Translation as a resource for the teaching of linguistic diversity in foreign language

Translation has played many roles in foreign language teaching. It has been, on the one hand, considered a fundamental methodological tool, constituting the core of the grammar-translation approach, and, on the other hand, heavily criticized and excluded from the classroom, whether from the practical or the theoretical point of view. Currently, with the communicative approach to language teaching, the study of language varieties has become very important to the learner, and considering the need to understand and interpret the meaning of a word within a specific socio-cultural context during the translation process, it is of paramount importance to acknowledge sociolinguistic variations in the text to be translated. Thus, our goal is to show, through a reflective analysis, that translation can be an educational resource for the teaching of linguistic diversity in foreign language. This study isbased on theoretical assumptions on translation dating from the time of Cicero and Saint Jerome to the present times.

THE PORTUGUESE DIASPORA IN THREE CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE NOVELS: POINTS AND COUNTERPOINTS

In O retorno (2011), Dulce Maria Cardoso invite us to know the Rui’s story, a Portuguese Angolan teenager that returned from Angola, together his family. He is compelled to rebuild his life in Continental Portugal, from a precarious and limited financial situation. The scenario was the seventies and the turbulent period of return of more than a half million of Portuguese citizens, during the decolonization of former Portugal overseas territories in Africa. In this paper, we have analyzed the theme of diaspora in the contemporaneous Portuguese Literature, considering as the start point the sociocultural context contained in the book O retorno. Thus, we have established a bridge with two other novels, within a comparative perspective, in order to find similarities or dissimilarities among them, once they address the same theme: Pouca terra...Poucá terra, by Júlia Nery (1984), that brings to the center of the narrative the emigrants story from France, under the approach of a girl called  Leonor, and Livro, by José Luís Peixoto (2012), which has the main focus, among the multiplicity of themes, the emigration scenario from France, and the loving disagreements between two young lovers: Ilídio and Adelaide. The goal is to sketch a viewpoint, clarified by the cultural studies, which conduct us to understand more largely some questions which come by the Dulce Maria Cardoso novel, and also the two other books in question.  They give us the measure of the construction of the contemporaneous Portuguese novel, and reflect the idea of a nation which uses to have a condition of discomfort. This discomfort is proper to who are at the mercy of the diasporic fateful experience, since the most remote past.