Scholarly research (articles and books) on translation in the K-12 educational context in the United States 

Teaching Guidelines & Examples

Leonardi (2010). The role of pedagogical translation in second language acquisition.

Abstract: Translation employed as 1) critical reading tool 2) grammatical analysis and explanation 3) vocabulary builder and facilitator 4) cultural mediation and intercultural competence development 5) communication – written/oral production
1. Authentic texts
2. Modifications (students’ proficiency level, direction of translation (ex. L1 -> L2), Focus of language skills, school setting, time availability, class size)
Keywords: SLA, Pedagogical Translation 

Ducar and Schocket (2018). Machine translation and the L2 classroom: Pedagogical solutions for making peace with Google translate  

Merschel and Munné (2022). Perceptions and practices of machine translation among 6th-12th Grade world language teachers

Abstract: This study inquires into the ways that middle school and high school L2 educators perceive MT and how educators are adapting their assignments in light of its use. The results of this study show that a punitive approach is prevalent, …and that infractions result in a wide array of consequences for students. The findings also suggest that a more deliberate inclusion of MT practices in the L2 classroom would be beneficial to teachers and students.
Keywords: Teacher Attitudes, WL classroom, Machine Translation

Bilingual Youths

Orellana, Reynolds, Dorner and Meza (2003). In other words: translating or “para-phrasing” as a family literacy practice in immigrant households

Abstract: Drawing on participant observation in the homes and classrooms of 18 young adolescents who serve as interpreters for their families, 86 transcripts of these interpreters’ oral Spanish translations of English texts, and 95 journal entries written by the youth about their translating experiences, we document the multiple literacies of daily life that youth engage in while translating or “para- phrasing” for their families. … This largely unexplored literacy practice is a common one in immigrant households, and we argue that bilingual youth’s experiences as cross-language “para-phrasers” can be used to support the within-language paraphrasing that is an important part of school literacy practices.
Keywords: Spanish-English Bilingual, Immigrant Youth, Family interpreters

Dorner, Orellana, and Li-Grining (2007). “I Helped My Mom,” and It Helped Me: Translating the Skills of Language Brokers into Improved Standardized Test Scores

Abstract: This study illustrates the regularity with which the children of mostly Mexican immigrants in Chicago interpret languages and cultural practices for their families. It also tests the hypothesis, generated from qualitative research, that such “language brokering” is related to academic outcomes. Using data collected from a subset of children (n = 87), longitudinal regression models, which controlled for early school performance, showed that higher levels of language brokering were significantly linked to better scores on fifth- and sixth-grade standardized reading tests. 
Keywords: Immigrant Youth, Mexican Americans

Martinez, Orellana and Carbone (2008). Found in Translation: Connecting Translating Experiences to Academic Writing

Abstract: Writing activities aimed at leveraging the translating/interpreting experiences of bilingual students in a sixth-grade English language arts classroom provide an opportunity for these students to develop meta-linguistic awareness and showcase their ability to shift voices for different audiences.
Keywords: Language Arts, pedagogical translation

García, Aponte, and Le (2019). Primary bilingual classrooms Translations and translanguaging

Abstract: This chapter considers the use of translation in primary classrooms. But most importantly, it attempts to differentiate translation from the concept of translanguaging. To draw a clear distinction, we focus on primary classrooms, and especially on those school settings where bilingualism and multilingualism are present. In some cases, a new language is being taught to language majority children (as an additional language) or language minoritized children (as a dominant additional language). In other cases, bilingual or multilingual minoritized children are being taught in two (or more) languages. The role of translation and translanguaging has had different histories in these diverse primary settings, and we will see how translanguaging rests on a different epistemology than that of translation.
Keywords: Primary Classroom, Translation, Translanguaging

Review Articles/books

Cook (2007). A thing of the future: translation in language learning

Abstract: Where translation is mentioned, it is often only to be rejected out of hand as self-evidently retrograde and useless. … as though all uses of translation were inevitably connected to authoritarian teaching, dull lessons, form rather than function, writing rather than speech, accuracy…
Translation could be related to various concepts dear to the SLA heart: lowering the affective filter (Krashen 1985), authentic focus on form (Doughty and Williams 1988), negotiation of meaning (Long 1985), noticing (Schmidt 1995) and so forth.
Keywords: TILT(Translation in Language Teaching)

Gnutzmann (2009). Translation as language awareness: Overburdening or Enriching the FL classroom?

Abstract: The cognitive turn in learning psychology & learner-centeredness & Multilingualism, intercultural communication, devaluation of native-speaker principle => revaluation of translation in LE
Definition of Language Awareness: -> p.59
“explicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception and sensitivity in language learning, language teaching and language use”
Keywords: TILT, FL classroom

Bermann and Porter (2014). A Companion to Translation Studies, introduction

Abstract: Throughout these forty-five essays, with their examples and case studies from across the globe, a number of threads reappear with some regularity – and help to limn the complex weave of translation studies today. Let us mention, in closing, six of them:
-Translation as a productive, rather than reproductive, practice.
-Translation, empire, and multilingualism.
-Identity, migration, sexuality. -Translation as collaboration.
-Rethinking literary and cultural history.
-Rethinking the ethics of translation.
Keywords: Translation Studies, overview

Baker (2014). The changing landscape of Translation and Interpreting Studies (from A Companion to Translation Studies)

