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Universidad VeracruzanaFacultad de Idiomas

Licenciatura en Lengua Inglesa

Área de Traducción

A Holistic Approach to Translator Training:

A Case Study based on a UV Workshop

Una monografía presentado porFrancisco González Ramírez

Para obtener por el título de Licenciado en Lengua Inglesa

Asesora de lengua y contenido:

M. A. Eileen Sullivan

Xalapa de Enríquez, Veracruz16 de junio de 2011

Formateado en estilo APA, 6ª edición.



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Table of Contents

Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. 2

Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 4

Theoretical Framework ........................ .......................... .......................... ....................... 11

Background on Translation Pedagogy ................................................................................. 11

The concept of Translator Competence ............................................................................... 12

PACTE Holistic Model for Translation Competences ........................................................ 12

Methodology........................................................................................................................ 17

Participants .................................................................................................................................. 18

Student informants. ........................................................................................................................................... 18

The instructor informant. ............................................................................................................................... 19

The researcher informant. ............................................................................................................................. 19

Materials ....................................................................................................................................... 20

Course materials. ................................................................................................................................................ 21

Instructor questionnaire/interview ......................................................................................................... 21

Analysis ......................................................................................................................................... 22

Data Analysis ......................... ........................... .......................... ............................ ............. 24

Introduction to the Analysis .................................................................................................... 24

Outstanding PACTE Competences.......................................................................................... 24

Correlations with PACTE Competences based on self-interview data and workshop

activities. .................................................................................................................................................... 26

1. Transfer Competence. ................................................................................................................................. 27

2. Strategic Competence. ................................................................................................................................. 27



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3. The Professional Subcompetences. ...................................................................................................... 31

4. Extra-linguistic Competence. ................................................................................................................... 33

6. Psychophysiological Competence ......................................................................................................... 38

Commentary ................................................................................................................................ 49

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 51

References ........................................................................................................................... 54

Appendix (a) Course Materials Table...................... .......................... ........................... 55

Appendix (b) The PACTE Model Chart ........................ .......................... ....................... 60

Appendix (c) Ned Herrmanns Whole Brian Model ....................... .......................... . 61

Extracted from: http://www.12manage.com/methods_herrmann_whole_brain.html

....................................................................................................................................................................... 61

Analyzing personal and organizational thinking preferences. Explanation of Whole

Brain Model of Herrmann. ('76) .......................................................................................................... 61

What is the Whole Brain Model? Description ...................................................................................... 61

Origin of the Whole Brain Model. History .............................................................................................. 62

Appendix (d) Instructors Self Interview ................... .......................... ....................... 63



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Introduction

Records indicate that translation has existed as means of massive communication since

the times of the Achaemenids when Darius immortalized in three different cuneiform script

languages his victory over the treacherous Gaumata in 522 BCE. Ever since then, translation has

played a fundamental role in the social and economical life of all cultures as it has bridged the

communication gap of many ±if not all± civilizations. As a consequence of the so-called

globalization and the boom of communication medias, the interest on this discipline has

dramatically increased in the past decades. The increment in the translating activity calls for a

large-scale translative competence; currently, there is a plethora of translation institutions around

the world offering undergraduate and postgraduate programs to train translators. However,

Sabaté-Carrové (1999:1) complains that the tools, methodologies, and training that trainees are

given in these programs have failed to prepare them adequately for their professional careers. In

her view, most translation training (TT) programs and methodologies have been designed on a

³hit and miss´ basis. She also complains about the lack of academic development of translation

pedagogy. Likewise, Hurtado Albir (2001:162) observes that the lack of curricular design and

development for the didactics of translation has encouraged some academics to mechanically

include, with essentially disregarding pedagogical considerations, works on linguistics or

traductology (e.g. Larson¶s, Newmarks or Vázquez-Ayora¶s manuals) in their programs. Both

authors agree that this gap in translation pedagogy has led some authors to attempt their own

theoretical frameworks on translator training models (Kaßmaul, Robinson, Baker, etc.), but that

these represent merely a small step in the direction of constituting translation pedagogy as a

discipline.



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Unlike the field of EFL, which has a well-developed pedagogy, translation has lacked a

similar disciplinary specialization. This was reflected in the design of many translator training

syllabi. P lan 90 at the Facultad de Idiomas de la Universidad Veracruzana (FIUV) may have been one

case where the resulting ³hit and miss´ basis, mentioned by Sabaté Carrové, also applied.

Unfortunately, there is currently no research project aimed at evaluating the degree of success

Plan 90 had in preparing active professional translators, therefore I am unable to ascertain if the

last statement is true. If so, then the training was probably less than optimal. I remember that

during a translation exercise, a professor²after hearing a frustrated fellow student ask why

translation had to be so difficult²told us: ³Translation is indeed very hard. That¶s why many

students don¶t dare translate when they leave here.´ I thought at the time that he meant that it

was the nature of translation to be virtually impossible, and that no one in my classroom would

ever measure up to the challenge. At any rate, I myself felt insufficiently prepared for life as a

professional translator.

Why did I feel so unprepared? Danielle Giles, quoting Jansen and Jakobson (2000:114),

gives one more or less obvious answer: ³Such skills [translation skills], like other cognitive

skills, are acquired and mature over a long period, generally far longer than the few months or

years that translation students spend in the classroom«´ (2004:1). Indeed, the BA¶s program

was holistic and thorough, since it included subjects ranging from culture, compared literature,

stylistics to machine translation, Spanish writing workshops, traductología and compared

grammar; however, my question, perhaps, can be further illuminated if we consider that there

was an absence of a broader approach to translation theory: the mainstay of our translation

theory subject (Traductología) came from Vázquez-Ayora¶s work Introducción a la



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T raductología. Curso básico de T raducción (1977), a compared stylistics approach to translation.

Vázquez-Ayora¶s work is indeed ample, dealing with translation matters such as discourse;

however his approach is mostly based in linguistics and even if it is supposedly based on context,

as Llácer-Llorca (QUOTE) observes, his examples rarely go beyond the sentence level. We also

spend a good deal of time in learning his version of the technical procedures conceived originally

by Vinay and Dalbernet (1958). Vázquez-Ayora aimed at making translation more scientific

through linguistic analysis (QUOTE Introduction), consequently he proposes in Chapters 1 (la

unidad de traducción) and 9 (el procedimiento gral. de la traducción) QUOTE the use of set

procedures that start from the analysis of the Source Language text to the rendering of the

translation equivalences²by choosing the adequate technical procedure as required. We learn to

use the technical procedures to analyze and provide translations using the technical procedures ±

a methodological error, according to Delisle (1988). I believe it would have been rather useful if

the translation theory course had helped us build our understanding of the translation process and

in encouraging us to develop our own method of translating instead of learning name tags

(translation procedures) of someone else¶s understanding of the translation process (Vázquez-

Ayora¶s, for example). In any case, the technical procedures seemed inoperative to me at the

moment of exegesis, as they relied on prescriptions that were hard to follow when facing real

texts²due to time issues mainly, and because such procedures are of very little assistance in

interpreting and re-expressing a given message or understanding discourse. The very word

³procedures´ (an established or official way of doing something, according to the Oxford

English dictionary) suggests that Vázquez-Ayora believed that translators could be provided with

some pre-established way of dealing with translation problems. In the following excerpt from



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T ranslation: An Interpretive Approach (1988), Delisle seems to support my contention that the

procedures are unhelpful in learning to translate:

The term ³procedure´ is misleading, because comparative stylistics does

not study the process by which equivalences are established [«] the

categories of comparative stylistics (and particularly the so-called

translation procedures) cannot really be applied to the analysis and re-

expression of messages, or even to the verification of equivalences [«]

Compared stylistics short-circuits the interpretive process of

translation

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« Delisle (1988: 72, 73, 74)

Although I have never actually used these ³procedures´ in my brief life as a professional

translator, I have come to better appreciate some of Vázquez-Ayora teachings that have helped

me develop my translator expertise: I have used his ideas on el genio de la lengua and

anglicismos de frecuencia, which have assisted me in understanding the different stylistic

devices used in English and Spanish for expressing ideas in written language. I also consult his

book for matters of style when I grow suspicious about my own translations; I generally regard

Introducción a la T raductología as a good compendium of English-Spanish style issues.

Nonetheless, I still believe that the translation theory program should consider many

more translation theories ranging from linguistics to postcolonial studies in order to better

understand the translation phenomenon. Fortunately, the panorama has changed in the most

recent curriculum: it includes a Translation Studies subject separated from the Traductología

subject²which should, in my opinion, be re-christened to Compared Stylistics, a very useful

subject, indeed, in helping students explore communicative possibilities and get away from

literal translation, but with a far less misleading name.

1 My own underlining



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It seems to me that the inclusion of the compared stylistics technical procedures in Plan

90 lacked of a clear pedagogical purpose as these are meant for analyzing the final product, and

not for developing neither the understanding of the translation process, nor the interpretive or

transfer skills. As time has gone by, however, I have become more optimistic about the

possibility of learning useful heuristics for translating in the classroom. As I moved into the

second level workshop and left behind Vázquez-Ayora, I was exposed to a different approach²

one which encouraged me. For me, at least, this new focus helped me to understand what I had

studied before.

Of course, the three diverse translation workshops we took offered very interesting

aspects about translation and they all contributed (along with the other subjects in the

curriculum) to the development of my expertise in the long run. Nevertheless, the pedagogy of

the second workshop is what most interested me in writing this paper. While taking this

workshop, I noticed that my translations began to improve, and I started to feel more confident of

my interpretive skills; my skills for transferring messages from one language into the other also

became better. In a short time, the theory learnt in the previous courses began to make sense and

I started to be more aware of my cognitive processes at the moment of the interpreting the

assigned texts2. This may be the result of natural progression ²my translation skills are still

developing nowadays, like Giles notes in his text², however, I believe the second workshop

instructor¶s pedagogical practices contributed vastly in the developing those skills.

