Some Reflections on Teaching Sight Translation in the Classroom

Abstract

With the various cultures and many languages round the world, the need for a professional translator who works as a mediator between cultures is getting very urgent day after another. Katan (2004: 16) stresses that the translator is "a bilingual mediating agent between monolingual communication participants in two different language communities." It is well-known that the interpreter interprets an oral message into an oral message in another language. In sight translation (ST), the translator faces a very big difficulty in that s/he has to render a well written text into an oral one without having the chance to formulate it carefully. Here, ST is a challenging activity, since it requires so many different skills at once. The present paper explores, discusses, and clarifies various aspects of ST. Accordingly; it proposes an ST course to function as a model for providing practical information on ST skills. It will also give some suggestions on sight translation teaching that can be adapted to different learning scenes.