Abstract: The definition of “translation” itself has been extended to encompass a wide range of activities and products that do not necessarily involve an identifiable relationship with a discrete source text. Against this background, and given the ready availability of historical overviews and syntheses of theoretical trends, this essay will focus on a number of interrelated themes that have strong resonance in contemporary society and have received growing attention in translation studies and neighboring disciplines since the 1990s: Representation, minority-majority relations, and Globalization.
Keywords: Translation Studies, overview

Flores and Rosa (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and language diversity in Education

Abstract: Drawing on theories of language ideologies and racialization, the authors illustrate how appropriateness-based approaches to language education are implicated in the reproduction of racial normativity by expecting language-minoritized students to model their linguistic practices after the white speaking subject despite the fact that the white listening subject continues to perceive their language use in racialized ways. They examine the raciolinguistic ideologies that connect additive educational approaches to teaching long-term English learners, heritage language learn-ers, and Standard English learners.
*Delpit(2006)’s work is criticized harshly.
Keywords: Language Diversity, Social Justice

Piller (2016). Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics

Abstract: Piller asserts that linguistic domination is manifested through the creation of an imagined standardized norm, which results in a denigration of linguistic repertoires that deviate from a standard language. … Piller illustrates how diversity discourses end up being divisive in nature as it marks one group as ‘diverse’ and another as ‘normal’, simply by virtue of their language use.
One way to offset social inequalities, is to produce counter-discourses of hope.
Keywords: Language Diversity, Social Justice

Pym (2016). Where translation studies lost the plot: relations with language teaching

Abstract: Translation scholars left the education field open for unopposed implantation of immersion and communicative teaching methods that ideologically shunned translation… Translation scholars themselves all but abandoned the non-binary pedagogical models that once included many types of translation solutions… They should instead adopt a view where everyone can translate, not just professionals, and everyone can be trained to translate better.
Keywords: TILT, Translation Studies

Rosa (2016). Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness: Raciolinguistic ideologies across Communicative contexts

Abstract: I focus specifically on dimensions of the racialized relationship between ideologies of languagestandardization and languagelessness in contemporary framings of U.S. Latinas/os and their linguistic practices. I draw on a range of evidence, including ethnographic data collected within a predominantly Latina/o U.S. high school, institutional policies, and scholarly conceptions of language. When analyzed collectively, these sources highlight the racialized ways that ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness become linked in theory, policy, and everyday interactions.
Keywords: Language ideology, Social Justice

Balboni (2017). Translation in language learning: a ‘what for’ approach

Abstract: Literature about translation in language learning and teaching shows the prominence of the ‘for and against’ approach, while a ‘what for’ approach would be more profitable. …this essay suggests the use of a formal model of communicative competence, to see which of its components can profit of translation activities. The result is a map of the effects of translation in the wide range of competences and abilities which constitute language learning.
Keywords: TILT, Communicative Competence

MacSwan (2017). A Multilingual Perspective on Translanguaging

Abstract: Some translanguaging scholars have questioned the existence of discrete languages, further concluding that multilingualism does not exist. I argue that the political use of language names can and should be distinguished from the social and structural idealizations used to study linguistic diversity, favoring what I call an integrated multilingual model of individual bilingualism, contrasted with the unitary model and dual competence model. I further distinguish grammars from linguistic repertoires, arguing that bilinguals, like monolinguals, have a single linguistic repertoire but a richly diverse mental grammar. I call the viewpoint developed here a multilingual perspective on translanguaging.
Keywords: Translanguaging, Linguistic Studies

Maria González-Davies (2020). Translation as a natural practice in the IPA to language learning

Abstract: Until recently, language teachers were told that these languages and cultures were stored in separate compartments in the brain. This contradicts recent research and observation of everyday practices, where we clearly connect our linguistic repertoire to overcome linguistic and cultural challenges.
Keywords: Plurilingual Approach, TILT

Gutierrez (2021). Translation in language teaching, pedagogical translation, and code-switching: restructuring the boundaries

Abstract: Conceptual and terminological inconsistencies persist that blur the boundaries between the general idea of using translation in the language classroom and more specific practices that involve translation tasks (also known as ‘pedagogical translation’) or code-switching. The article addresses these terminological incongruities by exploring the impact of conceptualisations of translation in language education and, specifically, its use in pedagogical translation
Keywords: FL pedagogy, TILT, pedagogical translation, code-switching

Dranenko (2021). The Other in Translation: To Welcome or Not to Welcome

Abstract: The study shows the principles of translation theories centered on the welcoming of the Other and it analyses the relationship between the notions of “proper” and “foreign”. Then the drifting that can be borne out of “non-ethical” translation which undervalue and/or ignore the asymmetrical links between dominant and dominated languages.
(…)
The article undertakes the examination of the problem of the Other in translation while referring to Ricoeur’s idea that the foreigner is neither the same (identical to us) nor the other (different from us) but the similar, that is to say the conjunction of the identical and the different.
Keywords: Translation Studies, Translation Ethics

Chun (2023). English Language Teaching and Resurgent Nationalism: What is to be Done?

Abstract: Many instructors around the world have also wished to engage with their students’ sociopolitical-induced anger and anxieties but felt inhibited and indeed threatened by the policies, discourses, and actions of neo-nationalist politicians as well as their students’ parents.
Keywords: ELT, Social Justice