2 Compared stylistics procedures derive from cognitive processes similar to the ones Ireferred to in this paragraph. As I mentioned before, it is not so much that Vazquez Ayora analytic

categories are wrong, but that are of little help for novice translators. They are useful in tagging a

finished product, but they give no hint of the cognitive processes. I believe they best follow the

learning of the cognitive processes that ultimately enabled me to produce better translations.



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After having taken the previously mentioned workshop, I realized that the instructor¶s

approach to conducting the class had been multifarious: the activities were aimed at developing

reading, extra-linguistic, memory and cognitive skills. The latter realization encouraged me to

further research the topic of translation theory and translation pedagogy so as to understand the

methodological basis for the instructor¶s course. My initial research led me to the PAC TE

(Procés de Adquisiciò de la Competència T raductora i Avaluació) model for translation

competences. I found that the instructor¶s practices developed (or strived to, at least) several

translation competences to a certain extent. Therefore, my research question arose: how many

of the PACTE model¶s competences were dealt with in the course, and how did the instructor

tackled them with her teaching practices? I decided to carry out a post-facto descriptive case

study of the T aller de T raducción II, Grupo C workshop, in order to document, analyze and

categorize the instructor¶s teaching practices in light of the Translator Competences detected by

the PAC TE group (at the University of Barcelona, where they have carried out theoretical and

empirical research since 1998) and current translation pedagogy literature, and from my

particular point of view as a workshop participant.

Thus the objectives of this work are as follows:

y To find points of contact between the workshop instructors classroom activities and

practices and the competences they strive to develop utilizing the Translation

Competences model described by the PACTE.

y To describe the objectives, the activities and the underpinnings of the workshop

instructors teaching practices.

y To gain insights into the logic of the workshop instructors teaching practices.

This research project is divided as follows:



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The Theoretical Background contains a brief history of the current situation of

Translation Pedagogy, as well as an explanation of the concept of Translation Competence.

Afterwards, I provide a description of the PACTE¶s holistic model of Translation Competence. I

discovered that several concepts on Translator Training (henceforth TT) from D. Robinson, M.

Sabaté-Carrové, and others resonated with the instructor¶s own methodology. Though these TT

concepts are not dealt with in the Theoretical Framework, they will emerge throughout the

analysis in supporting many of the instructor¶s ideas and procedures.

The following section is a Methodology section where I explain how I obtained the data

to carry out this research, and how I utilized the theory described in the previous section. I also

provide a description of the participants and the materials, and explain how I carried out the

analysis.

The Analysis section describes in-depth the instructor¶s methodology for developing the

translation competences found in the PACTE model. (Interestingly, the instructor herself had

never even heard of the PACTE model.) Finally, I draw my conclusions about the instructor¶s

teaching model, and I comment on the interesting aspects that the research generated and which

can provide material for further research.

I believe it is of utmost importance to start creating TT models in our academic context. I

hope the results from this research nourish the discussion on TP, and that a translator training

model adapted to the present needs of the FIUV will be developed and put in place eventually.

Finally, it is my hope that future students will find this paper inspiring and start their own

research projects on TP.



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Theoretical Framework

In writing this conceptual framework for my T rabajo Recepcional , my concern will be to

provide a Translator Competence model as a guide to identify the competences which were

developed in the case under study. I will also describe how the development of such

competences was achieved. To that end, I will also document relevant ideas for this research

from Douglas Robinson¶s manual Becoming a T ranslator (1997), Jean Delisle¶s T ranslation: An

Interpretive Approach (1988) and Mariona Sabaté Carrové¶s doctoral thesis T owards a T heory of

T

ranslation Pedagogy (1999), seeking a better understanding of how the competences

developed. I also included a brief history of TP to help the reader understand where we are

currently regarding TP.

Background on Translation Pedagogy

Translation has been traditionally regarded as an activity that is learned mostly through

empirical experience; under this assumption, translation theoreticians paid little attention to

translation training and to translation pedagogy until the late eighties. It was not until the 1990¶s

that TP was more or less consolidated as an independent discipline. The closest that the

translation theorists came to focusing on TT was the proposal of training manuals based on

structural linguistics and, according to García Yebra (1987: 22), methodological guides based on

lexicology and semantics. According to Robinson (1997:162,163), the central concern for

translation theorists (even as far back as Cicero) has been only the issue of equivalence, thus

making TT at best a secondary consideration. It was not until 1988 that Holmes identified TT as

an applied discipline, including it in his map of Translation Studies where it was shown as part of

the ³applied§ activities as opposed to the ¦pure§ study of translation. Ever since then, the number of



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academics concerned with TT and the translator as a learner has continued to increase. Many

academics involved in TT have generated new knowledge about specific training techniques,

among them Kaußmaul (1989), Hurtado-Albir (1996 to the present), Robinson (1997), Mariona

Sabaté Carrové (1999). Nevertheless, TP is yet to be consolidated as an independent discipline in

its own right as the discussion is still in an early stage.

The concept of Translator Competence

A fundamental advance in the creation of TP was the concept of translator competences.

These competences are a set of skills that student translators should learn or empirical translators

develop at some point of their careers. The term, based on the concept of ³linguistic

competence´ coined by Noam Chomsky in 1962, came into use 1980¶s. The understanding of

translation competence is very important as it can serve as a basis for the creation of course

syllabi. The term ³translation competence´ , as I have explained, started to appear in translation

theory literature around 1986 although initially many authors used the term without explicitly

defining it (Hurtado Albir. 2001: 382). However, as TT has grown and found its place within the

discipline, scholars, such as Hewson and Martin (1991), Kiraly (1995), Hurtado Albir (1996) or

Neubert (2000) among others, have continued to generate models and functional descriptions for

TC.

PACTE Holistic Model for Translation Competences

The PACTE Group (Process of Acquisition of Translation Competence and Evaluation)

has been carrying out holistic, empirical-experimental research concerning translation

competence and its acquisition in written translation since 1998. In their research at the

Autonomous University of Barcelona, they have considered both the translation process and the

translation product. They have examined, in turn, both inverse and direct translations in six



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language combinations: English, French and German-Spanish and Catalan. The participants in

this group include Amparo Hurtado-Albir (who has been mentioned previously) as group leader,

as well as participants of other national backgrounds, including Allison Beeby, Mónica

Fernández, Olivia Fox, Anna Kuznik, Wilhelm Neunzig, Patricia Rodríguez, Lupe Romero, and

Stefanie Wimmer. This group of researchers has generated a holistic model which is described

in Hurtado Albir¶s book T raducción y T raductología: Introducción a la T raductología (2001: 393, 398).

There are many translator competence models: the PACTE project, the PETRA project at

the University of Granada, the TransComp at the University of Graz and the CTP project at the

Zurich University, to name a few. I have chosen to use the PACTE model¶s categories for

explaining the teaching practices in the workshop under study since it was the only available

model I had at hand at the time I wrote this paper. The PACTE model integrates research from

previous authors such as Hatim and Mason, Kiraly, Hansen, Neubert, and Orozco. In regard to

her motivation for organizing the PACTE research, Hurtado-Albir begins by debunking the

pedagogical nature of much material (manuals, etc.) purportedly addressing pedagogical

concerns:

E l vacío pedagogico existente en didáctica de la traducción ha dado pie a

que, en los últimos años, se incluyan de manera directa y mecánica, sin

pasar por una aplicación pedagógica, investigaciones desarrolladas en el

ámbito de la Lingüística o de la T raductología [...] Aunque algunos de

estos trabajos (cfr. por ejemplo, Robinson, 1997d) reflejan una mayor

preocupación práctica y metodológica, en realidad se trata más bien de

libros sobre aspectos teóricos de la traducción que sobre su enseñanza;

lo que hacen es plantear el conocimiento de la reflexión teórica como un



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medio de aprendizaje de la práctica, produciéndose así una confusión

entre teoría de la traducción y didáctica de la traducción.´

Hurtado-Albir (2001: 164).

According to the research carried out by the PACTE group, TC is the ability to carry out

the transfer process from the comprehension of the source text to the re-expression of the target

text, taking into account the purpose of the translation and the characteristics of the target-text

readers (Hurtado-Albir 2001:385). TC is also defined as the underlying system of knowledge,

skills, abilities, and attitudes necessary for translating. This model makes a clear distinction

between competence (the underlying system) and performance (translating in itself), and it is

developed on the basis of the following theoretical assumptions [adapted from Hurtado-Albir

(2001)]:

1) translative competence is different from bilingual competence

2) translative competence has constative and operative components (subcompetences)

which:

(a) are of diverse nature (e.g. linguistic, extra-linguistic, instrumental,

professional)

(b) work at different levels (e.g. knowledge, skills, epistemological knowledge,

operative)

4) strategies interact within these components.

5) translative competence comprehends a group of subcompetences that interact through

a gamma of hierarchies, variations, and relations.



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As explained above, TC is divided into different subcompetences that interact with each

other (See Appendix (b) for the chart). The competences, which are integrated to form

³Translator Competence´ include: 1. Linguistic Competence for the two languages ( bilingual

competence), 2. Extra-linguistic Competence, 3. Transfer Competence, 4. Professional and

Instrumental Competence ,5. Psychophysiological Competence and6. Strategic Competence. A

detailed explanation of each of these follows.

Linguistic Competence or Bilingual Competence consists of the capacity for

understanding the source language (SL) and for producing texts in the target language (TL). It

comprises the following skills: grammar competence, textual competence (knowledge and

mastery of the different text, or discourse genres), illocutionary competence (mastery of

language functions), and sociolinguistic competence (related to the comprehension and

production within contexts presenting differing dialects, registers and jargons).

E xtra-linguistic Competence is the implicit and explicit knowledge of the world and of

particular subjects. This competence is composed of knowledge about translation, bi-cultural

knowledge, encyclopedic knowledge (world knowledge), and subject knowledge (on specific

topics).

