Telescope visión : or why can't translator trainees communicate?

incl. ref.

This pilot project indicates that a confrontation with grotesque errors like the above examples may counteract the student's -possibly teacher-induced - tendency to focus on units that are too small and on their own situation as translators rather than of the recipient of their product. It demonstrates that an understanding of the concept of telescope vision and its consequences for the communicative adequacy of their translation product, together with the realisation that they often do posses the linguistic, pragmatic and strategic knowledge to cure this defective vision, may pave the way for a deeper understanding and a better use of basic translation processes and strategies. Teaching results in later classes of the same type as the one in the study seem to confirm this. It is expected that my ongoing systematic research on students' use - or rather abuse - of dictionaries will throw more light on aspects of this complicated area.