For many years, translation has occupied an uncomfortable position in English language teaching. Associated with the grammar-translation method, it has often been viewed as incompatible with communicative approaches that prioritise fluency, interaction and meaningful language use. As Jeremy Harmer (2015:63–64) argues, the reaction against translation, ‘allied to the increased numbers of monolingual native speakers who started, in the twentieth century, to travel the world teaching English’, created ‘a powerful prejudice against the presence of the L1 in language lessons’. Beyond this historical and methodological suspicion, translation has also posed practical challenges in multilingual classrooms: teachers rarely speak . . .
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