T ransfer Competence consists of the capacity to understand and carry out the translation

process beginning with the reading of the SL text and ending with the final draft. In other words,

the competent translator must be able to understand the SL text and to know how to express its

features in the TL, keeping in mind the over-arching goal of the translation and the

sociolinguistic features of the beneficiaries (clients, readers ) of the text. This is the central

competence that integrates the other competences.



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Professional and Instrumental Competence refers to the knowledge and abilities related

to the professional practice of translation. It comprises a wide range of knowledge: knowledge of

where and how to find documentation and sources of all kinds; knowledge of how to use new

technologies, and where to obtain them; knowledge of the job market and of the behavior of a

professional translator.

Psychophysiological Competence consists of the ability to apply the attitudinal, cognitive,

and psychomotor mechanisms to carry out the translation process. It incorporates the cognitive

capacities of attention and memory; psychological attitudes, such as intellectual curiosity;

perseverance, critical spirit, the recognition of one¶s abilities and trust in one¶s capacities; rigor

and so forth; the capability for developing creative processes, logical thinking, etc.

Strategic Competence is made up of all the individual processes (internal or external,

conscious or unconscious) that the translator employs for solving problems arising during the

translation process. There are several existing strategies for different purposes, for example:

strategies for compensating for a lack of understanding of a text (separating main ideas from

secondary ideas, looking up for information, establishing conceptual relationships, etc.); for

reformulating ideas (paraphrase, retranslate, reformulate ideas aloud, etc.) for documenting

(knowing how to choose information, organize the order of consults, etc.). Developing this

competence is essential because it gives translators ways to detect, solve and²when a problem

arises²make decisions.

It is of utmost importance for the consolidation of translation pedagogy to carry out

extensive empirical studies measuring the success of the strategies and processes for acquiring

the TC. The work that has been carried on by the PACTE group during the past eight years is,

however, still in process; for that reason, they do not present their results as conclusive.



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Methodology

The focus of this T rabajo Recepcional (TR), a case study, is the instructor¶s pedagogy

for conducting a single 9th semester Translation Workshop II in which I participated as student

at the FIUV in 2007. The workshop was given in the morning to a group of 27 students, 14 men

and 13 women of widely varying interests and abilities. All students attended eight hours a week

during the fall semester. At the time I actually took the course and began my TR research, I

lacked the background which would have suggested the use of diary writing and observation

schedules to describe the workshop activities. By the time I had defined my topic my

methodological choices were limited.

Therefore, in order to describe qualitatively the translation pedagogy approach employed

in the Workshop under study, I initially conceived the use of multiple perspectives. For the sake

of greater objectivity, they were distributed in the following way: (1) post facto documental

research supplemented by (2) semi-structured instructor questionnaire (3) my own emic (insider).

This case study may perhaps be best described as a descriptive case study. Yinn (cited in

Baxter 2008) notes that this type of case study is used to describe a phenomenon (the pedagogy

behind the workshop) and the real-life context in which it occurred (the Translation Area of the

FIUV). My role in this type of research is to describe the instructor¶s pedagogy as witness of her

teaching practices. Any criticism to her practices is beyond the scope of this capstone paper (an

explanatory case study would be needed instead) due to the nature of descriptive case studies. On

the other hand, I was unable to conceive any device for evaluating the success of her teaching

practices objectively in this research. Consequently, I have limited myself to only describing her



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teaching practices, and to measure their degree of contact with the competences identified by

PACTE.

As I have previously mentioned, this course was of special interest to me because the

methodology for conducting it was interesting in itself and because I found it significant for my

development as translator.

The present analysis of the TP employed in Translation Workshop II was carried out

using the literature presented in Chapter I to the end of identifying what Translator Competences

from the PACTE model were present in the instructor¶s teaching model, as well as in the course

materials. The major actors in this piece of qualitative research are described below.

Participants

Student informants.

This research project originally intended to have several key informants to provide the

information about the Workshop under study. However, owing to the fact that many former

students have moved away or have moved on to other interests, they were either very hard to

contact and, on the surface at least, seemed to have little recollection of the Workshop. Time also

influenced the decision which ultimately excluded key informants. It soon became clear that it

would take more time than I had at my disposition to gather all the relevant data from them, and

in the meanwhile the material I had in hand was more abundant than expected.

Consequently, the information analyzed was drawn from the workshop materials

themselves, from the self-interview with the instructor, M.A. Eileen Sullivan (henceforth ³the

instructor informant´ or simply ³the instructor´), and from the recollections of the researcher

himself, i.e. emic.



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The instructor informant.

The instructor informant is a professor at the F acultad de Idiomas de la Universidad

Veracruzana (FIUV) with 30 years of experience in teaching translation. She is very

knowledgeable in many disciplines such as rhetoric, discourse analysis, translation, as well as

EFL teaching (English as Foreign Language), and psychotherapy. She has been a translator for

about 35 years and taught that subject for almost as long; nonetheless, her TP knowledge is

mostly empirical.

The researcher informant.

The researcher informant has completed translation studies in the BA in the English

Language Program at the Universidad Veracruzana. I am also in the process of certifying my

mastery of French and Italian, and am self-taught in Romanian. My pedagogical concepts have

been nourished by experiences in martial arts, theater and teaching at an experimental language

institute: as a teacher of martial arts, I applied ideas drawn from (a) traditional instructor

apprenticeship which emphasizes the instructor-student relationship as well as non-verbal

transmission of knowledge, (b) formal instruction, including a sports methodology diplomate,

and three seminars with Richard Amos Sensei. I consider these experiences relevant since the

instructor employed non-verbal techniques in the Workshop, and regarded the body as a source

of information, and translation as a sort of performance. This performance, I reasoned, might be

similar to martial arts performance and be related to verbalization and muscle memory in martial

arts. My theatre training consisting of working with Yaco Guigui, an actor-director of long

experience who used ludic techniques focused on de-inhibiting the student actors. His constant

question was: How do you synthesize these words into action? (This was a sort of translation, I

thought.) Often, more than explaining, this instructor²like martial arts instructors²preferred



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modeling to explaining. Other exercises proceeded on the understanding that meanings encoded

in the body could be perceived and translated into words. At the experimental multidisciplinary

institute (Laboratorio Sperimentale Multiculturale) I learned a very different type of pedagogy:

first, in an Italian course, I was taught comparatively in an approach that assumed it was better to

work from the students¶ current state of knowledge, and therefore proceeded analogically and

deductively from the student¶s language. (Perhaps the method merits the name ³constructivist.´)

The generative transformational grammar of Chomsky was translated into a pedagogical model

in which a limited number of universals were identified and then dealt with across language

boundaries. This approach was a simplified version of some of the concerns of Vazquez-Ayora,

but with more pedagogical considerations. I later re-interpreted the approach and applied it to

French language teaching at the same institute. Later on, I utilized the same approach for

teaching myself Romanian, Portuguese, German and Farsi; unfortunately, I have only partially

adapted it to these languages, as I have had very little time for doing so.

Materials

The documents to be examined included a detailed post-facto account of the materials

employed in the Workshop. In each case, objectives, procedures and instructor perceptions of

outcomes are specified and available for analysis. The emic participant did not write a separate

document, as did the instructor, but rather reflected on his personal reaction to different

materials, techniques and so on. Other documents consisted of the actual materials used in the

course. No official course syllabus was included since the purpose of the research was not

comparative but aimed at exploring those aspects which were intrinsically interesting and

comparing them with the PACTE model. The instructor questionnaire was to provide

information on the teaching model supporting the workshop¶s methodology.



21

Course materials.

The course materials were gathered from the original photocopies from the workshop

kindly provided by a former student in the same workshop. The material was originally

presented in chronological order in a table containing the description, the rationale and activities

for each material as provided by the instructor. I subsequently organized it into five categories

according to the material type: Theory, Structured Translation Exercises, Reading and

Translation Texts, Evaluation, Syllabi. The workshop materials, which appear in the table, are

both abundant and extensive. (The ³fit´ between the material and the time frame of the workshop

was evident in the fact that most students had to make a real effort to keep up.) A few documents

may have been lost. The research was carried out on those documents which could be

recuperated. [The table itself can be found at Appendix (a)]

Instructor questionnaire/interview

The application of the instructor questionnaire was carried out in an atypical manner; one

shaped partly by instructor preferences and time restrictions and partly by the researcher¶s need

to know. Before the decision to use a self-interview was made, I consulted an experienced

qualitative researcher who said that it was one alternative; another would be for the instructor to

simply write an essay. Both would acceptable in terms of reliability. The instructor was reluctant

to have an unedited recorded interview published claiming that such impromptu exchanges end

up sounding ³demented.´ On the other hand, she reasoned that if her workshop had been

somehow unique, then perhaps the questions that she had asked herself in the process of

developing the workshop would also have been unique. So, at least initially, the interview was

³open´ in order to allow her the greatest possible degree of self-expression. (Later, the self-

proposed questionnaire was augmented with further questions from the emic researcher, as



22

explained below.) She felt comfortable with responding to questions in front of a screen: She

remarked that when student researchers approach her, she typically responds to their

questionnaires by e-mail ³in order to do them justice.´ Clearly, this course of action precluded

sophisticated techniques of analysis3

which take into account interviewee reactions to questions

(e.g. fidgiting, hesitation, eye movement, change of tone of voice) and the subjective reactions of

the interviewer co-occurring with each response. [The interview can be found at Appendix (d)]

In addition to increasing the instructor¶s comfort, considerable time was saved with the

self-interview conducted in front of a computer. Further information was gathered in a later

face-to-face interview during which researcher questions about the text were clarified and new

questions added. First layer additions and clarifications subsequent to the initial interview appear

in italics; third layer additions appear in footnotes. The instructor¶s questionnaire will be referred

to as the Self-Interview henceforth. [See separately bound Appendix (d).]

