Translation as a communicative unit in language

The traditional methods of language teaching adopted translation as a means of consolidating linguistic acquisition in a foreign language through the exercise of theme, and control of the comprehension of texts by means of the version. „The goal of educational translation is essentially didactic”. It is practiced within the framework of the language class (except in the particular case of examinations and competitions) and the receiver is either the student or the teacher, in both cases, a small and familiar audience. In this case, translation is no longer an end but a means, insofar as what matters is not the message or the meaning that the text conveys, but the act of translating and the different functions it fulfils: language, perfection, control of understanding, solidity of what is acquired, and the establishment of structures …

The traditional methods of language teaching adopted translation as a means of consolidating linguistic acquisition in a foreign language through the exercise of theme, and control of the comprehension of texts by means of the version. „The goal of educational translation is essentially didactic”. It is practiced within the framework of the language class (except in the particular case of examinations and competitions) and the receiver is either the student or the teacher, in both cases, a small and familiar audience. In this case, translation is no longer an end but a means, insofar as what matters is not the message or the meaning that the text conveys, but the act of translating and the different functions it fulfils: language, perfection, control of understanding, solidity of what is acquired, and the establishment of structures …

Used for pedagogical reasons (class motivation, evaluation of achievements, help of weaker pupils, etc.), translation into the language class takes many practices, including „explanatory translation“. This type of translation is used to explain the language. The teacher uses it when the intralingual translation cannot lead to positive results. From the lexicon point of view, when a word of the foreign language is new and rarely used, the teacher explains it in the mother tongue to save time and avoid confusion for the learner. From a grammatical point of view, the explanatory translation is useful insofar as it allows to identify the points of difference or similarity between the two linguistic systems (the foreign language and the mother tongue)