ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the importance of translation within a four-year liberal arts college curriculum. The class combines intellectually challenging content (theory of translation, history of translation, literary translation) with language skills. When advanced students of Spanish register for the class, they see translation as a revitalizing force of foreign language learning and as a form of linguistic and conceptual enrichment. However, after the second day of class, students realize that translation is one of the most important disciplines within their liberal arts education. Without translation, they could not read most of the works of their major disciplines.
In this chapter, I show how students explore the history of translation and the importance of this discipline in Spain and Latin America. Students are exposed to the history of translation, specifically to different schools of translation that have coalesced through the concurrence of political, cultural, and linguistic circumstances. The second part of the class is devoted to the study of the theory of translation based on Spanish and Latin American critics. During the seminars, students have to describe main trends in translation studies, establishing a concise explanation of the work of these influential writers within the liberal arts curriculum.
