Artistic and Literal Translations

One of the key elements of global education in communication. Since I am English dominant I have a clear linguistic perspective. My students come from at least 9 different countries and may have immigrated to the U.S. or may be staying for a short time to learn English before returning to their home country. The cultural aspect of language is a major aspect of my ESL instruction. I want the students to draw from their education in their first language and apply that knowledge to English. Many of my students progress quickly in their language acquisition. I wanted to make them aware of the mental processes their brain requires when they are translating. The project that I developed took several weeks of instructional time. I think it revealed many ideas about language that my students had never considered prior to the lesson.

The major point the students learned was that literal translation of words does not communicate much meaning. They often struggled with doing a word by word translation from their first languages into English. They tended to convert the entire thought into English rather than keeping the original word order or syntax. By forcing them to do the word by word translation, the students analyzed the differences between their thinking and linguistic processes in the first language and English. Their comments demonstrated insight into both the cultural influence of words and connotations as well as the mechanical organizations of both languages.

Students commented that they finally understood the concept of "Voice" in writing. Some students were able to adapt their written voice to the purpose and audience. As English Language Learners voice in writing limited the progress in writing. While grammatical errors were still present, flexibility in voice began developing. One student stated that he never knew or even considered how his brain was working as he negotiated two languages simultaneously. Most students said this was the most difficult lesson we did all year because there were so many possible solutions and variables.

I plan to continue to adapt this unit for my students in the future. While getting a numeric assessment of the project proved difficult, the process of deep analysis that the students engaged in yielded immeasurable results.

Samples of student Writing are linked here.