Dear colleagues,

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the October issue of our Newsletter devoted to translation.

I have to admit this has been my first task of this kind, challenging and fun at the same time. To start with, I could choose the topic I felt needed to be further explored in the Serbian ELT context; secondly, I enjoyed cooperating with the contributors and working on the articles; and finally, I had an opportunity to get acquainted with at least a bit of what being an editor actually involved!

The need to decide on what it is teachers might find useful in this area prompted me to engage in discussions about different translation issues with my colleagues who work with students of different age and of various levels of proficiency in English. Once we started to dig deeper, I realized how many interesting translation-related activities my colleagues used in their classrooms and thought it would be great to have them contribute to this issue of the Newsletter. Some of them hadn’t done much writing since we left university, and, as they said, writing something they believed would be of interest to a wider audience was a challenging task indeed. Both for them and for me! However, a more important thing this experience has made us all realize is that we all have a wealth of experience we can share with our colleagues and thus make a small step towards cooperative exchange of experience and improving our teaching!

Why translation? With intercultural communication becoming a major issue in the field of ELT, translation - as a powerful means of building bridges between cultures and promoting intercultural understanding - has once again become a topic of interest for foreign language teachers. ‘Once again’ I say because with the advent of the Communicative Approach in language teaching the focus was shifted away from translation as it did not seem to fit in with the new goals set for language instruction. This might be the reason why we are often at a loss when it comes to the objectives of introducing translation activities into our classrooms and the techniques to use to teach translation. Therefore, I was interested in exploring this particular topic as I was hoping your contributions would help us all find ways of introducing translation into our classrooms in a more meaningful way. In addition, I was motivated to choose this topic because I wanted to present to my colleagues an amazing job my students did during the last academic year, so two of the feature articles are devoted to the translation project carried out at the English Department in Niš.

Before you get down to reading all the interesting articles we have prepared for you: I’d like to invite all of you to contribute to the following issues, share your experience with us and, if there is a topic you are passionate about, try to act as Guest Editors for one of the next issues dealing with a topic of your choice. Finally, as a first-time Guest Editor, I would greatly appreciate all your comments on this issue and any suggestions you might have – do feel free to share them with us and thus help us make MELT and Newsletter more immediately relevant for your experience!

Just one more thing: in this Newsletter we're launching Letters from the editors and Who's who in ELTA. You'll find links to both at the very end of this issue.

Enjoy!
Milica Savić
October Guest Editor

Amazing Minds – Amazing Experience
by Danijela Duvnjak
This school year Danijela started telling her pupils about England using her new experience in the filed of teaching. If you would like to experience something like she did join ‘Great Teachers’ competition. Read the whole article (MS Word 750KB)

Completely Personal Diary
by Mirjana Marušić
Some day at the beginning of March
My friend Maja calls me. “Hey, Mira, I’ve heard about some programme for Young English Teachers. ELTA, British Council and our Faculty organize it. You go to England for three weeks. Do you want to apply?” Read the whole report (MS Word 51KB)

Icebreaking a Translation Course
by Ljiljana Marković
Two and a half years ago the first generation of pupils – the magnificent 24 – enrolled in the ‘philological’ class of Stevan Sremac Grammar School in Niš. They have been teachers’ pets since Day 1, while at the same time other pupils in the school have been green with envy for the ‘superb’ equipment and work conditions in their classroom. Read the whole article(MS Word 44KB)

Self Defining in Serbia
by Briget Ganske
This summer I traveled from my residence in New York to Nis to teach grammar school students interested in further developing their English language skills. This bit of information—where I was going and what the objective was—was basically all I knew when I left behind the skyscrapers and neon lights of New York for the wide blue sky of Serbia. Read the whole article(MS Word 104KB)

The Ten Stories Translation Project
by Milica Savić
As a lector at the English Department (Faculty of Philosophy, University of Nis), I have become aware of the fact that one of the most challenging and demanding tasks our students are engaged in during their studies is translation. Read the whole article (MS Word 1.23MB)

Pitfalls and how to avoid them: another take on The 10 Stories project
by Nina Lazarević
Having met the uniqueness of Salinger’s style during the studies, both the students and coordinators knew that they were faced with one of the American writers most difficult to translate. The students had to carefully analyse the text, its structure, linguistic context, as well as the widest cultural context. Read the whole article (MS Word 149KB)

The Matura Exam
by Nina Stamenković
In May, 4th-grade high school students have to take the final (matriculation) exam. Apart from being stressful and time-consuming, is there any other use of this exam? This question has been troubling me ever since I was a student and even more now that I am at school again but with a completely different status and with a completely different perspective to things. Read the whole article (MS Word 37KB)

15 October 2007, 1815 – 1930
British Council premises
Hot Corner workshop for English Language Teachers
‘Learning strategies’
Presenter: Ivana Ćirković Miladinović
Some learning strategies involve changes to the design of instruction. Learn more about this and apply to sanja.eric@britishcouncil.org.yu

16 October 2007, 1815 – 1930
British Council premises
Happy Hour workshop for English Language Teachers
‘Working with Minimum Resources’
Presenter: Sanja Čonjagić
The aim is to present the most effective tips on how to behave when you enter the new classroom, how to introduce the new topic, how to motivate students, how to fulfill the time remaining till the end of a lesson. Sanja Čonjagić will use the experience gained during the two-week Teacher Refresher Course in The Dublin School of English. Apply to sanja.eric@britishcouncil.org.yu

30 May - 1 June 2008
6th IATEFL ELTA conference
The Classroom that Beats the Odds

13 October 2007, 1000-1130
British Council
Global Gateway web portal presentation
Presenter: Nada Purtić
This exciting portal brings together schools in more than 70 countries around the world. It enables young people to work together, learn from each other, from authentic resources - created by them, for them and with the help of their teachers.

