“We don’t just Translate Texts”: Students’ Perceptions towards the Effectiveness of Project-based Learning in a Translation Course

This research study aims to explore students’ perceptions and reflections on the effectiveness of project-based learning (PBL) in a Thai-English translation course in the EFL context. The participants of this study included forty-nine students who were enrolled in the Thai-English translation course. The participants were asked to produce a Thai-English text and a video clip with English subtitles as a project. At the end, they were asked to complete an online questionnaire with the closed-ended and open-ended responses related to their perceived challenges and effectiveness of PBL. Descriptive statistics were employed to analyze the quantitative data. To complement the data in the survey, the qualitative data from the open-ended responses were coded using content analysis. The findings revealed that the majority of the participants perceived that the project was rather difficult due to the limitations of their semantic and syntactic knowledge in English, thereby causing translation errors. The participants also strongly perceived that a native speaker played a crucial role in editing their translation work and improving the quality of their text and viewed PBL as an effective pedagogical approach in terms of enhancing their English language and translation skills. In addition, they believed that they could develop their cooperation, teamwork, and presentation skills. These results can indeed offer novel evidence and pedagogical implications to implement project-based learning in EFL translation courses.