I coordinate the module Translation Theory, which is part of the MAs in Translation with Language Technology (TLT) and in Literary Translation. The large majority of students take it as part of the TLT degree. They have to take at least one of Translation Theory and History of Translation. Students in the translation MAs come from a variety of backgrounds and work with various language pairs. We offer translation between English and French, German, Spanish, Italian, Welsh, Polish, Dutch, and Chinese and attract students from Britain, continental Europe, North America, and East Asia.

The module is taught in a normal lecture room with a data projector. It consists of ten two-hour sessions, of which the first hour is a lecture explaining theory and the second hour involves more practical work, e.g. work in pairs or small groups and discussions. Teaching in class is supported by a Blackboard module which provides practical information and pdf-versions of the PowerPoint presentations.

One component of the module involves the analysis of translation problems caused by different morphological and syntactic properties of the source and target language. In approaching this question, students with different language pairs have very different perspectives, but they can still learn a lot from other language pairs.

In the second hour, I ask students to work in pairs with the same language combination and identify phenomena in their language pair where morpho-syntactic properties of the two languages differ and cause translation problems. I ask them to find actual examples that illustrate the impossibility of translating the expressions literally.

As the students have different language pairs, it is not a good solution to let them present their results in class. A pair of students working on English-Chinese will have to present much detail to make non-Chinese speakers understand the issue. Other Chinese students will want to react on the basis of much additional knowledge. The two groups will also have different questions. The problem of these two levels of competence (with various shades in between) will also arise for any other language pair. Therefore, I ask students to present their results on Blackboard in a wiki.

On the start page of the wiki in Blackboard, I explain what students are expected to do. They should create a separate page for each phenomenon. On that page they should explain the linguistic difference and give one or more examples of the translation problem it causes. I instruct them explicitly to explain the phenomena in such a way that non-speakers of the other language than English can understand the issue.

I also encourage students to react to and edit the existing pages. They can correct each other’s typos and add examples or observations in the text as long as they support the main point. Where students disagree or have questions of understanding, it is better to react by means of a comment. The original authors are expected to reply to criticism and questions and to edit their text accordingly.

A significant proportion of the students took an active part in the wiki. About one third to half of the group contributed pages, so that from most pairs of students at least some results ended up in the wiki. There was some discussion among people of the same language pair and there were some questions of clarification. Students did not only look at pages on their own language pair. Students were reluctant, however, to edit a page another student had initiated. I looked at the pages at regular intervals, corrected some typos, and commented where appropriate. The result was a useful resource for all students (not only) in their preparation for the exam.