Ministry of Education of the Republic of Serbia signed a strategic partnership with Ministry of Education of England which allows primary, secondary and VET schools in Serbia to engage in these partnerships. Even more, Serbia has become a Partner of Choice. This means that Serbia will be promoted as the preferred partner with whom schools in the UK should be partnering with.

Ms Nada Purtic will talk about what her school, Žarko Zrenjanin Primary School in Novi Sad, has achieved so far through the Global Gateway web portal. For all further information and applications please contact sanja.eric@britishcouncil.org.yu

Students’ feedback on the Ten Stories project
by Milica Savić
It is my great pleasure to say a couple of words about three of the students who enthusiastically participated in the Ten Stories translation project and who I have been teaching for almost a year now. Nataša, Aleksandar and Dušan are all exceptional students of the English language and literature at the Faculty of Philosophy, Niš, and this project has only proved their outstanding talent. Read the whole article (MS Word 38KB)

Translation practice techniques
by Nina Lazarević
The traditional approach to translation – students translate on their own, hand in a translation to be marked, then the teacher uses most of the class time to go over the text, highlighting problems, suggesting better solutions – may not show how students actually learn from, or about, translation. Read the whole article (MS Word 29KB)

A class translation project
by Milica Savić
What I see as the main challenge in setting up a translation activity in our secondary school classrooms is making it purposeful for students. Ask any high schooler why (s)he studies English and you will get one of the following answers: to be able to communicate with foreigners, to have access to the information on the net and the satellite TV, and, maybe, to be able to find a better job in the future. Now, does doing translation fit into any of these? Read the whole article (MS Word 40KB)

Problems in translation practice – How are we to overcome them?
by Jelena Stefanović
Teaching translation has so far been actively discouraged by many teacher trainers as a hindrance to language fluency. We, as teachers of English in a high school, had been in favor of this attitude until we started teaching translation as an obligatory part of secondary-school curriculum. Read the whole article (MS Word 34KB)

Backtranslation
by Vladan Pavlović
Backtranslation represents a translation procedure that includes translating a piece of already translated text back into the source language. Read the whole article (MS Word 48KB)

An Introduction to LearnEnglish Kids
The aim of this session is to familiarise yourself with the material on the LearnEnglish Kids website. As you work through the tasks keep your students in mind, and make some notes in the boxes so you can share your findings with your colleagues later. Read the whole article (MS Word 37KB)

The Captain’s shirt story
By Nina Lazarević
Origami might not be the first thing to spring to mind when talking about English language teaching. Be that as it may, I’ll try to show a quite simple model (as finished figures are generally named in origami) that you may use in you class with young (or not so young learners).Read the whole article (MS Word 1.35MB)

English by Wolf
Dje si, bolan  - Where are you, sick, Momci iz kraja - Boys from the end, Taman posla - Dark of the job  Read the whole article (MS Word 81 KB)

More Funny Translations
Black Grass = Crna Trava, Castration City = Skoplje, Cockadoodledoo Hill = Petlovo Brdo  Read the whole article (MS Word 27 KB)

Recovery Room
See it (Jpeg Image 11KB)

English Here, English There, English Everywhere
by Dragana Grozdanić
Language is a way of expressing ourselves as individuals and as members of a particular nationality, culture, group, etc. Language determines how people perceive the world, and at the same time our perception of the world affects the language we use. Read the whole article (MS Word 25KB)

The Voice of My Stomach
by Briget Ganske
Sometimes I imagine my stomach talking to me. Often in New York it says “spicy tuna sushi” or “chocolate peanut butter cupcakes” because there is a great Japanese restaurant in my neighborhood and next to it a bakery lined with cupcakes in the window.Read the whole article (MS Word 47KB)

Gibanica
by Sonja Stojanović
Of all the “gibanica” I have eaten since living in Serbia, this has to be my favourite recipe! Read the whole article (MS Word 31KB)

A Day in the life of…Jelena Pralas
An interview by Irena Miladin
Jelena Pralas attained her BA and MA degree at the University of Novi Sad, (Course of English and American Literature) where she is currently doing her PhD Studies. Read the whole interview(MS Word 48KB)

Total English
Total English is a six-level English language course taking students from Starter to Advanced level, or, in other words, from CEF level A1 to C1. This is an adult course which offers teachers choice and flexibility, a complete range of resources and engaging material. Read the whole article (MS Word 159KB)

We would hereby like to thank all the contributors and encourage them, and all of you, to continue making our newsletter and magazine fantastic as it is!
You can take part, as well, and share your thoughts with us! Send us your comments and suggestions – here are some guidelines to help you:

1.What are your favourite sections of Newsletter / MELT and why?
2.What do you think about this issue?
3.Any further comments or ideas regarding Newsletter / MELT?

The editors are happy to receive all your suggestions and articles at melt@elta.org.yu

Do you know who is who in ELTA?