Contrastive Rhetoric and Text-Typological Conventions in Translation Teaching

Sonia Colina
Arizona State University
Abstract

This paper illustrates the relevance of contrastive rhetoric research to Translation Studies and shows how it can be applied to translation pedagogy. After a brief descriptive analysis of the recipe genre in English and Spanish, student translations are examined. It is shown that the work of novice translators is one case in which source-language textual features are transferred into the target text. The effects of explicit instruction on textual-features and text-typological conventions are examined by comparing student translations: a significant improvement in the work of students exposed to explicit instruction is indicative of the benefit of pedagogical intervention. The evidence presented also indicates that translation competence is in fact separate from bilingualism.

Table of contents

Text linguistics and contrastive rhetoric have in the last two or three decades attracted a great deal of attention from researchers in theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics as well as from teachers of English as a Second Language. Translation Studies, however, has been somewhat slower in directing [ p. 336 ]its attention to text linguistics and contrastive rhetoric, in spite of an emerging body of literature (Tirkkonen-Condit 1986; Hatim and Mason 1990; Nord 1991; Neubert and Shreve 1992). This paper is one more effort toward applying research in contrastive rhetoric to translation studies and translation pedagogy in particular.

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