Innovation in Language Learning

Future opera singers at conservatories in the Czech Republic study Italian as a foreign language but they also need to understand completely lyric texts related to the scores they interpret; on that account their language education should include translation activities. This paper includes a theoretical part, which analyses linguistic aspects that influence translation related to the specific language of lyric texts, and a practical part based on research conducted on students at the Conservatory of Pilsen which aims to show all the concrete aspects of such a specific translation. The linguistic analysis is based on the corpus of lyric texts commonly used during the training of future opera singers. The research is based on texts actually interpreted in the current school year. The aim of the research is to provide a comparison of the linguistic knowledge obtained as a benefit of modern teaching methods and the specific knowledge required for the translation of Italian lyric texts. The research questions to be answered are: Do modern teaching methods help the translation process? In what way and to what degree? Finally, the research is extended by the comparison of declared and performed language knowledge of the participants. The future application of the presented research is the modification of teaching methods used in the language education of future opera singers.

Keywords: Translation, Italian, Language education, Opera singers, Lyric texts.

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