The Future of Education

The needs of opera singers studying Italian or German as a foreign language differ completely from those of other kinds of students’ studying these languages for other purposes and must indeed include translation. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the research which has already been conducted – based on the teaching model applied in the contemporary musical education institutions in the Czech Republic – with the aim of finding out the best teaching strategies to follow and avoiding the strategies not to follow. The research includes the analysis of the linguistic and extralinguistic aspects that influence the teaching process, the analysis of didactic materials and tools used to teach translation and the analysis of concrete translations of scores and musical texts; examples of Italian texts are given. In accordance with the hypothesis, modern teaching materials and communicative methods are found to be often unsuitable for such specific educational needs and only a limited number of other types of materials, as pointed out in the research, are available. Specific strategies and also further research into musical text translation are needed. These results are of significance especially for teachers of Italian and German as a foreign language working with opera singers.

Keywords: Translation, Opera singers, Teaching process, Scores, Musical Texts.

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