Abstract Current trends encouraging a move away from monolingual teaching have sparked a renewed interest in the role of translation in language instruction. Yet, there are few theoretically and empirically grounded proposals regarding specific uses of translation in the language classroom. This study argues for the potential of translation in promoting learners' metalinguistic awareness, through metalinguistic talk. Based on the conceptualization of translation as an act of plurilingual mediation, we identify three features of translation that make it particularly suited for this purpose: (i) the separation of form and meaning, (ii) the comparison of linguistic resources across languages and (iii) the communicative objective of translating. We propose an operationalization of the identified features and explore it empirically using data from a project involving 64 young learners of English in Norway (age 8–10) who were audio‐recorded during collaborative translation tasks. Through qualitative analysis of interactions, we investigate ways in which the identified features are manifested in peer interactions. The findings indicate that translation has the potential to generate rich metatalk, making it an effective means for promoting metalinguistic awareness in additional language learning.
Bader et al. (2026) studied this question.