An Investigation Of Learning Motivation Of MTI Students From Different Majors

In order to meet the urgent demand for translation or interpreting talents in China’s social,economic,and cultural development,improve the training system of translation or interpreting talents,innovate the training mode of translation or interpreting talents,and improve the quality of translation or interpreting talents,a professional degree of Master of Translation or Interpreting is set up.The MTI degree aims to cultivate highlevel,application-oriented,professional interpreters and translators who are morally,intellectually,and physically developed.They can adapt to the needs of global economic integration and national-international competitiveness,as well as the needs of national social,economic,and cultural development.The students have generally obtained a bachelor’s degree with a good bilingual foundation and those with different majors and professional backgrounds are encouraged to apply.In this paper,the author mainly investigated the influences of different majors on the learning motivation of MTI students.This paper conducted a survey on MTI students from some of the universities in China by means of a questionnaire and an interview and then the collected data was analyzed by using SPSS software.The paper can conclude from the research that the learning motivation of MTI students with different professional backgrounds will have different learning motivations when learning translation or interpreting,which can be divided into different dimensions:intrinsic interests and personal development motivation,social responsibility motivation,learning situation motivation,and achievement motivation;the learning motivation of MTI students from different majors has significant differences in social responsibility motivation,learning situation motivation,and achievement motivation.In terms of motivation for social responsibility,learners of natural sciences majors have lower motivation than learners of foreign languages or foreign languages translation and interpreting,and also significantly lower than learners of humanities and social sciences majors.In terms of learning situation motivation,the humanities and social sciences scored highest,followed by foreign languages as well as foreign languages translation and interpreting,and the natural sciences.In terms of achievement motivation,foreign languages as well as foreign languages translation and interpreting scored significantly higher humanities and social sciences.The author hopes that the investigation and analysis of this paper will provide some inspiration and reference to the teaching of MTI as well as students from different majors.