Journal Article

A Corpora-Driven Approach for the Sudanese EFL Translation Classroom

Al Hassan, Awad

2015

Overview

Corpora have recently been increasingly used in the field of translation and translator education. Through the use of 'monolingual', parallel and comparable corpora in translation classrooms, teachers and students can gain invaluable insights and knowledge into the best ways of dealing with and addressing translation problems. Moreover, using parallel corpora in particular can potentially help both translation teachers and students produce more accurate and fluent translation into the second language, as parallel corpora provide authentic examples of translation of different genres translated by expert/professional translators. In this paper, I will propose a corpus-based approach drawing on monolingual, parallel and comparable corpora to enable translation teachers to develop and enhance student translators' skills and strategies in order to effectively achieve translation tasks. The approach will mainly focus on the tasks of translation from Arabic into English since difficulties are likely much more when it comes to translate into the second language (target language) than with the case when translating into the first language (source language). The paper will reflect on the experiences of Sudanese student translators in a Sudanese university enrolled on a translation course as part of the requirements for a BA degree in English. The proposed corpus-based approach has two main objectives. Firstly, it is intended to provide both teacher and student translators with additional resources that move beyond the (intuition) and traditional (bilingual) dictionaries as the sole auxiliary tools for translation predominately used in the Sudanese context. Secondly, it is hoped that it will also draw the attention of and encourage Sudanese Applied Linguistics/TESOL teachers and researchers to corpora as a promising area for research and pedagogy. The paper will also discuss the possible difficulties involved in the implementation of the proposed approach and suggest some ways for minimizing and overcoming these difficulties. In closing, some pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research will be presented and discussed.

• Publisher: جامعة الخرطوم - كلية الآداب
• Subject: السودان / المعاجم والقواميس / معايير الترجمة