Book review. Pathways to Translation: Pedagogy and Process Kent, Ohio and London, England: The Kent State University Press, 1995. xv + 175 pp. ISBN 0-87338-516-0 $29.00 (Translation Studies, 3).
Table of contents
The need for an effective translation pedagogy is a major justification for studying the translator's mind. This view is stressed by the author Kiraly as well as Gregory M. Shreve who wrote the foreword to Pathways to Translation. It is true that many translation courses are still based on the belief that "one learns how to translate by translating" (p. 7) in a traditional teacher-centred class (see e.g. Nord 1996). Thus it is the ambitious aim of the book to derive better informed teaching methods from empirical research on the cognitive processes involved in translation. The data elicitation method used in this research is think-aloud. The ultimate aim is to contribute to the creation of an educational programme which will "assist translation students in the development of their own self-concept as professional translators" (p. 2). Professional self-concept—even though it is never properly defined—emerges as a key notion in the book, and, as a motivation for an empirical study, it seems promising. Indeed it makes the reader expect more than Kiraly's experiments are designed to yield.
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