An action-oriented approach to didactic dubbing in foreign language education: Students as producers

This article discusses the action-oriented foundations of TRADILEX (Audiovisual Translation as a Didactic Resource in Foreign Language Education), a project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, which involves researchers from twelve universities across Europe and the UK. This project focuses on the improvement in the linguistic skills perceived through audiovisual translation (AVT) practices such as the use of captioning (i.e., interlingual and intralingual subtitling) and revoicing (i.e., dubbing, voice-over, and audio description) through an actionoriented approach (AoA). The ultimate objective is the study of AVT as a means to enhance learners’ communicative competence and reception, production, and mediation skills in an integrated manner. Following the design of a methodological proposal for a didactic sequence of AVT tasks, proposals are currently being piloted with B1 and B2 adult learners of English as a foreign language utilising – and adapting – the recent illustrative descriptors (Council of Europe, 2018) for AVT instruction. The potential benefits of action-oriented AVT tasks in foreign language education (FLE), in which foreign-language learners become active producers of AVT work, are put to the test employing empirical inquiry and thereafter advocating for more comprehensive integration of AVT in the FLE curriculum overall

LSP Teaching within a Plurilingual Perspective

In the light of the reappraisal of pedagogic translation, particularly since the turn of the century, my presentation first investigates the nature of pedagogic translation, drawing on models and methods elaborated in translation studies and educational linguistics. Then, it introduces the competence framework laid out in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2020). Thirdly, it illustrates how translation pedagogy is being gradually integrated in LSP teaching as part of the syllabus design of modern languages degree courses in Europe. To this end, I examine the convergent approaches and methods presented in three undergraduate coursebooks that draw inspiration from the plurilingual stance upheld by the CEFR. The first coursebook is Mundos en palabras: Learning Advanced Spanish through Translation, authored by Ángeles Carreres, María Noriega-Sánchez and Carme Calduch (2018). The second one is Italian to English Translation with Sketch Engine, authored by Dominic Stewart (2018). The third one is Linking Wor(l)ds: A Coursebook on Cross-linguistic Mediation, authored by Sara Laviosa (2020)

Language Teaching in Higher Education within a Plurilingual Perspective

The pedagogies that are currently being put forward within a broad multilingual paradigm in languages education endorse the general principle that learning is a collaborative and dialogic process engaging learners and teachers as partners that bring diverse linguistic, cultural and other knowledge into the classroom. The plurilingual approach to modern languages education adopted by the Council of Europe at the turn of the century is in line with the multilingual orientation embraced by educational linguists in the wake of migration and displacement on a global scale. This article deals with the implementation of the plurilingual approach in higher education, by focusing on the use of a particular type of cross-linguistic mediation in language teaching, namely written translation. Firstly, the article investigates how pedagogic translation is conceived of in applied linguistics. Secondly, it gives two examples of how translation is becoming an integral part of language teaching and testing in European universities. The concluding section contains some recommendations for future research

Training versus profession: from traslation to web location

One of the hottest topics of debate in the context of higher education is the existing divide in different regions of the world between university training and the job market. Although no consensus exists on possible ways to solve this, it is probably necessary to seek a balance between passive submission to the fluctuations in market demands, and settling in to educational stagnation. The Translation and Interpreting Degree offered in Spanish universities teaches students specific linguistic, cultural and instrumental knowledge that enables them to solve problems specific to the essential modalities and spheres of translation and interpreting. The job market those graduating in this degree enter is complex, for various reasons [1]. It is a dynamic, multimedia market, focused on speed, which demands high quality, based on teamwork and, above all in recent times, one dominated by localization as an emerging activity [2]. It can be affirmed that, given that translation has evolved in the same manner as its environment, teaching methods must also adapt to the new era and to the reality of the market. We have proposed a teaching-learning environment based on our PATT (Professional Approach to Translator Training) Model [3-4] which, under a social constructivist focus, offers the opportunity to integrate the fundamental subjects of the degree in a way that the training of future translators is guaranteed the necessary coherence provided by this broad vision of the profession. In this context, ICTs are essential tools. Despite the fact that, traditionally, student assessment has focused on the product, that is, the translated text, we argue that the assessment of the translation process, although entailing an enormous challenge, better reflects the acquisition of skills. Furthermore, the ideal situation would be for students, within the framework of continuous training, to be able to manage their own learning experience. We have designed self-assessment and peer review tools that take in a wide range of skills. Within the sphere of translation, localization is the linguistic, cultural and technical translation, and adaptation, of an electronic product into another product aimed at a local market. In the final part of our study we focus on pedagogical issues related to the training of specialised translators and localizers who will be working in the field of web localization.This study was supported by the RD&I Project CSO2015-64532-R (Spanish "Ministry of Science and Innovation") partially funded by the FEDER program of the European Union

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Is Library Database Searching a Language Learning Activity?

A qualitative research study that asked international students how they thought of words to enter into a library database to see if language learning was also involved