Grammer & Vocabulary Test 5
 

Translation, as a skill on its own, is not perhaps of the greatest use to many students of English as a foreign language. , translation is a very necessary skill the rather different field of literature, in which translation from target language (English) into the mother- is demanded. (Only on very rare is translation from the mother-tongue English ever required.)


Translation is a skill in its own right and language tasks which students are not of attempting before a certain level proficiency in the target language. Unfortunately, translation is introduced too early in curriculum, it is often responsible for in the student a mental block the foreign language and the mother-tongue, at the elementary and intermediate of learning a language. Many tests translation tend to be unreliable because the complex nature of the skills and the subjectivity of scoring. In many instances, the unrealistic expectations of of translation manifest themselves in artificial sentences and literary texts set translation. The testee is expected to an ability to make fine syntactical and appropriate lexical distinctions - an ability can only be acquired after achieving high degree of proficiency not only English and the mother-tongue, but in comparative stylistics and translation methods.


essential point, then, is that translation not be used as a means testing general language proficiency. It is entirely valid however as a test instrument in a translator's school.

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