Towards A Model Of Teaching Pragmatic Translation In Higher Vocational Technical Institutes

Higher Vocational Technical Institute (HVTI) has developed rapidly in recent years. With the guiding ideal of "combining learning with working", the HVTI education has gradually formed its own features. However, the translation teaching in HVTI has not made much progress, especially for the non-English major students. This part of students accounts for a big proportion of students' number, and they may face the translation tasks when they enter the workplace. But in fact, many HVTI graduates are short of English competence, and they often misunderstand the exact meaning of the English documents on translating. That will not only cast a bad influence on communication and make losses on business, but also be harmful to the image of their serving employers. Therefore, the importance of translation should be fully recognized and reevaluated in HVTI English teaching. And the training of translation ability should be put into the same position as that of listening, speaking, reading and writing ability. Thus we could improve students'translation performance, and bring up the technical talents with English applicable ability in their work.Pragmatic translation refers to the translation of practical texts, and it includes almost all kinds of texts except literatures. It aims to pass on information, and concerns about the effect of information transmission. Pragmatic translation conforms to the English teaching guidelines for HVTI, which focuses on the practical usefulness of teaching contents; and it accords with the translation tasks'requirements in their future work. In result, it is suitable to teach pragmatic translation in HVTI with necessary adjustments.The objectives of HVTI students'learning translation are:1) to improve their English competence through translation, and 2) to master the ability of translating practical texts in order to tackle with the translation tasks in their future work.The features of HVTI translation teaching lie in:1) HVTI students' English competence is relatively low, which refers to their poor mastery of vocabulary, grammar, learning attitude and methods.2) The society does not expect too much for HVTI graduates. The companies that employ HVTI students usually do not require them to translate something as a professional translator, but ask them to use translation as a tool in order to finish some bigger tasks. For example, secretaries in the medium or small-scale companies would translate some documents when doing foreign trades; or the technical personnel would briefly translate the technical documents from foreign companies. Translation here is called elementary "instrumental translation".3) The feature of higher vocational technical institutes is to teach student by "doing", that is, to instruct a certain skill to students by imitating the working process. Therefore, the pragmatic translation teaching in HVTI should be adjusted according to the above features, and it could not be achieved by simply doing sentence translation exercises as before.Considering the teaching reality in HVTI, this thesis proposes a "two-phase" pragmatic translation teaching model for the non-English major students, aiming to provide a systematic and applicable solution to this problem.After the introduction part of this thesis, Chapter Two analyzes practical translation theory and the mainstreams of translation teaching methodologies---"3P" (presentation, practice and product) approach and "task-based" approach. Chapter Three reviews the HVTI English teaching guidelines released by educational authorities, especially the requirement of teaching translation; and the research papers in the field of translation teaching in higher education, in particular the HVTI translation teaching. And then, according to the features of HVTI students and society's demands, this thesis puts forward the "Two-phase" practical translation teaching model for non-English major students in HVTI. Chapter Four sees a case study of this model in the author's serving institute and the evaluation of this model by the means of tests, interviews and questionnaire. Finally, Chapter Five concludes the findings of this thesis, points out its limitations and brings up suggestions to improve the pragmatic translation teaching in HVTI.