Construction Of Subjects’ Communication System In Translation Teaching For English Majors

Focused on the cultivation and development of the students’ translation competence, this paperseeks to establish a pluralistic, dynamic and open communication system in the translation teaching forEnglish majors by attaching importance to the various parameters such as the communication subjects,the process, the purpose, the intermediary objects, the environment and the communicating models.With a descriptive study, we have presented a diachronic picture of translation teaching for Englishmajors and seen its great development in terms of teaching materials, teaching content, teaching meansand methods, its evaluation and also the teaching staff. Meanwhile, we have also found that in spite ofthe development, the teaching effect has fallen far behind. Teaching subjects are always the most activeand initiative among all the teaching elements, so we can choose to solve the problem by establishing asound communication system.The construction of the communication system has to begin with a change of our concept ofteaching process and subjects. The traditional definition of the teaching process could be extended tocover the pre-teaching stage, the while-teaching stage and the post-teaching stage. All those who haveinfluential participation in the process should be taken as subjects, including the manipulation subjects,the regulation subject and the organization and administration subjects. With an integral approach, wehave studied the communication among them and seen serious communication deficiency.The purpose of the communication among the subjects is to cultivate and develop the students’translation competence. We can resort to re-categorization and construct a composite and multi-layeredtranslation competence structure covering the super-ordinate category, the subordinate category and thebasic level category which includes the ontological competence, the conditional competence, thepracticing competence and the evaluating competence. Students have to go through different stages intheir translation competence development. Their competence in a certain stage could be taken asscaffolding for that of the next stage. The theory of “Zone of Proximal Development” is of greatsignificance in directing students’ translation competence growth.We can choose various intermediary objects for the communication among the subjects, amongwhich the teaching content is of the utmost importance. The choice of intermediary objects must becompatible to the communication purpose. Thus, the intermediary objects we are going to choose haveto cover the ontological one, the conditional one, the practicing one and also the evaluating one, which respectively corresponds to translation theory, language/culture/knowledge, translation practice andtranslation criticism in the term of teaching content. So the intermediary objects for the communicationamong the subjects are composite, multilayered and stereoscopic, too. Besides the teacher and students,all the other subjects should have full participation in the choice of the intermediary objects and thechoice must be of help for the subjects to communicate, for the purpose to be realized.The communication environment for the translation teaching subjects could be categorized intothree: the physical one, the psychological one and the technological one. Such a communicationenvironment is of great distinction from the traditional teaching environment. The establishment of theenvironment must be in the interest of the realization of the subjects’ communication purpose and all thesubjects must get fully involved in it. Besides, the establishment of the environment for thecommunication in the pre-teaching and the post-teaching stages must not be neglected.We can get different communication associations such as teacher-student, student-student,teacher/student-translation industry and teacher/student-other subject associations.The teacher-student communication must be student-centered and the teacher must have a closelook at the students’ learning process and translational process. Besides, the teacher has to pay adequateattention to the students’ inner world and their differences. Teaching narration is of great help to do that.Students communicate among themselves mainly through cooperative work, which could berealized mainly in three phases, namely, the intra-group cooperation, the inter-group competition andthe class integration. A group should include members with different translation proficiency anddifferent groups should be well-matched in their proficiency. Group work means both cooperation andcompetition. The teacher should manage fulfillment of his/her role to facilitate the communicationamong the students. Student-student communication has its own advantages and we should bring theminto full play.Teachers and students can resort to real translation projects, the imitation of the real translationsituation and translation qualification certification to communicate with the translation industry. Someprofessional interpreters or translators can be invited to join the teaching staff. Students can havetranslation training and internship to have a close look at the real picture of the industry. By readingsome representative programmatic documents, they can also establish a close tie with the industry. Apartfrom that, they must also have adequate and effective communication with the other subjects.