Analysis

The analysis of the data involved color-coding each of the Translator Competences from

the PACTE model. The next step was to look for coincidences of the color-coded competences in

the discourse of the Instructor¶s Questionnaire, and in the description and rationale of the course

materials. After that, the number of coincidences were counted so as to determine the strongest

competences from the Course Materials, and the model in the Instructor Self-interview; the

weakest competences were considered in the analysis, but it foregrounded the strongest

competences: the Bilingual Competence, and the Extra-linguistic Competence.

3 The inclusion of body language and interviewer reaction in a three-column scheme was

referred to me by Prof. Sullivan. She observed this type of research at the UNAM Center for

University Studies on a visit with Dr. Leslie R. Bloom.



23

The final step involved analyzing how the instructor dealt with the weakest and the

strongest competences, and describing the process. Theoretical references to Robinson, Sabaté-

Carrové, and others are made throughout the analysis. As there was no time to include former

students in this study, determining the actual extent to which the competences developed

qualitatively in the students is unknown to the researcher. Therefore, many qualitative factors

such as student attention, student opinion regarding the activities or student presence in the

classroom were not analyzed.



24

Data Analysis

Introduction to the Analysis

The analysis involved using data from the Material table and the Self-Interview to

determine the extent to which PACTE competences were developed in the workshop.

Subsequently, in order to better understand the characteristics of the instructor¶s teaching model

(for conducting her translation workshops) a theoretical explanation was provided. There were

some instances where there was no translation theory available for explaining some of the

instructor¶s strategies.

O

utstanding PACTE CompetencesThe first step taken in the analysis of the data drawn from the material table and the self-

interview involved deciding which PACTE competences were actually fully developed in the

workshop, which were partially developed²albeit in an idiosyncratic way²and which were

sufficiently underrepresented to be excluded from this analysis. The competences are listed in

order beginning with those of least interest for this study and ending with those of greatest

interest for this study. (A full description of the competences can be found in the Theoretical

Framework chapter from page 6 to 10)

1. T ransference Competence. The transference competence was completely excluded from

this study because it involved the entire translation cycle. The stage of development of

the students in this particular workshop seemingly precluded the full development of this

competence. Still, the rest of the competences nourish this competence, i.e. if the rest of

the competences are well developed, so is transfer competence. We thought at first that

the students¶ final results would give a clue to the development of this competence, but it

was felt that the normal classroom grading procedures included too many points



25

involving factors extraneous to the actual development in student expertise. (That is to

say, points for attendance, participation regardless of quality, homework assignments,

etc.) Examinations were given, but they were progress tests, not achievement tests.

Consequently, no reliable instrument to measure achievement was used. Therefore,

grades seemed unlikely to reflect the development of the transfer competence.

2. Strategic Competence. The strategies constituting this competence were, in general, not

dealt with in-depth in this workshop, with the possible exception of strategies for

compensating lack of student understanding of texts and reformulation of ideas.

3. Instrumental-Professional Competences. The instrumental subcompetence was not dealt

with in the course because no types of software or CAT tools (Computer Assisted

Translation) were included for instructional purposes. The professional competence, on

the other hand, was developed to an important degree through the use of anecdotes about

the behavior of professional translators, for example (refer to page 29 for more

information on this competence).

4. E xtra-linguistic Competences. Only one exclusion was made in this category: knowledge

about translation. The information concerning this subcompetence turned out to be very

similar to the behavior of the professional translator described in the Instrumental-

Professional Competence. Thus, the analysis is centered on real world knowledge

(encyclopedic knowledge), knowledge about translation itself, bi-cultural knowledge and

thematic knowledge (knowledge related to topics being translated).

5. Bi-lingualCompetences. In the case of the linguistic competence, two subcompetences

were excluded: the grammar subcompetence, and the handling of the illocutionary aspect.

No activities were directed to specifically improving students¶ handling of grammar. The



26

generally recognized lack of advanced language skills among upper level students at

FIUV, mentioned by the instructor in the Self-Interview (p. 8, l. 14), may have prevented

a thorough development of this competence. Of greater interest for this research were the

handling of the sociolinguistic aspect and the knowledge of different text genres.

6. Psychophysical competences. Most of the subcompetences named in the PACTE for the

psychophysical competence were dealt with in the workshop. It appeared, in general, that

the emphasis of the workshop was tipped toward attitudinal aspects of the translation

process such as rigor, recognition of one¶s abilities and trust in one¶s capacities, cognitive

capacities of memory and attention. Creativity at first appeared to be developed to a

lesser extent, although later I came to question this perception. Neither the instructor

participant nor the researcher were able to connect the ideas from the self-interview or the

class activities to the development of logical thinking in the case under study; therefore,

this last ³attitude´ was excluded from this study.

Correlations with PACTE Competences based on self-interview data and workshop

activities.

The competences below retain the same numeration as above, reflecting their prevalence

and relative interest for this piece of intrinsic research. As mentioned previously in the list above,

the extent of development of the competences differed; the first three competences in the above

enumeration were developed only marginally whereas the last three were broadly developed.

Consequently, the study is centered in the Psychophysical Competence and the Linguistic

Competence. Nonetheless, the less prevalent competences have been commented as well.



27

1. Transfer Competence.

Even though I realized that this was very important competence, the Transfer

Competence was completely excluded from this study, as previously stated. It is mainly an

internal process and I found no instrument to adequately measure it.

Despite the fact that most of the activities in the workshop were somehow aimed at

developing it, the Transfer Competence cannot be taught per se, since the translation process is

mostly an internal one. Hurtado-Albir (2001:311) comments on the difficulty of studying any

cognitive process, especially the translation process which happens at different stages and

includes different types of knowledge and numerous skills. It should be taken into account that

the Transfer Competence is supported by the other competences (text competences, extra-

linguistic competences, strategies, etc.); hence, a thorough development of the rest of the

competences should give a solid foundation in the Transfer Competence. Another reason for its

exclusion is the difficulty of determining the extent to which this competence was developed in

this workshop, as the PACTE is not very clear in delimiting its specific working parts.

2. Strategic Competence.

The Strategic Competence comprises all the processes that translators employ to solve

any problem that arises. The strategies developed in the workshop were: (a) strategies for

compensating for a lack of understanding of a text, and (b) the reformulation of ideas. Of the

broad range of strategic competences suggested by Hurtado Albir (see p. 13), we selected only

two for in-depth study.

(a) Strategies for compensating lack of understanding.

The instructor addressed issues such as lack of understanding of a text in an indirect

holistic way. The instructor believes that lack of good reading skills was the main cause



28

preventing students from understanding any text (Self-Interview, page 8, lines 4-7). This

problem was dealt with, according to the self-interview, by having students read more than they

actually translated so as to give them an amplified context to support their translation [on certain

topic] (page 8, lines 15-18). The course material table reported 14 text readings out of 20 items;

in contrast, the total of translation exercises sums up to 13 including vocabulary exercises and

the subtitling of the Crop Circles video. In spite of the instructor¶s insistence on the usefulness of

thematic repetition, she did, in fact, only one repeat in single topic in printed texts (Item 9, the

³Viceroy Time Drinking´ article, and the alternative text on pulque.) However, she also repeated

topics in the ³oral texts´ she produced at the whiteboard on support of students¶ reading.

Unfortunately, it proved impossible to recuperate all the white boar talks for matching with

printed texts.

Delisle puts forward a similar idea for didactic purposes of translation. He believes that

student translators should read some texts before translating. Afterwards they can discuss the

recreation of the text; the text is the true unit of translation (cited in LLácer-Llorca, 2004: 76).

In the self-interview, the instructor mentions an additional strategy that aids students to

better understand a source text: comparing the source text with a discourse model (page 7, lines

18-21). In the Self-Interview the instructor provided two teaching anecdotes related to translating

without the benefit of target language (henceforth, TL) discourse models (page 10, lines 31-45).

The instructor believes that the students have, in fact, already internalized certain discourse

models. They are, however, unable to use this knowledge because they lack confidence in their

own judgement. Consequently, they rely on dictionary searches to a great extent, and forget to

check what they are saying against a discourse model (Self-Interview, p. 7, l. 19). In her own

study, Sabaté-Carrové found that students were unaware of this problem: ³Excessive dependence



29

on bilingual dictionaries is one of the problems that students tested in this study were not aware

of. Dictionary translations prevailed over context-bound information´ (1999:45).

The instructor tackled the problem of sentence-bound student translation by providing

parallel text models to be emulated (regarding style, discourse, etc.) The self-interview and the

course material table reported some examples of modeling: (a) the instructor¶s own translations

(page 15, lines 43 & 44; Items 5, 6, 15& 7, Course Materials), (b) two anecdotes (page 10, lines

35-49; pages 15 & 16, lines 53-59 & 1-4) (c) and several class activities (Items 13 & 14, Course

Materials). In my own experience, the result of this approach is that students have a better idea of

what kind of register, for example, the target text should contain; thus, they produce a more

natural translation.

Another example of a modeling strategy happened in a different group (I walked into the

instructor¶s classroom that day). Students were translating the instructions for a window-washing

squeegee. They were producing very unnatural translations, so the professor asked them to

remember the language used in TV commercials and to re-translate the text with that language in

mind. She asked them to perform the translations as if they were recording a TV commercial. I

did not see the rest of the class, but the instructor told me that students produced more natural

translations because they were able to evoke the discourse they had learnt from TV commercials.

(b) Reformulating ideas.

The PACTE mentions the following strategies connected with the reformulation of ideas:

(a) paraphrase, (b) retranslate, and (c) reformulate ideas aloud. This is a partial list, notes

Hurtado-Albir, as more strategies for reformulating ideas can be listed. Due to the fact that the

instructor¶s emphasis tipped toward other aspects of translation (such attitudinal aspects), this



30

competence was developed without discrete-point reference during class exercises or in-class

translation evaluations.

