Multilingual communities have language shift. This ‘shift’ can change the plurality of
languages in those communities; it favors the more dominant language and pushes the
minority to its death or loss (Holmes: 2001). And when one language dies or losses, this
world also losses one of its treasures. Translation activity in schools, in the spirit of language
maintenance, helps to mantain minority language over the presure from the dominant
language. It also helps students appreciate values of both languages. This paper discusses
how important introducing translation in language teaching as part of language maintenance
