Abstract
To date, translation didactics has mainly been conceptualized from theorists' and researchers' perspectives and not focused extensively on the voices of the translation teachers or students. This research project aims to help this knowledge gap, analyzing the translation knowledge construction by 39 English language students and two translation professors from the School of Languages and Literatures of the Autonomous University of Queretaro, Mexico following a constructivist approach. In constructivism, students play an active role and have a central position in the educational process since they do not acquire knowledge from the professor but construct it. This educational perspective is related to responsibility, learning autonomy, and student empowerment (Kiraly, 2001; Kiraly, 2014; Serrano & Pons, 2011). It appears to have gained particular relevance during the COVID 19 pandemic due to the different changes implemented by institutions. To analyze translation knowledge construction an extensive literature review was carried out as well as online field work. Data was collected during the August-December 2020 online semester employing online semi-structured interviews, virtual classroom observations, students' translation exercises, and homework uploaded to Google Classroom. Data was classified into a set of emic and etic categories and examined with the qualitative software Atlas. ti. Preliminary findings regarding the impact on knowledge construction in an online environment show that participants faced various changes during online translation teaching and learning, and they have developed positive and negative educational experiences during online classes' implementation. In the following stage of data analysis, the ways that students identify, recall, and apply knowledge related to translation and linguistics will be identified. Moreover, special attention will be paid to students' comprehension in the virtual classroom, the similarities and differences between the source and target languages, and the relevance of errors (both in terms of making errors and error feedback) during the educational process.
Researcher(s)
Research team(s)
Project type(s)