A bodily and co-creative approach to teaching literary translation

Over the last decades, embodiment has been posing great challenges to education, and several studies show that an embodied perspective has much to offer to researchers, educational practitioners, as well as policy-makers, as evidenced by the emergence of paradigms such as Embodied Learning and Embodied Education. However, reflection on the educational implications of an embodied perspective is still at a very early stage and there are few educational interventions designed after the principles of embodied cognition so far. Drawing on recent empirical research that explore the integration of body in various learning contexts, the contribution addresses the didactic implications of an embodied understanding of translating. The authors describe a series of activities and tasks they proposed in the context of German-Italian literary translation courses held at the University of Bologna. They focus on the question how a bodily approach can be implemented in teaching literary translation – that is, how a corporeal dimension is to be integrated in the academic education of translators to such an extent that students can learn to use the body as a resource for their translating. In this way, they aim to promote a broader reflection on the educational/didactic implications of embodied cognition as well as of a phenomenological view on language.