method, various incarnations of the direct method arose. Direct method is an umbrella term for any method which does not use students’ first language (L1) as a tool for learning the second (Cook, 2010). Therefore, in a swing of the pendulum against using the first language (L1), language learning became characterized by monolingual use of the second language (L2) and the “systematic use of the L1 in the classroom” (Cook, 2001, p. 403) has been out of favor for over a century. Communicative language teaching (CLT) is among direct method approaches which do not favor the use of L1 in the classroom.

Since translation as a pedagogy by definition requires the use of the first language, issues with avoiding L1 in the classroom need to be considered. These concerns might include a belief that students should acquire L2 the same way that they acquire L1, that is, monolingually; that the goal of language acquisition is coordinate bilingualism, in which students have two completely separate language systems; and that students can acquire L2 better by hearing more of it and less of L1 (Cook, 2001).

However, the above arguments can be countered and a positive case can be made for the use of the first language in the classroom.  Cook (2001) points out that deliberate use of the first language can help students be more aware of their languages, take pride in being bilingual, and interlink L1 and L2 knowledge in their minds, helping with translanguaging skills for real-life use when two languages are simultaneously in use.

Positive effects of L1 use include efficiency (e.g. teaching grammar, organizing tasks, discipline, praise), learning, naturalness in the teaching setting (personal contact), relevance in the situation, and, most relevant for this handbook, cases in which student use of L1 is an essential part of the learning activity, i.e. translation (Cook, V., 2001; Cook, G., 2010).

It has also been argued that both students and teachers use the first language in the classroom “under the table,” so L1 use should instead be “deliberate and systematic” (Cook, 2001). In support of this argument, Canga-Alonso and Rubio-Goita (2016) found that students believed the use of the L1 to be “unavoidable” (p. 145) in second language learning, and they therefore also recommend the “responsible use of the mother tongue and translation as a teaching tool” (p. 146). Similarly, Gonzalez-Davies (2017) found it unrealistic to avoid the use of L1 in the classroom since teachers and learners use translation covertly anyway, particularly while teachers overtly use CLT.

Cook (2001) argues that by using both L1 and L2 in the classroom, students are produced “with two language systems as genuine L2 users, not as imitation natives” (p. 419). It is a common misperception to think of bilinguals as monolingual speakers of two separate languages (Brown & Larson-Hall, 2012), and therefore it is also a misperception to think the goal of classroom instruction is to produce speakers with native-like, monolingual competence in the second language.  Even being a balanced bilingual speaker of two languages, or a speaker with equal proficiency in two languages, is not the same as being a monolingual speaker of two languages put together in one person (2012). Instead, the goal is for “treating students’ linguistic repertoires as an integrated entity” (González-Davis, 2017, p. 125).

Other more recent approaches to language teaching have moved beyond communicative language teaching and look instead to this goal of producing language systems as an integrated entity. These approaches include multiliteracies, critical literacies, and cultural and symbolic competence. The goal of the pedagogy of multiliteracies is to recognize the complexity of students’ linguistic and cultural environments, and, in doing so, to empower and ultimately give students access to L2 both at work and in the community. This in turn will help initiate critical engagement in designing their social futures and finding “success through fulfilling employment” (New London Group, 1996, p. 60). According to Lo Bianco (1999), the pedagogy of multiliteracies by its nature requires recognition of social and individual bilingualism in the language classroom. By extension, acceptance of bilingualism also requires the acceptance of L1 and L2 use and translanguaging between language systems.

In addition to multiliteracies, these new approaches include critical literacies and cultural and symbolic competence. Critical literacy requires students to “read…for intentions, to question sources, to identify others’ and one’s own assumptions, and to transform information for new purposes” (Kern, 2000, p. 33, citing Flower, 1990). Critical literacy also encourages students to “read with a writerly eye” (2000) and causes them to think about language choices. Regarding cultural competences, Kern (2000), citing Kramsch, notes that the language classroom should expand to being a “‘site of cross-cultural fieldwork’” (p. 21) which uses grammar, communicative, and textual resources to meet this goal.  Similarly, Phipps and González (2004) advocate languaging, which is “about learning discourses by enabling the enculturation of learners into social practices, using both their own and their other language” (p. 88). Kramsch and Whiteside (2008) note that the “increasingly multilingual and multicultural nature of global exchanges is raising questions about the traditionally monolingual and monocultural nature of language education” (p. 645). They therefore propose that multilingual communicators also show symbolic competence through their ability to manipulate more than one linguistic code, thereby moving beyond traditional communicative competence in a target language (2008).

Colina and Lafford (2017) note that these “increasing arguments for informed use of the target language, for the shared communicative purpose of translation and language learning, seen especially against the backdrop of communicative and task-based methodologies, and for multilingual, literacy and cultural approaches to language teaching, have prepared the ground for the return of translation to language teaching (112).” In this sense, we have moved from the plains of the grammar translation method, in which students learned grammar and vocabulary to translate texts of languages they would never speak, to a complex new linguistic and cultural terrain. In other words, the language teaching and learning world has changed completely. The next section will explain why translation is a perfect vehicle with which to navigate it.