Talk
Diving Whole: Translation as Immersive Practice in the World Language Classroom
Aron Aji
Director of Translation Programs and the Center for Translation and Global Literacy, The University of Iowa
The use of translation in the world language classroom is often perceived as antithetical to the immersive aims of the Communicative Method. In their legitimate criticism of the old grammar/translation method, proponents of the Communicative Method have rightly pointed out that teaching grammar by relying on translation contradicts the natural way in which language is learned (by experiencing, by hearing and speaking, etc.). However, both translation practice for grammar learning as well as its critique are based on a very limited, mainly instrumentalist understanding of translation. When deployed fully and boldly, translation practice animates the learner’s sensory, critical, reflective, and creative faculties, A language pedagogy that utilizes translation practice also values the learner’s subjectivity wholistically; it does not suppress but rather can incorporate the translatory dynamic already at work in the learner’s mind and train this dynamic towards an interlinguistic immersion experience that furthers second-language acquisition. Consequently, the classroom itself becomes an immersive experiential space in which meaning is made and remade, tested, critiqued and refined both individually and collectively, gaining a deeper hold in the learner’s subjectivity.
Bio:
Aron Aji directs the Translation Programs, and the Center for Translation and Global Literacy, a US-DOE national resource center at the University of Iowa. A native of Turkey, he mostly translates modern and contemporary Turkish writers. He has received the National Translation Award for Bilge Karasu’s The Garden of Departed Cats, and was a finalist for PEN Translation prize for Karasu’s A Long Day’s Evening. He and David Gramling received the Global Humanities Translation Prize for Murathan Mungan’s Valor: Stories. Aji’s recent translations include Ebru Ojen’s Lojman, co-translated with Selin Gökçesu, and Ferit Edgü’s Wounded Age and Eastern Tales. Past president of The American Literary Translators Association, Aji has given workshops and talks nationally and internationally on translation pedagogy and practice.
Friday, November 8, 2024
B-4 Dwinelle & Zoom, 3-5 pm
This lecture is co-sponsored by the Berkeley Language Center, Berkeley Translation Initiative, Institute of European Studies, and College of Letters and Science.