The Role of Translation in Second Language Acquisition
The Role of Translation in Second Language Acquisition

Summary/Abstract: In the past decades, language teaching methodology has shifted its focus from a linguistic to a communicative approach, thus placing great emphasis on learners’ proficiency, that is, their ability to communicate in the target language. As a result, classroom activities involving students’ own languages have been discouraged, and translation, as a bilingual activity, has been dismissed on account of its being oldfashioned, academic, artificial, difficult, and largely impractical. However, the role of translation in foreign language acquisition has recently been revised, and a new concept of “communicative” translation has been introduced. Referring to the particular case of Romanian as the mother tongue/L1 and English as the target language/L2, the aim of this paper is to take a diachronic look at the theoretical and political arguments against pedagogical translation, and bring arguments in favour of introducing translation activities in foreign language education. Drawing on the theoretical considerations presented and the author’s teaching experience, the main conclusion is that acts of translating can contribute to the development of learners’ communicative skills, and the promotion of their linguistic and cultural identities.

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