TradExpert team attends the Triadic Communicative Approach Feedback Conference on 05 July 2023
On Wednesday, 05 July 2023, Suzanne Katajunga Nzigire, Senior Lecturer at the School of Translation and Interpretation, gave a presentation in the lab on the TCA: Triadic Communicative Approach.
The set-up was complete by 11 a.m. Participants, including the Honorary Chancellor, Professor Clémence Kasinga, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Professor Florent Babaapu Kabilayi, and other members of the scientific community and students, took their seats. Eloge Mulumba, an alumnus of the School of Translation and Interpretation and Manager of the TradExpert Team, also attended the conference.
The presentation focused on TCA ("Triadic Communicative Approach"). This innovative method combines two approaches: the approach based on Bolivar's triad (1981, 1986, 1994, 1995) and that of Riazi and Assar, as well as Newmark's communicative and semantic methods (1991, 2001). TCA was developed as a result of recent advances in linguistic-textual studies, which confirm that the structure of a text or discourse can greatly facilitate its analysis and translation, a theory verified by the studies of Bolivar, Riazi & Assar.
While reading and researching, the researcher had the idea of testing these discoveries of textual linguistics. If my hypotheses are verified, "they could help me a great deal in my work as a language teacher and discourse analyst", she said. That's what motivated the search for a better linguistic unit or a strategy capable of restructuring a discourse. She discovered three approaches whose structure made it easier to analyse the text and even translate it.
After the speaker's presentation, professors, academics from the School of Translation and Interpreting and students - the main recipients of this new approach - asked questions to which the speaker responded. From these discussions, TCA also has all the characteristics of scientific research. It is (1) global, (2) collective, (3) diachronic, (4) collaborative, (5) objective, (6) positive, and (7) valid, reliable and reproducible.
TCA is global because it applies to the discourse as a whole and refers it to other texts and approaches; it is collective because it tackles several aspects at once but advances by eliminating some based on solidly constructed arguments; it is diachronic because it evolves and history and according to context, unlike a synchronic approach which freezes on a given moment and situation in history; it is collaborative because it combines with other means of analysing and processing the text to improve its results (e.g. it combines with discourse analysis, which is both a theory and a method of analysis); it is objective, but also subjective (Albert Einstein).
These kinds of activities are important for language professionals and language students in the Democratic Republic of Congo," says Eloge Mulumba. Following her presentation, the Q&A session, and the various contributions from the professors, the audience was treated to a cocktail. A photoshoot and interviews with the journalists present for the event followed this.