How do your teachers handle translations?

[Abby Pullen]

I've had three different Latin teachers in my three years of taking the language and they all have done different things in relation to translating from our textbook. For example, my current teacher makes us do "triumvirates", in which three of us stand in front of the class, the first person reads a passage from the story in Latin, the second person translates it, and the third answers grammar questions about it. But my other teachers never really did any organized translations like that except on certain occasions when they would make us translate out loud. Anyway, I am curious as to how other teachers make their students do translations. 

[Vediovis Gorus]

Well, in my second year, my teacher would have us first read the passage, then write the translation on a separate piece of paper and answer any questions in the book involved with that chapter. This past year, he would have us write a part of the chapter on a sheet of paper, then translate said passage, and that was supposed to show how far we had gotten in our books (it was far more independent study-based than my second year).

[Abby Pullen]

That's cool. What series of textbooks do you use?

[Vediovis Gorus]

Well, the first year we used Lingua Latina, then we switched to Ecce Romani. Second year was all Ecce, then this last year we switched back to Lingua. It was rather confusing and not that great of a learning environment.

[Abby Pullen]

oh I'm sorry.

[Vediovis Gorus]

Meh. He just wanted to experiment with different methods of teaching. But he did it all over the course of three years, going back and forth between books. But oh well. What can you do?

[Abby Pullen]

Yeah, I guess that's just one example of world suck.

[Vediovis Gorus]

Indeed. That's an example of epic world suck.

[Joseph Marx]

I only had one teacher in high school. She would have us all translate the exercises, then we would discuss them in class, especially if the grammar were particularly icky. My fourth year, translating Virgil, we had three pairs who translated 20-line chunks. That way, we covered Aeneid much faster than we would have. And I think it worked.

[Dara D]

My school uses the Cambridge books, Caicilius and everything. I have had two different teachers and the first I liked the most because she allowed us to work in small groups to translate them and write it on paper. The translations are stories, with plots and characters, so it is best to write it down. My second teacher went back and forth between this method and her own, which I disliked. Most often times she would sit there reading it directly and translating it, wrong most of the times and she would yell at us when we corrected her. I love the language and I cannot wait to take it again this year.

[Lizliz]

The most direct answer to your question is that, in third and fourth year Latin, she didn't. The first two years were very structured and we learned sooo much, and we had translation passages out of the books (we used the worst books, Latin for Americans, but I was usually pretty good at it so the passages didn't bother me too much) that we would work on in groups in class and then write out for homework, but then we hit third year, and big scary "real" Latin, and I think my teacher was so afraid of scaring us away that she didn't make us do shit as far as translating. We had to write out the passages and write out the vocab line by line, but we didn't have to parse anything and she didn't grade on accuracy. She just handed us the translation and spoon-fed us the grammar, literary devices, and scansion because it wasn't always "by the book". We would only cover a single passage of eight to twelve lines every week. When I got to college, needless to say, I had forgotten what little I knew about how to go about translating.