HOW TO TRANSLATE? FROM THEORY TO PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICE

Juan Carlos Soto Castillo
jcsotoc@unal.edu.co
Publicado en Capital Letter No. 5
Mayo de 2004




Review about an article written by Professor Sergio Bolaños
Forma y Función Magazine number 16 Universidad Nacional de Colombia Department of Linguistics


Licenciado from Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose de Caldas, and then from Instituto Caro y Cuervo, where he obtained a masters degree in Linguistics, Sergio Bolaños has been studying several languages such as French, German, Dutch, Russian and other European languages on his own. After ten years of academic work as a professor in the Universidad, professor Bolaños is enjoying a Sabbatical year. During this time, he is finishing a research project conductive jto a PhD program in a German university. The study is about equivalence in the theory of translation. In recent years he has been writing and developing a series of studies in this discipline. His aim is to present a pedagogic proposal which could have a linguistic impact in the vision of the world, and give students a better field of knowledge when they decide to focus on this area.


From 'theory to pedagogical practice' is about a way to show that it is viable to establish connections that permit to bring together the theorical studies of translation to the professional and pedagogic practice of this discipline. At an initial stage, the communicative character of the translation process is reiterated, in other words, translation as a communicative process. Then, a pedagogic proposal is done, where professor Bolanos leads our attention to the special emphasis on the active role of the student as an autonomous producer of his/her learning process, and the teacher's role as a constant guide of this cognitive activity.


Thus, the conception of translation as a process for solving problems is hardly shown in the three stages of the process: the original reading in LI, the production of the translation in L2, and the evaluation (from a critical point of view) of the result of this interlinguistic and intercultural activity. For this, a series of aspects and questions is proposed as useful guides for discussion in the classroom when the art of translation becomes the goal of the course.


Those students who are interested in this art can find in this text a well presented and ordered set of points. A new way of translation is required for the coming times, and thanks to the efforts and dedication of professor Bolaños, it is possible to count with such a proposal made here, in the Universidad Nacional, for the whole world.