Although the PACTE reformulation strategies were not tackled head-on in the workshop

they were practiced indirectly. The Course Materials reported activities for Item 2 which covered

strategies (a) and (b) through by asking the students to summarize and do back translation back

translation and inverse translation. Likewise, I recall that Items 8, 10, and 12 involved students

sharing their solutions in front of the class, which required a good deal of reformulating ideas

aloud (c). Again there was no discrete-point analysis, in the sense that the instructor¶s reiterated

criterion was ³making it sound like Spanish´ instead of focusing on pre-established ³procedures´

(such as Vazquez-Ayora¶s) to solve arising problems. Students were required to paraphrase

constantly in order to produce a more ³natural´ translation. They were invited to add to their

classmates proposals by brainstorming. Some alternatives were obviously wrong, but in other

cases the collocations were not so easy to judge. ³Have you read that somewhere? Who said

that? Did you consider another word before you gave us that one? Did you look that one up

when you did your homework? Where?´ Basically, she was asking the same kind of questions

required by Gile in his IPDR (Integrated Problem and Decision Reporting).

On the other hand, I also believe that (c) also helped us train what Gregory Rabassa calls

the translator¶s ear, which is able to notice when a text sound alien in the TL that way. Rabassa

believes that ³the translator must have a good ear for what his author is saying and he must have

a good ear for what he is saying himself´ (cited in Llácer-Llorca, 2004:81). Regarding

Rabassa¶s idea, Llácer-Llorca (2004:56) comments that indeed the best translations sound fluent

as if they were written in the original language. Llácer-Llorca¶s commentary may be related to

the concern of making a translated text more readable. Giles (2004) claims that students trained



31

to translate on the basis of language equivalence often have the problem of producing unnatural

sounding texts. While this statement may seem trivial, he says, many professors even in TT

programs tend to ignore the readability norm and give preference to formal ³fidelity´ over

naturalness of the target text.

The foregoing suggests that the instructor paid little attention to already prescribed

strategies for reformulating ideas (i.e. ³technical procedures´), rather she encouraged students¶ to

find their own ways of solving translation problems. The precept of ³making it sound like

Spanish´ shows that the instructor was more concerned about students being able to produce

more readable translations than strict equivalences.

3. The Professional Subcompetences.

Competence 3 in the PACTE includes the Instrumental Competence, an aspect which²

on this occasion at least²was not developed in the Workshop. Owing to its exclusion, the

heading of the section is "Professional Subcompetence" only. The PACTE includes in the

professional subcompetences (a) knowledge of the job market and the (b) behavior of the

professional translator in connection with the professional subcompetence. Since the PACTE

offers no further description regarding any of their characteristics, these two subcompetences can

be interpreted in several ways.

(a) Knowledge of the job market

The only strategy employed during the workshop was the use of advice from the

instructor¶s own professional experience and that of other translation professionals. The self-

interview reported that, in order to compete professionally, translators should develop their (1)

inverse-translation skills (self-interview, page 13, line 47 & 48), which is often required in the

real world and excluded from the curriculum at the FIUV; (2) their ability to read longhand, as



32

many English speakers still use it (self-interview, page 14, line 1 & 2) and because it occurs in

older materials; (3) the ability to read in front of a camera and to record audio-scripts (a radio

script was translated and adapted in this particular workshop, and one of the students went to the

Radio UV and saw how another material we had worked with in back translation was actually

recorded (p. 14, l. 4 to 9.) Finally, the ability to keyboard at least 60 wpm was recommended

(self-interview, page 14, lines 53-55). Robinson (1997:37) also comments that typing fast is an

important factor in increasing translation speed (a crucial issue in the modern capitalist world).

(b) The behavior of the professional translator

Regarding the behavior of the professional translator the instructor seemed mainly

concerned to debunk some of the myths, surrounding translator behavior and, in my opinion,

derived from older translation theory. The course materials table reported the following three

strategies for transmitting translator behavior. (1) To reflect on the nature of her editions on a

target text, contrasting it with the source text (item 15, course materials). (2) The teaching

anecdotes about ³the fidelity myth´ exploiting Robinson¶s notion that translation is ³what the

client wants´ (items 1, and 15, course material).

The foregoing demonstrates that the instructor was very concerned about the translator¶s

adaptability to any text ³in the French sense´ task. She was also concerned with the ethics of

translation, for example: she told students at the beginning of the workshop under study, the

anecdote about the interpreter who made up a welcome speech without knowing the language to

save face of the delegate who was not informed about the official languages (present in the Self-

Interview, p. 1, l. 34.) The point of the story is that translation or interpretation ethics involve

matters beyond the ³right equivalence´ depending on the real-life context: the instructor believes



33

that the interpreter¶s behavior was indeed ethical because face saving was more important than

the right equivalence.

Douglas Robinson points that the definition of translation ethics has been traditionally

very narrowly defined: ³it is unethical to distort the meaning of the source text´ (1997: 30). As

proved in the previously cited anecdote, this definition is inoperative in the everyday life of the

translator. ³There are cases when the translator is explicitly asked to µdistort¶ the meaning of the

source text in specific ways, as when adapting a text for television, a children¶s book, or an

advertising campaign (ibid ). It seems that in professional translation the issue of equivalence can

be often changed for ³what the client wants´ (or needs).

4. Extra-linguistic Competence.

The extra-linguistic competence was intensively developed, in quantitative terms at least,

in the case under study. No exclusions whatsoever were made in this category. The class

materials contained knowledge from specific topics, to bi-cultural and world knowledge. The

instructor also utilized the same materials to develop cultural knowledge; therefore, I merged (a)

real world knowledge (encyclopedic knowledge), bi-cultural knowledge, and thematic

knowledge into the same category. Knowledge about translation itself involved the same

findings as in the Knowledge of the Job Market from the Professional Competences, hence its

exclusion.

(a) Real world knowledge, thematic knowledge, and bi-cultural knowledge

The reason why the instructor paid little attention to subtitling and translation software is

because she believes that students are usually good at handling technology themselves (Self-

Interview, p. 14, l. 36). Their problem lies elsewhere. Language and culture generally represent

more of a challenge to students, in her view. The instructor tried to improve students¶ culture by



34

giving them several texts related to history, anthropology or socio-politics. Two of the teaching

anecdotes provided cultural information from her own experience as a learner of Spanish as a

second language.

Examples of the material types mentioned in the foregoing paragraph include Susan

Sontag¶s text ³On Being Translated´ (Item 1, Course Materials), which is contextualized during

the Sarajevo siege of the middle of the 90¶s. The activities involved studying a map of the

Balkans and comparing a few phrases from the Serbo-Croatian languages. The instructor also

complemented this text with a questionnaire on vocabulary and contents. The pulque texts (Item

9), and the ³Saints in Mexico´ (Item 13) also contained Mexican history and cultural information

about Mexican traditions. Item 13 involved a description of how a radio recording is performed.

The ³African Marriage Rituals´ (Item 7) text contained information on the Karo people¶s

marriage traditions, and the ³ Don¶t Let¶s Go to the Dogs T onight´ (Item 10) contained

information on the social situation of children in three different African countries.

As mentioned previously, two anecdotes contained bi-cultural information. The

instructor, being a native speaker of English, was able to offer this kind of information. The

³Bless you´ story and the ³Why not teacher?´ story describe two situations where cultural

differences create a degree of discomfort in the protagonists. It is probable that more information

of this type arose during the ³whiteboard talks´ or the class activities. Nevertheless, the

researcher is unable to clearly remember (and there are no documents).

5. Linguistic competences.

The three PACTE subcompetences of greatest interest are: (a) textual competence

(knowledge and mastery of the different text, or discourse genres) (b) and the sociolinguistic



35

competence (related to the comprehension and production within contexts presenting differing

dialects, registers and jargons). The sociolinguistic aspects sometimes arose in relation to a text

(reflected in the material table) or formed part of whiteboard lectures typically presented at the

beginning of the class. (Self-Interview, p. 7, l. 39)

(a) Textual subcompetence.

One of the problems the instructor has detected in FIUV undergraduates is that they are

held back by a lack reading skills (Self-Interview p. 8, l. 6) partially due to their undeveloped

language abilities. Delisle (1988:85) observes that university students should be well versed in

grammar, but the reality is that they enter TT programs with undeveloped language skills.

Delisle, however, believes that a translation course should not be the place for systematical

language instruction. This view differs from that of the instructor, who pointed out that

translation programs should always strive to improve students¶ language ability. Furthermore,

she believes that language is acquired while trying to learn something else (Self-Interview p. 8

lines 13 & 47.)

Perhaps one of the reasons why B.A. students are many times unable to identify or re-

express discourse types, which vary from one assignment to another ±much less those varying

within a text itself²is due to their undeveloped language skills. Students are frustrated upon

confronting the whole text, which they generally fail to understand because they are little

experienced in reading in general, and also because they lack the linguistic and real-world

knowledge that would help them through (Self-Interview p. 8, l. 6) Students then retreat to the

sentence level and spend excessive time on word-searches (Self-Interview p. 7, l. 19). In my

personal experience of workshops, it has seemed to me that the text never quite recovers its

³wholeness.´ The instructor addressed this discoursal issue by asking students to read texts



36

belonging to different diverse genres and written in different registers (see Course Materials

table for detailed information). The instructor complemented this strategy by delaying contact

with the written word, first providing extended information in the format of whiteboard talks

(Item 17, Course Materials). Subsequently, she created a glossary for the printed text later to be

translated by the group to undercut student tendency to solve any problem with a dictionary,

leaving them little time and energy to deal with the discoursal level. By giving this support, her

intention was to undercut students¶ usual sentence-level, word-search strategy, obliging them to

move on to the discourse level.

Another way of assisting students (and modeling how to translate a text attending to the

discursive level) consisted of the instructor¶s sight translating a given text prior to students¶

translating it outside of class. As she sight-read, some students felt stimulated to ³beat the

teacher to the punch.´ Other students, who depending on auditory rather than visual processing,

were given the option of listening only. In each case, the student became familiar with the

³whole text.´ (Self-Interview, p. 11, footnote 4; Items 6 & 17, Course Materials).

