Essay Monica Garzón

ESSAY

Translation was a very popular teaching-learning strategy in the period of GrammarTranslation , after which it fell into decline when the Direct Method appeared, its followers found it inadequate and even counterproductive, and its decay continued until the emergence of the Communicative Approach, but later authors such as Duff (1989), Hurtado Albir (2001) or lavault (1985), who made the translation reborn again and they have supported the idea of ​​incorporating mother tongue (MT) as a usefull tool in the learning of a (FL) Foreign Language,

Now I will refer especially to Duff's statements, who identify three essential purposes of translation and an activity in language learning: accuracy, clarity and flexibility. I have argues that "trains the learner to search (flexibility) for the most appropriate words (accuracy) to convey what is meant (clarity).

I believe that the translation of our mother tongue into a foreign language or vice versa is very important for our acquisition of the foreign language, it is essential to know the meaning of each word with its different meanings, such as this exemplo; Country: country, countryside, region, village, national, rural, neighborhood, etc. to achieve an accuracy in the translation of the source text.

When the student is in contact with the language through the translation has the possibility to clearly identify the different grammatical categories according to the function of the word in the context, an example of this is the word can, as a verb; Power, know, can, as a noun; Can, boat, jar. That is to say the translation is a powerful tool, through it students develop abilities to acquire and identify vocabulary, to achieve the flexibility in the translations in the cases in which the values ​​of the meanings do not find an equivalent in the context of the mother tongue

The translation allows to identify the pragmatic use of the language and to give an adequate meaning to the idiomatic expressions, idioms or sayings of the foreign language in the process of acquisition.

In particular, this theme reminds me of the translations I had made in the time of schoolgirl to the literary works in English language of the writer Charles Dickens, like in Great Expectations, when my level of English was still very basic, did not exist the internet and I used a very specialized dictionary, I remember the example expressed in this book with the expression: "brought me up 'by hand.'

Pip narrates: My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbours because she had brought me up 'by hand.'

"Brought up by hand" means that he was bottle or spoon-fed rather than nursed by his mother or by a wet-nurse.

With the previous example you need a context and a complete bilingual dictionary to be able to understand exactly what their true meaning is, without the use of these tools the translation would be inaccurate and thanks to the work of the translation of this book I could understand that we must give a semantic sense appropriate to each English language text that we read or work on.

When the student does not present a good level of English with the work of the translation they can understand that there are complex levels of English and can infer grammatical rules that exist in the foreign language because they are different in their mother tongue, with the translation the students can to develop short- and long-term memory as an example of the meaning of the expression "brought me up 'by hand, " discovered by me " many years ago and still remembers my memory

In conclusion, the translation does not hinder the process of acquiring a language, on the contrary, the translation reinforces the simple and complex grammatical structures of the English language and is a magnificent tool for all language skills, it is a perfect combination with other strategies of Teaching and  learning to reinforce knowledge and skills in English.

 Translation makes it possible to work memorization, so important in acquiring a foreign language to remember words, expressions and colloquial uses of the foreign language, translation with the help of the traditional dictionary has been relegated to the background partly by the use of translators of the Internet that displace the real and fruitful work that the students must do for themselves.