Learning Foreign Languages Through Translation. Functions and Methods of Translations in Teaching Foreign Languages
Abstract
In the classical methodology of foreign language teaching, an important place was given through translation. The grammar-translation method was used at the beginning to teach Latin, and then used in the 18th and 19th centuries to teach current or live languages.
This method of teaching foreign languages was later replaced by a direct method of teaching, which mainly focused on the intuitiveness of speech and did not bind to the mother tongue. In the 20th century, these methods were combined, the product of which became a mixed or mediatory method, which includes the features of these two.
However, the translation role in this combined method is rather marginal, mainly designed for knowledge control. Translation and consecutive interpreting sometimes begin to be used at higher levels of foreign language teaching by students of profile fields, for example by philologists, historians lawyers etc.