GEN TEFL Journal Volume 3 (2018)
E-ISSN 2520 209X
Teaching Mediation Skills: First Steps Using a Bilingual Corpus Approach
SUMIE AKUTSU, Toyo University, Japan
This paper discusses the use of a bilingual translation corpus in order to develop intercultural communicative competence. Exploring translated versions of selected texts with concordance and text mining software, an analysis is made to see if cultural and linguistic differences can be found in the translations in terms of interpretation and language usage. While the judicious use of translation activities in a university classroom is of pedagogic value in and by itself, it can be argued that a further benefit can be derived from doing more advanced research using the bilingual translation corpus. This paper will conclude that students can become better language users with more sophisticated interpretive mediating skills through realizing linguistic and cultural differences between the Japanese and English languages.
Date of publication: 15 December 2018
E-ISSN 2520 209X
Teaching Mediation Skills: First Steps Using a Bilingual Corpus Approach
SUMIE AKUTSU, Toyo University, Japan
This paper discusses the use of a bilingual translation corpus in order to develop intercultural communicative competence. Exploring translated versions of selected texts with concordance and text mining software, an analysis is made to see if cultural and linguistic differences can be found in the translations in terms of interpretation and language usage. While the judicious use of translation activities in a university classroom is of pedagogic value in and by itself, it can be argued that a further benefit can be derived from doing more advanced research using the bilingual translation corpus. This paper will conclude that students can become better language users with more sophisticated interpretive mediating skills through realizing linguistic and cultural differences between the Japanese and English languages.
Date of publication: 15 December 2018
