Translation as a Learning Tool in English for Specific Purposes: Toward a Flexible Framework for Designing Translation Activities

The inefficiencies of the Grammar-Translation Method in meeting the needs of language learners whose aim was learning living languages and being able to establish real communication led to the emergence of communicative methods and, consequently, the roots of all inefficiencies were attributed to translation and the use of mother tongue. However, since the last decade of the twentieth century, some scholars have turned attention to the functions of translation in language teaching in general and in English for Specific Purposes in particular. Although many publications have acknowledged the effectiveness of translation exercises, in each study one or a limited number of features for translation exercises have been referred to, and some studies have sufficed to make general claims regarding their effectiveness. In this interdisciplinary study, after extracting the standards counted for translation exercises in the literature, they were blended, expanded on and completed to form a flexible framework for the design of exercises using mother tongue and translation. Afterward, using the framework, one sample exercise was designed and its mechanism was elaborated on to serve as a practical example. Considering that the majority of translation exercises of specialized English books in Iran are presented using the repetitious instruction “Translate the following text”, the full potential of translation exercises in teaching/learning genre conventions, improving language skills, consolidating the knowledge of subject matter, and (self)assessing skills has not been actualized. Therefore, this study can be helpful for materials developers in the design of translation exercises.