Traduisez en français - I dare you!

I sent this letter to the Herald the other day, after reading that Carole Ford (one-time headteacher of Kilmarnock Academy and and highly respected writer of Maths textbooks) thinks academic standards in Scotland's schools are falling. The Herald didn't publish my letter but don't start me on the subject of the Herald's letter page or we'll be here all day, so here are my comments plus a wee bit more, not on Maths - I wouldn't dare - but on what she said about language learning.

I have the utmost respect for Carole Ford in her wish to defend standards in national exams. However, I don't accept her suggestion that translation into the foreign language ('the prose' as it was known in Scottish schools) was somehow a guarantee of excellence in language learning. I taught the prose for many years, routinely sending off to university excellent language learners who never achieved more than 12 out of 50 in that part of the exam and who emerged from academe after 4 or 5 years with good degrees, still unable to do prose translation. Even more tellingly, I worked with teachers with good degrees who every year did the prose under exam conditions at the same time as their students. And failed it. 

The experience of doing the prose was a pretty demoralising one for students and teachers alike. Dictionaries were not allowed. Who does any translation work without a dictionary on hand? You don't use it to translate but you do need it to check nuance of meaning, not to mention spelling. Every trick, piège and faux ami was in the prose. Teachers couldn't rely on what would appear from year to year, so we never felt we had prepared our students well, no matter how hard they and we worked. 

The trouble with translation of any kind is that it is a very high order skill. It requires a good knowledge of grammar and syntax, knowledge of cultural meanings and references, implicit and explicit understanding of language and how it works, knowledge and understanding of colloquialisms. There is more to it than simply word for word translation. 

These days school students just don't have the time or the maturity to develop such a skill. And in any case, frankly, translation is a waste of their time, which is better spent learning to manipulate a limited body of language suitable to their age and developing maturity; understand the spoken and written word; and develop their confidence in speaking and writing. 

These days, I do prose translation just for the hell of it: when I watch French movies, I put the subtitles on and check them for accuracy. You'd be amazed. Or maybe now you're read this, you wouldn't!