Translations

Phase 1-2 Assignment Prompt

Download this Assignment Prompt

Jump to the Language and Literacy Narrative Assignment Prompt

Jump to the Synthesis Essay Assignment Prompt

Overview:This assignment involves creating two translations this semester where you re-imagine and re-compose your writing into different genres (e.g., translating an essay into a presentation, video, poster, or meme).   Adjusting your style, delivery, and your language choices is important for both translations. The length, genre, and intended audience of each will vary.  
Length:625 – 750 words
Genre:Narrative
Audience:Classmates + Teachers

Assignment Introduction

This assignment invites you to rework your ideas and language to fit different genres with different audiences and different rhetorical purposes. Such translation work promotes a sophisticated critical awareness of how texts and communication strategies change based on the rhetorical situation.

It’s a harmful myth that the best way to learn and communicate our ideas is through writing essays featuring Standard American English. Translating your written essays into more popular genres (e.g., videos, memes, posters, flyers, social media posts, poems, songs, animations, PSAs, speeches) invites you to practice composing real writing aimed at reaching real audiences.

Translation 1: “Spoken” Narrative

For Translation 1, you are asked to rework your Language and Literacy Narrative into a spoken/visual version that you will present to your classmates and instructor. This will provide an opportunity to practice not just translation but also presentations. And it will help us get to know each other better. For your 3-minute presentation, you have several options. You could:

  • Text Box: read your favorite lines from your written narrative
  • write an entirely new narrative (or “spoken word” version)
  • reenact a moment from your language and literacy past
  • read/perform lyrics that you or someone else wrote that captures something about your language/literacy identity
  • deliver your presentation “live” or prepare a prerecorded audio or video file (just please email the file to your instructor 24 hours in advance).

Translation 2: Visual “Argument”

For Translation 2, you are asked to rework a specific idea/example from your Synthesis Essay into a visual argument. This project involves you selecting your

  • intended audience: who do you want to reach? who are they? what do they care about? what appeals to them? what turns them off?
  • genre: what might best reach your audience—a poster, flyer, meme, political cartoon, animation, video, slides, something else?
  • language: what language, words, and tones would best reach your audience?
  • design: what design elements (layout, color, text, images) would be ideal?

Instructor’s Learning Goals

1. Analyze Your Genre’s Norms and Your Audience’s Expectations                            

Translation is not easy, partly because determining genre norms and audience expectations can be tricky. You are asked to carefully analyze your genre and audience so that you practice communicating effectively across different rhetorical situations.

2. Practice Intentionally Meeting or Resisting Genre Expectations                             

Deciding to uphold and perpetuate genre norms and audience expectations is an important part of being a writer. Experiment, take risks, and decide for yourself whether you will intentionally meet (or not) the expectations of the genre and your audience.

3. Carefully Consider and Adjust Your Delivery, Design, and Media                            

Practice adjusting your delivery from written to spoken by considering your volume, tone, body language, and eye contact. Draw on your “native,” “home,” or “other” languages, literacies, and ways of being as you see fit. Incorporate props, artifacts/momentos, slides, or other supportive objects or texts.

Practice adjusting your design for visual texts (vs. written texts) by considering the layout, style, colors, and font for any text you’ll include. Carefully craft your language to appeal to your audience, and practice incorporating media like images, drawings, memes, graphics, charts, hyperlinks, and/or something else.

4. Practice Specific College-Level Writing Goals                                                                 

  • Practice reflection and self-assessment (see Self-Assessment Prompt).
  • Meet the assignment deadlines for rough and revised drafts.
  • Meet the length requirements.
  • Participate in the peer review process.
  • Practice revising based on feedback.

Your Learning Goals

Be sure to identify for yourself one or two learning goals for each translation.

Identifying your own learning goals is an important part of developing as a writer. Your goals could be about trying something new, managing your time, changing your process, changing how/where you work, avoiding procrastination, utilizing a resource, building confidence, overcoming a challenge, sharing your writing, or something else altogether.  

Later, you will assess how well you have met the goals set by your instructor and by you.