Chapter 1, ‘The rejection: ‘‘Reform’’ and Direct
Method’, describes how ‘Grammar Translation’, as
Translation in Language Teaching: An Argument for
Reassessment
G. Cook
Oxford University Press 2010, 177 pp., £ 27.50
isbn 978 0 19 442475 2
Translation has, for over a century, been the pariah of
English language teaching. Guy Cook calls this largely
unexamined view into question and makes
a devastatingly well-argued case for the restoration of
translation as a proper, and indeed essential, part of
language teaching.
The aims of the book are twofold:
. . . to show the weakness of exclusively
monolingual language teaching—that the reasons
behind it are more commercial and political than
scientific, that it is supported only by selective
evidence and shaky reasoning, and that it
disregards learner and teacher needs.
. . . to show that translation has an important role
to play in language learning—that it develops both
language awareness and use, that it is
pedagogically effective and educationally
desirable, and that it answers student needs in the
contemporary globalized and multicultural world.
(p. 155)
The book is in two parts. Part One, ‘History’
(Chapters 1–3), documents the origins and reasons
for the current negative views of translation. Part Two
(Chapters 5–7), ‘Arguments’, rehearses the
arguments against these views and puts the case for
the rehabilitation of translation. Chapter 4 acts as
a bridge and analyses just what is meant by the term
‘translation’.
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practised at the time, was rightly condemned by the
Reform Movement. However, with the coming of the
Direct Method and private language schools such as
Berlitz, the condemnation of all translation became
the norm, and a new orthodoxy based on
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Monolingualism, Naturalism, Native-Speakerism,
and Absolutism took over. Cook highlights the role of
special interests in this development: translation is
more difficult in multilingual classes and with
teachers who do not speak their students’
language(s); publishing houses and private language
schools want their courses to be marketable
worldwide; and there is political self-interest in
exporting ‘native speaker’ teachers as experts and in
attracting students to study in the metropolitan
countries.
In Chapter 2, ‘The long silence’, Cook explores why
translation remained the great unmentioned in
Applied Linguistics and S L A research for most of the
twentieth century. He documents the shift from
cross-lingual to intralingual approaches and from
form to meaning, all facilitated by the ethos of
political ‘liberation’ in the same period. The chapter
ends with mention of the few dissenting voices: Stern,
Howatt, Widdowson, and Kramsch.
In ‘A climate for revival’, Chapter 3, Cook notes the
revival of interest in using students’ own languages in
teaching. He goes on to describe changes in the
academic and political climate favouring this
renewed interest. The growth of globalization and the
increase in multilingualism (and multiculturalism)
have brought about a more tolerant attitude to code
mixing and switching and to the use of students’ own
languages. However, he cautions that ‘we should not
assume that support for own-language use is the
same as support for translation, nor should we
confuse the two’ (p. 53).
The justification for a bridging Chapter 4, ‘What is
translation?’, is the value that description,
discussion, and analysis of translation can have for
language learning and the consequent need for
a theoretical framework and a metalanguage to
support it. There is a fascinating and helpful
discussion of levels of equivalence: linguistic,
semantic, pragmatic, discoursal, and cultural, and
the issues they raise both for translators and for
teachers. He draws attention to the important
distinction between ‘what makes a good translation
in the world at large, and how it differs from what is
a helpful use of translation in the classroom—the
differences between translation as an end of learning,
and translation as a means’ (pp. 73–4). He also has
some pertinent things to say about the revaluation of
translators from covert, invisible operatives to more
overt players on the stage of international
communication.
Part Two, ‘Arguments’, opens with Chapter 5,
‘Evidence-based arguments’, which focuses on
the ‘technological level—what the evidence
against T ILT (translation in language teaching) is
within the context of assumed purposes’ (p. 86). He
examines the evidence from S L A research, which is
strangely silent on the issue: ‘while S L A never
balked at challenging other cherished beliefs—the
efficacy of instruction, graded syllabuses and the
learning of rules—the rightness of monolingual
teaching was never scrutinized’ (p. 91). Outside S L A ,
there has been a more positive view of language
contact and mutual influence, seeing it as an aid
rather than an impediment to learning. He goes on to
discuss the issue of how we define ‘success’ in
language teaching. He suggests that rather than
aiming for the internalization of the target language
to become as close as possible to the native speaker
ideal, it is possible to define success as ‘the ability to
move back and forth between two languages, to have
explicit knowledge of each language and of the
differences between them, to operate in the new
language while not losing one’s own-language
identity, and to have an impact on the new
language, making it one’s own . . .’ (p. 100). He also
reminds us that the presupposition of continuous
progress in the effectiveness of language teaching is
open to serious doubt. There is no data to
support this belief, language teaching does not
accumulate knowledge and understanding in the
same way that physics does, and ‘such claims
confuse shifting values with objective measures’
(p. 102).
It is to values that he turns in Chapter 6, ‘Educational
arguments’. Here we are reminded of the main
curriculum philosophies on offer: technological,
social reformist, humanistic, and academic. He
reasons in detail that there are strong educational
arguments for T ILT from all four perspectives. This is
in some ways a key chapter since it makes the case for
TI LT at the higher level of values and curricular aims,
rather than merely from the detailed technological
level as in Chapter 5.
Chapter 7, ‘Pedagogical arguments’, examines more
practical issues, such as which kinds of teachers
would be needed, which kinds of learners (Beginners,
Advanced, Intermediate and Young learners), and
which types of translation would be most appropriate
for each. He then presents six activity types, ranging
from corrected close translation to communicative
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translation with commentary on each. He shows that
the pedagogical charges against TI LT, ‘that it is
unhelpful to learning, unusable, dull, authoritarian,
unpopular, artificial and slows students down’
(p. 125), are all unsustainable. Like any other
approach, it is not so much what you do as how you
do it that counts.
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Although the book is a damning indictment of much
current practice, it is conciliatory and inclusive, not
confrontational, in tone. Cook makes it clear that even
were T ILT to be widely adopted, there would still be
value in monolingual approaches, and he warns
against a demonising of the monolingual teacher.
None the less the book marks a decisive moment in
the seismic shift in thinking about teaching foreign
languages, especially English, including facilitative
use of the mother tongue and re-explorations of more
traditional, form-focused activities, like
memorization and repetition. It deserves both
theoretical and practical attention. Perhaps the
French, where the tradition of ‘theme/version’ has
survived relatively intact, may have something to
teach us? Francoise Grellet’s Apprendre
a Traduire (1991) is but one striking example of
material for thought about using translation as
a vehicle for learning. We live in interesting times:
having lived through one paradigm shift, I now
have the feeling that this book marks the start of
another.
Reference
Grellet, F. 1991. Apprendre a Traduire: Typologie
d’exercices de Traduction. Nancy, France: Presses
Universitaires de Nancy.
The reviewer
Alan Maley is currently Visiting Professor at Leeds
Metropolitan University. He has been involved in E LT
for 45 years and has published widely in the field. He is
a regular reviewer for E LT Journal.
Email: yelamoo@yahoo.co.uk.
doi:10.1093/elt/ccr007
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