Abstract
The aim of this paper is to present the challenges that the presence of foreign students whose mother tongue is not Czech poses to the teaching of translation and interpreting at the Institute of Translation and Interpreting at the Faculty of Arts in Prague (ITTRL FF UK). The authors of the paper have been teaching interpreting and translation seminars at the aforementioned institute for many years, in the same language combination of German-Czech and Spanish-Czech.
Based on their own teaching experience of several years, they will describe the challenges that this non-standard situation poses for teachers (compared to other languages taught at the Institute of Translation and Interpreting at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University), how teaching methods need to be adapted, how this combination of students with different mother tongues can enrich translation and interpreting seminars, and what benefits it brings to the interaction between teacher and student and between individual learners. First of all, we will briefly introduce the Bachelor's double degree (DD) programme Intercultural Communication: German and Czech for Translation and Interpreting, which has been implemented since 2016 between the Institute of Translation and Interpreting at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University (Czech Republic) and the Institute of Slavonic Studies at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Leipzig (Germany).
Some of the students in this programme are native speakers of German, while others are native speakers of Czech. The students attend many translation and interpreting seminars together, in which it is not possible to clearly determine the direction of translation/interpreting with regard to the mother tongue.
Specifically, we will focus on the semester courses Translation Propaedeutics (DE) + Translation I (DE-CS) and Interpreting Propaedeutics (DE) + Interpreting I (DE-CS). The curriculum of these courses was primarily designed for the double-specialization or combined Bachelor's degree in Intercultural Communication: German for Translation and Interpreting; i.e.
While the propedeutics courses focus equally on translation in both directions, the courses marked I target first the translation into the native language, i.e., into Czech, which is not the case for DD students who are native speakers of German - for them, these disciplines are more challenging as they translate and interpret into their foreign active language B or passive language C. In the theoretical part we will focus on directiveness in translation/interpreting and then on the didactics of translation/interpreting.
In multicultural and multilingual groups, directiveness is not so "black and white", as the classical target/source language dichotomy is dropped here. The teacher is forced to apply different didactic methods and modes of assessment.
In this context, one can speak of a so-called 'distorted directiveness' (cf. Way 2003: 322), which can, however, enrich teaching, especially if the teacher bases the seminars on project-based learning.
This form of teaching in translation seminars brings the formal training of future translators closer to real translation practice, while putting the learning process in the hands of the learner. Project-based learning falls within the didactic concept of so-called constructivism (Rohlíková & Vejvodová 2012: 101-149), which places the learning subject at the forefront as the main actor in the learning process.
Constructivist teaching is based on the principle of cooperation, and emphasis is also placed on the social dimension of learning, on discussion and interaction of students during group work. During the projects in the translation seminars, students learn through cooperative group work and the teacher acts only as a guide, advisor or tutor.
Due to the presence of DD students in the translation seminars, the projects formed heterogeneous groups, with both native speakers of Czech and native speakers of German. This heterogeneity allowed the students to bring their different preconceptions to the project-based learning and to enrich and learn from each other during the process of group work on analysis, translation, editing and the final presentation of the final text.
As far as interpreting seminars are concerned, group work can also be used in them. Students prepare dialogues between a German and a Czech in pairs, which are then interpreted bilaterally by another student; the student interpreter interprets for the native speakers and also receives feedback from the native speakers.
And although project-based learning in translation and interpreting may initially appear to be organisationally demanding and requires trust in the responsibility of the learners, in practice the social dimension of learning is proving to be very effective in training future interpreters and translators. The multicultural environment is closely linked to the world of translation and interpreting; multilingualism is a rather complex situation for translation and interpreting didactics in terms of directiveness.
However, if teachers choose appropriate teaching methods, this "distorted directiveness" is beneficial from the social (increased interaction between students), linguistic (presence of native speakers in seminars) and didactic (new teaching methods and assessment methods) points of view.