The ideal result of the foregoing approach is that students spend much less time looking

for words, which makes the task easier to do as well. The extended information at the beginning

of the class (or in the extended texts) also contributes to produce better understanding of the

contextual and cultural data of the text. Students, therefore, are able to give more accurate

translations of cultural items.

The instructor went beyond the concepts embedded in the PACTE Textual

Subcompetence. This happened because of her conviction that student translators need to

prepare themselves, not only as translators, but as competent bi- or multi-lingual text specialists.

She backed up this view with recommendations from L. Arencibia (a Cuban sociologist and



37

translator-interpreter) and from Douglas Robinson. The instructor also asked us to take note of

the range of job descriptions on the ProZ website, involving text manipulations far beyond

translation, including interpretation, correcting, editing, register or dialect shifting, etc. (Self-

Interview, p.9, l. 42; p. 17, l. 40). In line with these views, the course materials were used, not

only for translation, but also for working on the types of text manipulation mentioned above.

Examples of text manipulation exercises include Item 2 (summarizing), Item 12 (editing), Item

13 (writing a radio script from a translation), and Item 14 (adapting the recipe to the Mexican

context, and the availability of the ingredients) in the Course Materials table.

(b) Sociolinguistic subcompetence

The PACTE model mentions comprehension and production within contexts presenting

differing dialects, registers and jargons. The instructor dealt with this subcompetence through the

use of teaching stories, and texts in different registers and dialects, enriched by whiteboard talks.

The instructor believes that the lack of language development in FIUV students also

prevents them from understanding accents and dialects e. g. as they appear in films. (Self-

Interview, p. 15, l. 21 & 27). According to the Self-Interview, she tackles this problem by giving

students sociolinguistics lessons at the beginning of the class (p. 7, l. 39; Item 18, Course

Materials). Teaching anecdotes often presented sociolinguistic lessons, e.g. the ³Silent Club

Story´ refers to the social relations deaf people form, and the term they prefer to use in referring

to themselves; the ³Why not µteacher¶ story´ presents a different way of addressing school

teachers in Spanish and English. I remember the ³Silent Club story´ came along in a class

discussion where students were reflecting on a more political correct term for deaf people (Item

8, Course Materials).



38

The class texts were written in different registers (both in Spanish, and English, see

Course Materials), and some of them included different dialects and jargons. Examples of these

texts include the ³ Don¶t Let¶s Go to the Dogs T onight´ text (Item 10, Course Materials), where

students were confronted with African lexis and structures. Other examples include the two texts

on pulque (Item 9) , which contained historical lexical items, and Mexican sayings; the pumpkin

pie recipe (Item 14) included topic -specific vocabulary and lexical items from English recipes

and students were required to translate those to Spanish. The ³Crop Circle´ film (Item 16)

contained a broad range of English dialects, which students had to understand and translate

without the use of the film script.

Teaching anecdotes have proved again to be one of the instructor¶s main strategies for

passing on sociolinguistic knowledge. An abundance of class materials and activities also

complemented these anecdotes.

6. Psychophysiological Competence

This competence was perhaps the one the most consistently developed during the

workshop. All three subcompetences mentioned in the PACTE were present in the workshop,

although to differing extents. The following analysis will be organized into three subsections,

each one dealing with a particular subcompetence: (a) cognitive capacities (memory and

attention) (b) psychological aptitudes (intellectual curiosity, critical spirit, self-confidence, and

rigor) and (c) capability to develop creative processes.

(a) Cognitive capacities of memory, and attention

Although these two skills can be seem very straightforward, attention, for example, can

be ambiguous. Its meaning can range from concentrating on external phenomena to

concentrating on internal phenomenal such as translator¶s feelings. Nonetheless, PACTE offers



39

no explanation with respect to either attention or memory. Therefore, this analysis will be

centered on the memory skill, as I was unable to find a direct connection between the workshop

activities and the development of the attention skill in the students (unless it is the multimodal

aspect, discussed later).

If the attention skill is to be understood as self-awareness²focusing inward-- then this

analysis can point out several important efforts to develop it. One of the instructor¶s premises

behind her pedagogy is that translation depends much on the individual¶s cognitive preferences

(self-interview, page 9, line 18)²a posture shared with Douglas Robinson in his Accelerated

Course (1997:42-44). To the purpose of better self-understanding, the instructor devoted time to

teaching Ned Herrman¶s quadrant schema (1993), forming groups to validate each student¶s

perception of their cognitive organization, and checking the individual¶s cognitive processing

preferences against the translation problems that arose in class work.

Regarding memory, the instructor tested student recall by setting extensive examinations

requiring detailed information from the texts, the glossaries, the teaching stories, vocabulary

activities, and even white-board information which arose from class discussion or whiteboard

talks. These demands, of course, developed students¶ memory (page 8, line 45). The

memorization was supported by recycling the old materials²anecdotes, texts and vocabulary

(self interview, page 1, line 28; page 9, line 46.) The professor used Ned Herrmann¶s Four

Quadrant Theory to raise awareness about cognitive preferences, but also to make suggestions

about how they might improve their learning process and facilitate memorization and recall.

[See Appendix (c) for a detailed explanation of the Four Quadrant Theory].



40

The instructor had a strong conviction that learning occurs through the senses too, and

that the information can be retrieved through body memory (self-interview, page 1, footnote 1).

Robinson, citing Goleman, points out that the amygdala records feelings (as opposed to the

hippocampus which records facts) and its arousal adds force to all learning (1997:53). Robinson

(1997) proposes his own complex model of understanding and developing emotional memory.

He emphasizes the fact that translators should pay attention to their visual, auditory and

kinesthetic inputs and the way they like to process those inputs.

The instructor utilized what she calls a ³multi-modal approach´ (self-interview page 13,

lines 1, 14, & 16), a technique for aiding information processing through several sensory

channels. Her multi-modal approach is a way of applying Robinson¶s idea on multiple sensory

inputs. The ³multi-modal´ strategies reported in the research documents include: eating a

pumpkin pie after students translation of the recipe (Item 14, Course Materials), tasting pulque

curado when we read the article on Alcoholic Beverages in Colonial Mexico (item 9 in materials

table), and singing songs related to an apparently transparent children¶s text [in this case, the

traditional children¶s song Caballito Blanco, related to the ³ La borrega que vivía en una

manada´ story] (self-interview, p.4, l. 29 and p.13, l. 16).

Apart from using multiple sensorial channels, the self-interview revealed that, for

instance, infusing language with emotion is a key strategy for enhancing memory. The instructor

used to ask questions such as ³how does such and such word (usually a bad word in Spanish) feel

in your body?´ so as to connect the feeling of the word to its meaning, and to try to re-evoke the

sensation to retrieve the meaning. The instructor reported in the self-interview that some students

have no particular feelings for words (page 1, line 45); she found that this information is also



41

relevant in finding out how students processed texts. I remember she would ask students about

their way of processing a text, e.g. ³Do you hear a voice inside your head telling you the story or

do you rather see images like if it were a text?´ These simple questions aimed at helping students

increase their awareness of their personal style of approaching and understanding texts.

The foregoing reveals that the cognitive capacities present in the PACTE model were

dealt with intensively during the workshop. Nevertheless, it is difficult to determine to what

extent they were instilled in the students, or if they could have been developed further.

(b) Psychological attitudes (intellectual curiosity, perseverance, critical spirit, self-

confidence, rigor, etc.)

The psychological attitudes in the PACTE are very straightforward (with the sole

exception of rigor, which can be interpreted in more than one way) and they require little

interpretation. All these qualities identified by the PACTE as ³attitudes´ were dealt with to

differing extents in the workshop. The instructor displayed enormous concern regarding these

attitudes during the workshop sessions, and this concern was reflected in the self-interview as

well. The psychological attitudes were dealt with quite comprehensively in the workshop. Due

to the multifarious aspects of this subcompetence, this section will be divided into the following

subsections: (1) intellectual curiosity, (2) critical spirit, and (3) self-confidence, and (4) rigor.

Perseverance was excluded from this study because the activities of the case under study

were not particularly aimed at developing it. Notwithstanding, the entire workshop activities

covered a large volume of material, and placed heavy demands on the students¶ perseverance.

Ultimately, I was unable to devise a way of studying the perseverant attitude.

(1) Intellectual curiosity



42

Can intellectual curiosity be developed in a classroom? To me, intellectual curiosity

seems to be more of a personal trait than an attitude that can be the developed systematically.

Objectively measuring the instructor¶s success in cultivating the students¶ intellectual curiosity

would be rather difficult; however, the instructor did her best to describe the curious attitude of

the translator through the use of anecdotes (Self-Interview, p.2 l. 41), and through at least one

text from the Course Materials (Item 1).

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, anecdotes were the instructor¶s main strategy for

making students aware that translators need to be very curious (especially about words). One

kind of anecdote is what the instructor called ³word adventures´ in the self-interview (page 1,

line 39); this genre had a game-like quality and the instructor used it to raise awareness of the

fact that translators are usually emotionally bound to words and language, even to the point of

quarreling about them (page 2, line 2).

Another anecdote illustrating this view is the ³Columbarium Story´ (p. 3, l. 55), where the

instructor describes how she became interested in the word ³columbarium´²since she had

neither heard the word nor seen the object previous to her arrival in California. The fact that she

quickly apprised herself of translations, roots and applications of the word enabled her to enter

into a heated discussion with a historian concerning the meaning of the word. Another example

of the instructor¶s effort in illustrating translators¶ curiosity was the ³Silent Club Story´ (page 2,

line 41), where she described how an unknown term could linger in the translator¶s mind for

many, many years until the meaning finally become clear. The ³ La borrega que vivía en una

manada´ (page 4, line 27) is a very good example the translators need to have an unusual

degree of curiosity, being ready to question the obvious. In a conversation she mentioned that a



43

study showed that professional translators spend much time looking up things that ³they already

know.´

There is no conclusive evidence proving that the students actually developed their intellectual

curiosity. The Self-Interview and the materials themselves, however, suggest that students had to

develop certain curiosity to succeed in the course²due to the multifarious nature of the topics.

