Teaching Translation Strategies: The Case of Condensation

There is an ongoing debate on the nature of university translation course curricula which primarily tries to address the way translation competence is acquired. The fundamental point seems to be striking a balance between educating in the general with training in the particular. Using systemic contrastive analysis as the framework and condensation in user guides as the illustrative material, this paper presents some problematic issues students have to deal with in their translations and suggests a few activities intended to develop their linguistic, text, and extra-linguistic competences. The common feature of these activities is the "hands-on" approach in which students analyse comparable texts, familiarize themselves with authentic language data, find and compare alternative translation solutions, and develop their research skills. The main argument is that the classroom should be the ideal environment for students' attempts and discussions, and the bulk of already solved translation issues equip students with skills for tackling analogous challenges in the future.