Explaining errors in the teaching of translation: an error in the process or an error in the product?

Abstract

Introduction: The explanation of translation errors is a very important area of study in teaching translation, especially due to the emotional and psychological impact it has on students. Method: This paper presents exploratory research on this topic. Although subjective it includes quantitative data from the comparative analysis of several semi-structured interviews that were applied to two groups of translation professors in two different universities, one Canadianand the other Colombian. Results: The research highlighted how important it is to recognize students’ translation process in explaining their errors and how the academic and global context of each country influences the teaching method of the professors involved in the study. Discussion: The different conditions of teaching in each group are discussed as related to these results ; hypotheses and recommendations for teaching are proposed at the end of the article.

Keywords

• translation errors
• teaching methods
• translation process
• interference