(2) Critical spirit

Critical spirit seems somehow related to intellectual curiosity, as the latter leads to

constantly questioning reality. The self-interview mentions that the ³ La borrega que vivía en una

cabaña´ dealt with translators¶ habit of constantly doubting words they seemingly know. The

instructor¶s belief is that translators are required to spend a great deal of time looking for things

they already know, and that they should always doubt nearly anything that seems obvious (self-

interview page 4, line 36). This conviction is also reflected in another anecdote: the ³µGo West,

Young Man Story´ where the instructor emphasizes the fact that translators often do their job

according to their personalities, preferences, and even the moment where they are translating.

Therefore, they may unconsciously mistranslate the text, or even add information not present in

the source text, requiring constant vigilance and a permanent critical spirit.

A way of stimulating the critical spirit was through class discussion on topics such as

political correctness (in the case of item 8 in the Course Materials table), or the pulque

readings²in which students looked for evidences that text a was a double translation, and

contrasted it to a second text (text b) to look for ideological differences. In item 2 (Course

Materials) students were asked to discuss the findings of the article writer to see if they were,

indeed, applicable to Mexican reality.



44

The instructor would also feed class discussions with anecdotes about translators (or

interpreters) behaving in an ³inappropriate´ way (such as the interpreter who ³interpreted´ a

non-existent Korean welcome speech, page 1 line 34). In item 15 in the Course Materials

students reflected on the nature of text edition, and the truism that translation is ³what the client

wants, ´ echoing what Douglas Robinson claims (1997, p. 17) She went a step further to touch

on an increasingly popular theme: customer education. Inside and outside the classroom she

repeated: ³The translation is what the customer wants, or something better if you can convince

him or her.´ Thus, the instructor opposed the fidelity notion set forth by many translation

theoreticians throughout the centuries, labeling it ³irrelevant´ in everyday translation.

The instructor also became a model insofar as rigor and critical spirit were concerned.

True to her promise, she defended her proposals with hammer and tongs, and vigorously

criticized student proposals. (Self-Interview, p. 7, l. 10). As far as the instructor was concerned,

the key factor in becoming critical about words is ³owning´ one¶s words. In order to being able

to do so, the translator needs to become emotionally bound to his/her own words (self-interview,

page 7, line 14).

The emotional bonds to words are also related to the development of student self-

confidence. The next sub-section deals with self-confidence, and infusing language with

emotion.

(3) Self-confidence

The PACTE speaks specifically to this point in recognizing the translator¶s ability to trust

in his/her capacities. This point can be interpreted simply as self-confidence. The instructor was

very concerned about students¶capability to recognize their own abilities (agreeing with Sabaté-



45

Carrové that lack of self-confidence prevented student translators from performing like

professionals). According to the instructor, students were often unable to translate fluently (and

sometimes comprehensively) due to their over-concern regarding theoretical constructs,

dictionary searches, and painstaking sentence analysis (page 7, line 19). She offers a metaphor,

which she says is borrowed from Douglas Robinson: ³And when the centipede, who had been

walking quite happily along, was asked µMr. Centipede, how do you coordinate your 100 feet?¶

he thought about it for the first time²and immediately flopped helplessly down on the floor in a

tangled mess.´

My own feeling, as a student translator, is that because we are unable to recognize our

own strengths we submit²to our own detriment²to the hegemony of authors, rules, and

theories²especially in an educational system that has traditionally encouraged teacher

predominant environments.

In conclusion, the main strategy of the workshop instructor for promoting self-confidence

was giving students authority over their own strengths and making them responsible for

developing them. (page 7, line 14 & 22). In order to achieve the foregoing, the instructor put

forward the need for infusing language with emotion. The rationale supporting this idea is that

words become more meaningful when they evoke emotions, and therefore are more easily

recalled. The translator emotionally ³owns´ his/her words even to the point of arguing with

other people about them (the ³`Mogs Story,´ page 3, line 18, provides a good example). Giving

students authority over their words certainly gives a degree of empowerment against the

hegemony of the rules (such as the Translation Procedures which, in my personal case at least,

hindered instead of assisting in the development of confidence in my abilities).



46

Once again, the use of teaching anecdotes was a tactic for transmitting the idea of student

empowerment. The first story subgenre the professor cited in the self-interview (page 1, line 39)

is ³word adventures´; the instructor seems to use it as a sort of diagnosis of the students¶

relationship with words. This genre involves students choosing a favorite word, and explaining

what makes that word so special. This first stage reveals that some students already have a

³passionate relationship´ with words, whereas others feel confronted with an alien vision of

language (page 2, line 1). Other examples illustrating how words can become emotionally

meaningful are the curious ³Mogs story´ (page 3, line 18), and the painful ³Why not µteacher¶´

story. The instructor points out (page 4, line 49) that the stories contain archetypes (protagonists,

antagonists, questers, etc.) that seem to inspire students. I believe some of them may have felt

identified themselves with such characters.

Sometimes the instructor herself plays the role of the antagonist as she motivates students

to catch her non-native mistakes and to defend their own translation proposals (page 7, line 10),

thus obliging students to prove their authority as native speakers. When students win these

disputes, the instructor gives full credit, something which students find very empowering (page

7, line 11). In the case under study, she required students to criticize a couple of her translations

(items 5 & 15, Course Materials). Some teaching anecdotes illustrate that professional

translators sometimes commit truly absurd mistakes or behave ³unethically´ (One interpretation

the Korean speech, page 1, line 33; and the ³Watermelons´ anecdote, page 1, line 35). This type

of anecdote is aimed at inspiring confidence among students.

According to the instructor, giving students a degree of freedom in class choices is

important for empowering them (page 7, line 23). The best example of this was the free-

translation (item 17, Course Materials); students chose their text according to their preferences



47

and knowledge. The idea was to let the students choose subjects on which they could speak with

a certain amount of authority, and to provide an opportunity for sharing knowledge when

receiving instructor feedback. In spite of occasionally allowing students to choose their own

topics, the instructor admits that the margin of freedom is small indeed: she allows students to

choose either one of two preset options regarding class materials, but the unchosen material will

usually be worked on later in any case (the ³Eriksonian false option´ on page 12, line 9).

The foregoing proves that this subcompetence was dealt with extensively in the case

under study. The degree of success of the instructor¶s strategies is difficult to measure, as in the

other subcompetences dealt with in this paper. I found, however, that this subcompetence was

very important in my own learning process.

(4) Rigor

This attitude was not treated in a unique way in the case under study. The best example of

how it developed was the recycling of the course materials throughout the workshop. Students

had to keep track of all the information that was contained in the texts, anecdotes, and

whiteboard (self-interview, page 8, line 25), as they would be tested on it. Though this may have

not been the sole example, neither the self-interview, nor the Course Materials table showed

specific measures to develop the attitude of rigor.

(c) Capability to develop creative processes

This subcompetence was developed in the form of translating, guessing the meaning of

unknown words by context, summarizing and adapting a radio script and presenting it (see

Course Materials table for detailed information). These were the only examples of creative work.

No direct exercises (e.g. brainwriting, blue slip, or scampering) were reported either in the self-

interview or in the Course Materials. Creativity, however, requires a good deal of imagination.



48

The instructor seemed to have tackle creativity in an indirect way. The self-interview repeated

the NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) truism: if you want to be something (doctor, lawyer,

teacher, etc.) you start by imagining yourself as one and behaving like one. (Self-Interview page

11, line 9).

The instructor believes that in order to be a translator, it is necessary to make imaginative

leaps; that is, to impersonate the journalist, writer, scientist behind the text (self-interview page

11, line 6), i.e. like an actor interpreting different roles. This concept is very important to

succeeding and making the profession more enjoyable. Douglas Robinson notes that most

successful professional translators view their work in more human and imaginative terms. He

depicts the translator in apparently romantic terms: ³The translator, even of highly technical

texts, is more of a poet or a novelist than like a machine translation system [«] Imagine yourself

a machine with no feelings, a computer processing inert words, and you quickly begin to feel

dead, inert, lifeless´ (1997:44).

The instructor has the impression that students are often unable²or unwilling²to make

imaginative leaps, as that would imply abandoning their comfort zone (page 11, footnote 5). That

is also a reason why they are frequently unable to connect to a text and to go beyond the sentence

level (page 11, line 11). This was true in my case. I thought translation was a mechanical and an

almost impossible task to do; I soon became frustrated and regretted having chosen the

translation area.

The instructor dealt with this problem by stimulating students to carry out semi-

spontaneous not-quite-sight-translation exercises (which they had previously prepared and then

read without notes for support). She also called on students to translate intuitively without the

help of dictionaries and with little, or no analysis at all. The principle behind this concept is that



49

too much rationalization paralyzes performance (page 18, line 32 & 39). This very concept is a

commonplace in acting workshop, as I subsequently learned through my own experience. If the

comparison is valid, translators, like actors, need to synthesize and perform before analyzing.

Similarly, some FL pedagogues believe that language learners should first start producing, and

then learn grammar rules.

Another way in which the instructor addressed the problem of imaginative behavior was

by putting forward Robinson¶s concept of translators as actors. Instead of explaining, she

enunciated this concept in a Sufic or Zen way at the very beginning of the course, just after

giving the course¶s guidelines: How is the translator like an actor? Do you think that it is

possible that a translator can be, in some ways, like an actor? No answer was given by the

instructor. Instead, students were invited to reflect on the question and arrive at their own

conclusions. As often happens with Sufic stories, I myself at least, could not understand how a

translator is like an actor until years later. Nonetheless, this idea of translators as actors lingered

in my mind until, thanks to my most recent job as an actor, I was finally able to understand that

translators interpret in the same way an actor does.

