Abstract:

Developing intercultural competence (IC) in university English teacher training is one of the key aspects of students’ education. Translation as an act of intercultural communication can be seen as one of the most effective ways to achieve this goal. This form of communication requires a full command of the source culture as well as the target culture (in our case it is students’ own culture - Slovak) in order to enable them to provide an adequate and appropriate transfer between these cultures.

The initial parts of the paper deal with the background information related to the topic; the author examines translation through the prism of intercultural communication and emphasizes its possible contributions to developing students’ IC. However, the main part of the research is focused on students’ own understanding of the issue; the material basis for this part consists of translations of teacher trainees, their translation analyses and a survey conducted among a sample of 35 students who were involved in these translation activities.

These future teachers were informed about basic characteristics of the translation process and the intercultural dimension of such communication. They were asked to make various translations throughout the semester – they tried the translations of texts as well as audiovisual (AV) works in form of subtitling etc. Students were also required to write the translation analysis after each assignment. In relation to IC, they commented for example on the occurrence of naturalizing tendencies (domestication), exotization (preferring foreign cultural elements) and creolization. These categories, or strategies, reflect the translators’ tendencies related to the transfer of cultural elements from one context to another.

It is crucial to perform these shifts deliberately respecting the intercultural differences. Among other results, this research has shown that knowing they are expected to explain their strategies and provide relevant arguments forces students to really engage their IC in the decision-making process and critically analyze these differences reflected within the works to be translated. Findings obtained from these analyses are interpreted together with the results from a survey submitted by 35 students that were involved in these translation activities for the period of 10 weeks.

The interpretation of results maps students’ understanding of the importance of the IC development, translation as a form of intercultural communication and its possible use in improving the IC, it briefly addresses the specifics (e.g. space and time limits or visual components of AV translation) determining the transfer of cultural references within specific types of translation as well as other aspects arising from the translation experience of these students.

Translation as a process of confronting and transferring elements between two (or more) cultural contexts appears to be a very useful and attractive way for students to develop their intercultural competence. Not only does it encourage them to broaden their cultural knowledge, but it also forces them to interpret and analyze situations critically in order to find the most appropriate solutions and identify to what extent the receiving culture (in form of a reader, viewer etc.) can be confronted with the foreign elements; hence, applying their intercultural competence in practice.

Keywords:

Intercultural competence, translation, English teacher training, education, intercultural communication.