| Translation teaching is an important process in which translation theories and practiceare applied to. The study of translation teaching is also an important part of translation studies,which can improve the quality of translation directly. Nowadays people are paying more andmore attention to translation teaching as they take the studies of translation teaching more andmore seriously. As translation competence of the translator depends largely on the quality oftranslation teaching and training, translation teaching plays a very important role incultivating the translator's translation ability.In Chinese universities and colleges today, the course of English translation is usuallyoffered for the third-year English majors who have learnt the basic knowledge of English inthe first two years. Its basic task is to introduce to the students the basic translation theoriesand skills and teach them to do translation practice for the purpose of improving theirtranslation competence. According to the National Teaching Syllabus for English Majors ofInstitutions of Higher Learning (2000), the requirement for the third-year English majors intranslation is: to learn the fundamental translation theories, to tell the similarities anddifferences between Chinese and English, to master the basic translation skills and be able totranslate Chinese and English passages of intermediate level. And their translation should besmooth and faithful to the original. This is a course of the combination of translation theoriesand practice.To some extent, translation can comprehensively reflect the students' other four basiclanguage skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. In the course of learningtranslation, the students should pay attention to both translation theories and practice. Thepresent author has conducted a case study on translation teaching in School of ForeignLanguages of Guangxi Teachers University. The subjects are the third-year English majorswho are attending translation course. After their study of the first two years, the studentsshould have a sound linguistic competence. However, our error analysis of the students' C-Etranslation shows that in their translation there are a lot of errors, most of which are evenmisspelling, mispunctuation marks and grammatical errors. The error analysis of the students'C-E translation shows that their linguistic competence and translation competence are quiteweak. This paper tries to find out the causes for the poor translation of the students. Theauthor has also made a survey by the use of a questionnaire on translation teaching thatincludes the students' view on the translation course offered for them, their attitude towardstranslation teaching and learning and their view on the teacher's teaching method andteaching attitude and so on. The studies show that the students are dissatisfied with the currenttranslation teaching. The questionnaire also shows that most of the students pay no attentionto the study of translation theories. However, translation theories are of great significance totranslation practice and translation teaching as well. Lao Long (1990) views that the iiicombination of translation theories and practice is the way out of translation teaching. GuoJianzhong (1997) notes that the aim of translation teaching is to teach the students to dotranslation practice under the guideline of translation theories.On the basis of the survey, the paper offers some suggestions for translation teaching. Toimprove translation teaching and to improve the students' linguistic competence andtranslation competence, it is necessary to realize the importance of translation theoriesteaching and learning while improving their Chinese and the teaching method. Translation isnot only the students' individual activity in the translation teaching classroom, but acooperative work of all the students and the translation teacher as well.Translation is a lifelong work that needs diligence and... |
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