Pedagogical Translation for Language Teaching

Both translation and second language acquisition have received increasing attention in language-learning since the turn of the century. This book combines these theoretical approaches with literacy as a social practice for a powerful new approach to language teaching and learning. It provides the reader with transdisciplinary theoretical grounding, an overview of translation benefits and approaches, and sample translation activities as guidance for applying translation as a collaborative pedagogical tool in K-12 and postsecondary language-learning environments. These environments may range from monolingual with emergent bilinguals, bilingual, heritage, or world language (including English as a Foreign Language).

Texts for translation across languages, that range from oral, written, and multimodal, and all translation activities in the book include suggestions for modification according to age, language level, and language-learning environment. Flexibility in formulation of language and literacy objectives and assessments is also a key component of its approach, with potential modifications according to varying standards, such as CEFR, which is used in many countries across the world, ACTFL, Common Core, and standards for biliteracy.

This book enables readers from all language instruction environments to understand the benefits of and need for pedagogical translation, incorporate pedagogical translation activities into already-established content, design and modify pedagogical translation activities, and develop standards-based objectives and evaluations for translation-based activities.