Commentary

The foregoing analysis offers clear evidence that in the 2007 workshop, the instructor¶s

methodology aimed to develop many of the competences described in the PACTE model. Of all

the competences in this study, the Psychophysiological Competence appeared to be the best

developed during the workshop. The rest of the competences were developed to a significant

degree as well.



50

In my view, the debunking of myths surrounding translation and the development of the

self-confidence subcompetence were especially helpful; they contributed in eliminating many

seeming misconceptions and useless prescriptions from older translation theory which had

prevented me from feeling confident when translating.

Unfortunately, the results of this research are partial, since the voices of other former

students remain unheard. It remains to construct an objective means of evaluating the degree of

success achieved in the use of these didactic strategies. This needs to be done in future

workshops. Fortunately, on the other hand, the results of the analysis showed a significant

quantity of strategies for TT. It was possible to describe, and in some cases, even to begin to

classify them. These strategies can be put to the test in future research to check their

effectiveness and to perfect them.



51

Conclusion

Before undertaking the analysis of the Workshop, I had already suspected that the

instructor¶s methodology covered all the competences described in the PACTE holistic model for

translator competences. My suspicion was confirmed. Nonetheless, while all of the competences

studied in this paper were attended to in the Workshop, some were developed to a greater extent,

most notoriously, the Psychophysiological Competence. What surprised me most was the

discovery that what had seemed at the time random, if helpful, actions on the part of the

instructor, upon analysis proved to have a high degree of internal coherence and systematization,

as well as a basis rooted in theory. I consider that the teaching methods described in the analysis

are a very valuable contribution to the translation pedagogy discussion because many of them lay

a foundation for the development of didactic exercises for teaching particular aspects of

translation.

Even though this workshop was very ambitious insofar as it was holistic and covered a

large amount of material, a few gaps were left unattended. The instructor was reluctant to supply

discrete-point solutions (where they might have been helpful) and she had trouble with some

aspects of classroom management, e.g. keeping track of assignments and the proper sequence of

activities. Using the Ned Herrmann model, it was easy to find activities and approaches keyed to

quadrants B, C, and D²especially the D, which has to do with ³the big picture.´ But in terms of

quadrant A, where logic, rules and tradition prevail, there was a lack.

The purpose of this trabajo recepcional was to describe the teaching methodology in the

2007 Translation Workshop, and to determine how it measured up to the PACTE holistic model

proposed by A. Hurtado-Albir and her group. For a second time, I was to be surprised by the



52

amount of promising information that was generated and which surpassed my ability to process

within the limits of this TR. On one hand, it was amazing to discover the broad range of thinkers

cited in the instructor¶s self- interview. While there were twice as many translators cited as

members of any other professional category, there were also equal numbers of philosophers,

psychologists, educators, and linguists as well as a few others. Perhaps the multiple perspectives

that informed this holistic workshop explain why the range of approaches to didactic problems

was also so vast. It was impossible in this essay to even mention the 26 thinkers, much less

discuss them.

Another aspect of the instructor¶s teaching that became conspicuous upon analysis was

the instructor¶s use of modeling (behaviors and products) and scaffolding4. These two

characteristics led me to believe that the Workshop procedure resembled, basically, those of the

Cognitive Apprenticeship teaching model proposed by Allan M. Collins. Further, the use of

teaching stories to transmit a broad range of information and attitudes was found to be central to

the course. Although I was familiar with teaching stories as objects of contemplation with

multiple layers of meaning (as in the Sufi tradition), I had not imagined that they constituted an

important focus of interest for contemporary educators, going back to Jerome Bruner in the last

century, for example. Obviously, there was no time to theorize about the teaching stories. The

temptation to do so was great, because I discovered that they could be analyzed in terms of

several different theorizations, including Bloom¶s taxonomy.

After finishing this essay, I asked the instructor if she felt that anything important had

been omitted, or if there were anything else she would like to add. She replied that she had never

imagined that her Workshop had so much theoretical underpinning and that she felt, now that all

4 Giles is of a like mind when he suggests that trainees need tools to accompany them in theirautonomous progression along the learning curve (2004)



53

the mechanisms had been exposed and described, that if she gave Translation II she might meet

the fate of the centipede who, once conscious of the complicated coordination of his many feet,

promptly collapsed on the ground. The one thing that she wished to add was the phrase she most

often repeated during the course: ³The meaning is in the context!´ (By context she meant both

³context´ and ³situation´²as in the Geneva Conference Story, page 15, line 51). ³Just recently

I was pleased to discover,´ she said, ³that µThe meaning is in the context¶ sums up cultural

translation theory! So that makes me very up-to-date in my concepts, you see.´

This experience has encouraged me to continue research in the area of TP. Along the way

I have picked up a lot of theory of translation, and an agenda to follow in my search for a TP

model adaptive to our environment. The next step in developing the didactic approaches studied

in this TR would involve carrying out classroom observation and delving into education theory.



54

R eferences

y Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderland, L., & Brizee, A. (2010,

May 5). General format. Retrieved from

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

y Baxter P. & Jack S. (December, 2008). Qualitative Case Study Methodology: Study Design

and Implementation for Novice Researchers. The Qualitative Report Volume 13 Number 4.

Retrieved from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR13-4/baxter.pdf

y Carrové Sabaté M. (2000). Towards a theory of translation pedagogy based on computer-

assisted translation tools for Catalan and English non literary texts. Retrived from TRD

Tesis Doctorales en Red . (L-1623-2009)

y Delisle J. (1988). Translation: An Interpretive Approach. Ottawa: University of Ottawa

Press.

y García Yebra V. (1983). E n torno a la traducción. Madrid: Gredos

y Giles Danielle (2004). Blablablablablablablablablabla

y Hurtado Albir A. (2001) Traducción y Traductología: Introducción a la Traductología.

Madrid: Cátedra.

y Llácer Llorca, E. (2004). S obre la traducción: ideas tradicionales y teorías contemporáneas.

Valencia: Universitat de València.

y Robinson, D. (1997). Becoming a Translator: An accelerated course. New York: Routledge.

y Vázquez Ayora, G. (1977). Introdcción a la Traductología. Curso básico de traducción.

Washington: Georgetown University School of Languages and Linguistics.











and II contained the following items: multiple choice, error correction, fill-in-the-blanks, matching, definition,translation, essay questions.

accustom ss. to demonstrate acqand linguistic kntake a really chaover-reached thean additional lea

type tests.) Syllabi

21 Official syllabus Provided by the Academy. I partiallyrecruit the technicin dubbing anywaconceived as doc

22 Instructor

syllabus

(Post-syllabus: see materials table) I usually course. I like to ufeel more live to mgermane for one material was morunconscious.



Appendix (b) The PACTE Model Chart

Transfer Competence

Linguistic Competence Extr

Psychophysical Comptence P

Strategic CompetenceAdapted from Hurtado-Albir

(2001:397



61

Appendix (c) Ned Herrmann¶s Whole Brian Model

Extracted from: http://www.12manage.com/methods_herrmann_whole_brain.html

Analyzing personal and organizational thinking preferences. Explanation of Whole Brain

Model of Herrmann. ('76)

What is the Whole Brain Model? Description

The Whole Brain Model from Ned Herrmann is a technique that can be used for analyzing

personal and organizational thinking preferences.

People have markedly different ways that they perceive and assimilate information, make

decisions, and solve problems. Once an individual understands his or her thinking style

preferences, the door is open to improved communication, leadership, management, problemsolving, decision making and other aspects of personal and interpersonal development.

The Whole Brain Model is a mental model that describes thinking preferences. These are theways of thinking that satisfy us the most and seem natural for us at this point in our lives. These

ways of thinking can change, often as a result of significant emotional experiences, lifetransitions and other important insights. Thinking preferences describe the patterns of what we

prefer to pay attention to and what we don't prefer to pay attention to.

Thinking preferences can be different than our skills or the content of our work or our behavior,depending upon the situation. When we think or function differently than our preferences, even if

we have excellent skills, it's more likely that we'll find it somewhat uncomfortable andconsuming more of our energy.

The four thinking styles in the Whole BrainModel are:

1. Logician. Analytical, mathematical,

technical and problem solving.2. Organizer. Controlled, conservative,

planned, organized and administrativein nature.

3. Communicator. Interpersonal,emotional, musical, spiritual and the

"talker" modes.4. Visionary. Imaginative, synthesizing,

artistic, holistic and conceptual modes.



62

At the core of the most recent book of Ned Herrmann, lies his belief that the functioning of the

human brain is driven by a four-quadrant interconnected set of mental processing modes. Thesefour thinking styles, says Herrmann, originate in the brain's left and right cerebral hemispheres,

and in the left and right half limbic systems, each resulting in significantly different and distinct behavioral characteristics in human beings. How this complex brain interaction determines

thinking mode dominance and thinking style preferences, and how individuals and organizationscan benefit from such understanding, are the main themes of Herrmann's book (see below).

Herrmann's work is widely used by training and development specialists. The Whole BrainModel supersedes "left brain/right brain" thinking in earlier models. Also it has advanced new

concepts of thinking research and their applications in business settings. Dominant thinking inone of the four thinking styles, causes the development of thinking preferences. Then these

thinking preferences establish our interests, foster the development of competencies, andinfluence our career choices and ultimately our work. Argues Herrmann.

O

rigin of the WholeB

rain Model. History

In 1976, Ned Herrmann researched the brain as the source of creativity. At that time, he learned

of the pioneering brain research of Roger Sperry, Paul MacLean, Joseph Bogen and MichaelGazzanaga. From their work it is clear that the brain has four distinct and specialized structures.

Inspired by this research, Herrmann worked with EEG scans and, later, paper-and-pencilquestionnaires to identify four distinct types of thinking, each roughly corresponding to one of

the brain structures. The result of this research is the Herrmann Whole Brain Model. In August,1979, after many tests, in-depth research, and mountains of data, Herrmann had developed a

valid self-assessment that enables individuals to understand their own thinking style preferences

- the HBDI (Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument.)



Appendix (d) Instructor¶s Self Interview

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