All the students, the more advanced as well as the rather intermediate, should be able to improve their language facility. This is a delicate balance, not to bore one student while asking too much of another. My goal is to interest students in translation, not only as an exercise but also as an activity to discover more about the TL-culture. Thus the class discussions, which, by the way, are mainly in German, are very engaging. Finally, I believe that there is not only one correct translation possible.
Translations can be excellent, good, mediocre, bad, and also simply false.
I have always graded on quality and not on how close a student's translation is to a translation by a professional translator. In the classroom, we then criticize the different versions. In this paper, students are supposed to deal theoretically with the field of their interest in relation to translation. This includes some research with articles and books on translation theory. Some of the pertinent literature has been put on reserve.