Parallel corpora and the teaching of ancient languages: the Gospels as a multilingual corpus for learning Ancient Greek and Latin (with a focus on modality)

Abstract

In recent years, the importance of translation in the modern language classroom has been rediscovered. Moreover, new technologies allow for easier access to bilingual or multilingual translational corpora (parallel corpora) which can have applications in teaching. In this contribution, after briefly presenting the advent of the "translation turn" in language teaching, I look at the case of the teaching of ancient languages, in particular Ancient Greek and Latin. I present a new tool, a parallel Ancient Greek - Latin - Modern Language dataset containing the Gospels and, for Ancient Greek and Latin, annotated modal passages. I also show how it can be used in the classroom by suggesting some exercises.