On the utilitarian conception of language in translation

From translation theorists general point of view, translator and interpreter are bilingual and translate towards their mother tongue. This vision involves taking for granted the mastery of foreign language and culture. That is a necessary condition that seems to give the right to allow translation theorists to reduce the role of language to a simple tool. This paper aims to verify the relevance or not of this utilitarian assumption, to call attention to what might be the implications of this vision in the domain of Teaching French intended for translators and interpreters. Eventually some suggestions in the domain of Teaching Language for Specific Purposes will be given.