Nataliya Kovalska, Nadiya Prisyazhnyuk

National Technical University of Ukraine “KPI”

MOTIVATING RESOURCES FOR TRANSLATION TRAINING

The future interpreters and translators of the Linguistic Faculty of the National Technical University of Ukraine are being taught theoretical and practical courses of technical translation in different spheres of science and technology. At the intermediate level of general English our students face the challenge of translating specific texts in such spheres as economics, general engineering, computing and electronics, etc. Internet, computerized classes and enormous amount of dictionaries in any form help them a lot as well as their theoretical background (search for translation unit, mega text concept, translation algorithms and translation transformations, etc.)

But one day students enter our class of practical translation. The lecturer hands out the real authentic technical texts to be translated. It doesn’t matter whether they have sheets of paper or screen (if the class is computerized). You face the students, they look at you and wait for the instructions. If you tell them to translate the text, they may start translating at once. As a result it sometimes happens that the students-translators understand the main idea of the whole foreign text only on putting the full stop in the last sentence.

To avoid such situations in our class as well as in students’ future work as interpreters and translators we use a cooperative work procedure in translation training. This step-by-step procedure attempts to develop activities for translation process.

· The lecturer makes the selection of the texts according to previously defined objectives for translation practice.

· After scan reading the students , assisted by their lecturer, identify the source, the norm and the type of the text, its register, style and readership. It is a kind of game of imagination in which the text is real but the clients’ needs are imaginary.

· The students read the whole text twice. The first reading is comprehensive and general. The second is a “deep” one; placing emphasis on translation problems i.e. “reading with translation intention” (the students underline unknown terms and mentally confront potential translation difficulties with suitable translation procedures).

· The lecturer divides the text into segments depending on the number of students and the length of the text for “one-to-one translation”.

· Once “one –to-one” version is accomplished the students do the written draft with the most suitable translation strategies and procedures. Each student reads his own version of the translated segment.

· The students and the lecturer follow the reading, set up all necessary conventions with regard to the homogeneity of the terms and the coherence and cohesion of the final version, analyze the translation strategies and procedures used.

· The students’ final version should be revised and amended in the light of the whole text.

· The lecturer makes a final revision, gives formative evaluation and emphasizes

findings and analyses failures.

In classes of this kind the lecturer is a facilitator of the translation task, since the lion’s share of the translation process is accomplished by the students, mainly collectively, but also individually.

It appeared that using such procedure we face additional challenge. The idea of dividing technical text into segments and one-to-one translation is very good on the one hand because it gives the possibility to translate much more different technical texts in class. On the other hand students being used to our practice of such cooperative work procedure usually concentrate upon the thorough translation of a definite short passage from the text (the segment this student is responsible of) and often fail to understand the main idea of the whole text.

To concentrate our students upon the main idea of any technical text to be translated we propose some methods of teaching them to write very short summaries even before process of translation itself started. Writing summaries helps to immerse our students into the unknown foreign text from the very beginning. They may also benefit from gradually getting used to any kind of preliminary work with specialized technical texts.

To get used to summary writing students must be taught some pre-translation exercises. We propose some of them that we usually use in our translation training class:

· Write not more than 5 words from any technical sphere on the blackboard (or use display) and ask students to write a descriptive piece of writing. The idea is not to exceed the proposed quantity of sentences using 1 to 2 words in every sentence. You can arrange short discussion afterwards.

· You may as well ask your students to scan a very short technical text and to underline the key words. It helps to focus students’ attention upon the most important lexical items. This may also be followed by pair discussion and then class discussion to justify and clarify the choices of certain words and phrases.

· Prepare rather long scientific text that is not very difficult for comprehension and some questions related to the main points of the text. Ask students to skim the text and find the answers to the questions. Their full answers may serve as a summary of the text.

· Prepare a technical text and a summary of this text with gaps to be filled in. Following the activity students may easily identify the key words and to have a model summary after all the blanks are filled in.

· Give a talk on a certain scientific or technical topic and ask students to take notes. After they read out their notes and put what is relevant on the board it may easily be expanded to form a summary about a talk. Note-taking helps a lot in summary writing.

Summarizing is a highly challenging activity for the students because it compels them to think in an economical way and to produce the main idea of the text even before its translation. When motivating resources such as a cooperative work procedure and summary writing are used we can see the benefits of students’ work in translation.

References:

1.Гарбовский Н. К. Теория перевода: учебник.-М.: Изд-во Моск. ун-та, 2004. -544с.

2. Коваленко А.Я. Загальний курс науково-технічного перекладу. К.: ІНКОС, 2002. – 320с.

3.Корунець І.В. Теорія і практика перекладу. – Вінниця: Нова книга, 2003. – 408с.

4. http//iteslj.org/Techniques/Tan-Cooperative.html