Research On The Teaching Model Of Higher - Level Thinking Oriented Translation

In response to the demand for high-level translation professionals in the context of globalization and China’s shift in economic growth patterns, and in light of the status quo of translation teaching both in China and abroad, this dissertation takes the modeling of translation teaching as its object of inquiry, which has been at the heart of discussion in the Chinese community of translation pedagogy.Based on theoretical insights into the social and cognitive nature of translational action, the present study revisits translation as a mental process which involves an interplay of textual, cultural and social elements. With language as its medium, knowledge as its content and experience as its pathway, translation features in the interaction between the translator’s mental construct and the external environment in an attempt to achieve the transfer and communication of human knowledge. Both thinking skills and disposition function as prerequisites for the translator to transcend his/her own static knowledge and past experience, to realize the interaction between his/her internal knowledge and the external climate, and to establish the cognitive frame as a representation of the source-text world. Thinking plays a key role in recognizing and defining translation problems, selecting translation strategies, evaluating translation process and products, and constructing cognitive models. Thinking in the translation process helps with meaning construction and is in nature repetitive, interactive, irregular, pluralistic, indefinite, and self-regulating, which makes it a feature of higher-order thinking (HOT). The study suggests that a teaching model focusing on the interaction between higher-order thinking and the external climate in the translation problem-solving process is conducive to the efficacy of translation teaching and the pace of the translator’s personal growth and capacity for lifelong learning. Furthermore, a refined HOT-oriented Translation Teaching Model (HTTM) that conforms to trends in international higher education and the nature of the translation discipline serves to guide the direction of translator education and enhance the status of translation as an independent discipline.The present dissertation addresses the HOT-oriented model of translation teaching both inductively and deductively. Based on the practice-theory-practice paradigm, the study moves through four major stages, namely experience abstraction, conceptual inquiry, model construction, and case study. Taking into consideration the various dimensions of a teaching model, the dissertation contributes five chapters to a systematic portrait of the model—specifically, theoretical underpinnings, teaching objectives, operative conditions, the process of implementation, and outcome evaluation.The HOT-oriented Translation Teaching Model as proposed incorporates thinking skills into subject-matter instruction. Focusing on the translator’s self-development and meta-cognitive abilities, it is intended to deal with such higher-order thinking as decision-making, critical thinking, creative thinking and problem-solving in an attempt to provide learners with the skills to adapt to the real-world translation context.The HOT-oriented Translation Teaching Model is a recursive teaching model which integrates inquiry-based learning and reflective learning to reinforce a social-cognitive process that focuses on the teacher, the learner and the social organization. Supported by the concepts of cognitive apprenticeship and learning/practice community, the model features the foregrounding of meta-cognitive strategic knowledge, the explicitation of thinking processes, and the contextual ization of the learning process. Following the rules of reflection, feedback and recursion, the model stresses the trainee translator’s subjective role in the development of higher-order thinking and focuses on the interaction between the trainee translator and the external social environment. Instead of offering a rigid pattern, the model aims more at providing overall guidance for adaptive innovation in translation teaching through balancing reason and experience, structuring and restructuring, and stability and flexibility.The evaluative aspect of the model is (1) development-oriented in that it examines both the process and the product; (2) holistic in that it focuses equal attention on thinking skills and disposition, understanding of knowledge, and quality of thinking; and (3) performance-based in that it is centered around translation problem-solving. Coordinated with the multiple-source feedback mechanism of the model, the evaluative aspect features as a consultative process pertaining to the quality of thinking, interaction, knowledge, product, and progress.The dissertation holds that translation problems are deeply rooted in such linguistic and cultural conflicts as ambiguity, asymmetry and interference. Translation literacy expresses itself as the translator’s competence in mediating the conflicts in the problem-solving process, in which higher-order thinking plays a central role. Cultivation of higher-order thinking skills transcends differences in language pairs. The model, therefore, applies widely to undergraduate and postgraduate translation programs in various language pairs such as Chinese-English, Chinese-Japanese, and Chinese-French.The present dissertation is cross-disciplinary by nature and integrates the latest research findings in cognitive science and Translation Studies. Based on cognitive investigation into the operative mechanisms of higher-order thinking, it ventures to provide a comprehensive definition of the core attributes and contents of critical thinking, creative thinking and decision-making in the translation process, and defines accordingly the goals and approaches to the teaching of higher-order thinking. Based on systematic comments on the existing translation teaching models, the dissertation, in the context of post-modernism, formulates a refined model for HOT-oriented translation teaching, elucidating in details its theoretical foundation, teaching goals, processes,operative conditions, and evaluative parameters. Solidly founded in theory and practice, the model represents a transcendence of the existing translation-teaching model.