“El juego es el jugo”: A Practical Course in Literary Translation Russian-Spanish

Resumen

While translator education and professional training have experienced a steep growth in terms of teaching centers and innovative practices, problem-solving based and profession-oriented approaches to the training of literary translators remain scarce. This tendency is certainly related to the reduced economic impact of literary translation in the language industry, and on conceptualizations of literary translation as an endeavor that lends itself better to traditional instruction. As a result, pedagogical proposals for literary texts have traditionally not benefitted as much from advances in Cognitive Science and Expertise Studies as, for example, localization courses. And yet, literary translation offers a wealth of opportunity to practice transferrable skills that empower translation graduates to work in a number of positions in the language industry. The present paper offers a theoretical justification, a content outline and a set of practical procedures for a literary translation practice course in Russian-Spanish translation based on socio-constructivist translation pedagogy and Expertise Studies. I introduce a ludic approach to the training of future literary translation professionals, linking well-established practices in experiential learning to the dimensions of play and simulation that literary texts foster. The outlined course and the different procedures are based on the premise of using a ludic approach to promote deliberate practice, self-reflection and inquisitive thinking among trainees, and so the material is easily applicable to other fields of specialization.