La didactique de l’erreur dans l’apprentissage de la traduction

Abstract

The notion of mistake is often central to our perception of translation training, as can be seen in the glossaries of translation manuals. This vision of translation is also evident in the way teachers assess students’ work: their role often consists entirely in correcting mistakes. And yet, as some specialists in didactics point out, learners may be anxious and stressed by the fear of committing mistakes, a situation which is not propitious to learning. But beyond the mere notion of correction of mistakes, which may be inhibiting and considered as emphasising failure, mistakes or errors may be used as a substructure leading to ‘rebuilding’ of knowledge. An error may be a valuable educational tool, but it must be used with the greatest caution. In translation training, a teacher will often be able to help students make progress only if he/she is aware of the type of errors students are prone to making: it thus may be very useful to correct errors then to offer guidance to learners so that they understand the source of their errors in order to avoid their recurrence.