The Role of Translation Education and "Humanities Plus" in Liberal Education
During the past few years, many scholars have been re-evaluating both the “what” and the “how” of liberal education. These re-evaluations have sought to define liberal education in ways that go far beyond the classic formulations of the Yale Report of 1828 and Cardinal Newman’s Idea of a University. In particular, the new definitions emphasize the need for pragmatic and experiential education along with Newman’s “cultivation of the intellect.” For several reasons, translator education fits this modern approach to liberal education quite well. First, as students develop translation competence, they hone the critical thinking skills associated with traditional liberal education. Second, as students fulfill translation internships in community settings, they gain practical experience that helps them see how their critical thinking skills apply to the professional world. The Spanish translation major at Brigham Young University illustrates how such an experiential program can work.
On Translation's Place in Language Teaching and Learning and in University Language Programs
Since translation—which here includes both written and spoken modes—has often been considered incompatible with communicative language teaching and learning, translation studies must carefully find its place in university language programs. Translation’s unfortunate reputation as a means for second language (L2) acquisition stems from some of its earliest pedagogical implementations, which, particularly in the case of younger learners, consisted of:
Foreign Language Across the Curriculum: A Critical Appraisal
promotes the idea of foreign language across the curriculum (FLAC) (20). FLAC as presented here calls for modifying non-FL liberal arts courses to include a FL reading component; this change is based on the premise that FL study becomes meaningful chiefly in its application. Indebted to content-based language instruction, FLAC follows in the footsteps of writing across the curriculum. As early as 1981 the National Assembly on Foreign Language and International Studies recommended just such a strategy for projecting FL into general education. It proposed, for example, that "a section of a course in which lectures were in English could include discussion, reading, and writing in the foreign language."' The NEH has also lent support to the concept, underwriting a FLAC program at Earlham College (1980-84) and a second at St. Olaf College (1989-93). Although other institutions practice FLAC in some form, published accounts describe only these two. They therefore form the basis of this critique.2 Our criticism aims less at the two programs examined, or at the idea of FLAC itself, than at two orders of associated problems endemic to college-level FL instruction: first, elementary and intermediate FL study does not adequately prepare students for programs like FLAC; second, the program descriptions reflect certain misconceptions about the relation between FL and liberal arts that echo broadly across general education. The FLAC models reviewed here