Translation in CLIL: Mission Impossible?

Translation in CLIL? It may seem a contradiction in terms. CLIL means Content and Language Integrated Learning, and is based on the assumption that content is taught through the second/foreign language (or an additional language). Little or no room is left to the learners’ mother tongue, which is either declared off limits or used in very limited cases. So, what’s the role of translation in CLIL? Is there any place for it at all? Drawing on current research on CLIL (Aiello, Di Martino and Di Sabato, 2017; Baker, 2014; Coyle, Hood and Marsh, 2010; Dalton-Puffer, Nikula and Smit, 2010) and on the pedagogical uses of “the 5th skill” (Cook, 2012; Gaballo, 2009c), this study sets out to investigate how translation can be integrated into language and content learning. The methodological approach that underlies this analysis essentially combines several models which contribute to explaining the complex nature of the problem at issue (i.e. using translation to teach both language and content in the CLIL class), with its multiple variables to be taken into account. The pedagogical framework describes the implementation of the ensuing model’s design within CLIL contexts: examples are drawn from courses taught since 2005, inspired by social constructivist pedagogy (Vygotsky, 1978; Kiraly, 2000; Gaballo, 2009b) in a networked learning environment (Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Hodgson and McConnell, 2012; Gaballo, 2014), and a collaborative translation approach (Gaballo, 2009a).