Translator’s Terminological Competence: An Exploratory Study

In the era of globalization and information technology, significant changes haveoccurred to translation activities, and the professional competence required bytranslation industry has renewed accordingly. In recent years, some universities inChina have started setting up translation major in order to meet the ever-increasingdemand of the translation market, and the previously known “translator training” hasupgraded into today’s “translation education”. Terminology is the basic unit andmajor carrier of knowledge and represents the conceptual system of a discipline, thusplaying a crucial part in knowledge exchange and technical communication. Intranslation industry, great importance is attached to terminology translation, andalmost every step in the work flow of a translation project involves terminologicalissues. As can be seen, terminological competence has become an essential quality ofprofessional translators. Translator’s terminological competence is the underlyingsystem of knowledge and skills that a translator needs to be able to solve theterminological problems in translation process. Therefore, this research intends toexplore the current talent demand of translation industry and puts special emphasis ontranslator’s terminological competence, which is placed under the researchframework of translation competence.Currently, the empirical research on translation process is an important approachto studying translation competence. Since the early1980s, the empirical research oftranslation process has gone through four periods, i.e. burgeoning, forming,developing and prospering. Its research paradigm has been maturing, andintrospection has become its main method with a variety of auxiliary methods, whichconstitutes the methodological support for the empirical research of translator’sterminological competence. Recently, cognitive approach to translation studies hasbeen emerging, including translation expertise, translation information processing,translation strategy etc. In this dissertation, translator’s terminological competence isviewed as a kind of expertise, and empirical research is carried out to study the translators with different translation experience to outline the characteristics ofdifferent stages of terminological competence development. Terminology translationis regarded as a kind of information processing, and empirical research is conductedto investigate its process to construct a working model for terminology translation.On the basis of the achievements of translation strategy study, this research deals withthe types of cognitive support used by translators in terminology translation.Translation-oriented terminology studies are reviewed from three aspects, i.e.,principles and methods of terminology translation, translation-oriented terminologymanagement, and translation-oriented terminology education, thus providing thisresearch with the support from terminology studies. On this basis, this research goeson to deal with the positioning of the study of translator’s terminological competence,elaborate on its concept and build a tentative componential model, which providestheoretical reference for this empirical research.Before the implementation of the empirical research on translator’sterminological competence, two surveys are carried out, i.e., a website survey oftranslation enterprises and a questionnaire survey on the cognition of translationcompetence. The main findings of the website survey are as follows: nowadays,translation industry needs eight types of talents, i.e., translators, interpreters,reviewers, senior translators, translation project managers, talents capable of bothtranslation and interpreting, talents capable of translation quality control, andlocalization translators. There are ten requirements for the competence of translationtalents, i.e., bilingual and transfer competence, revision and quality controlcompetence, domain knowledge, computer skill, translation technology skill,localization competence, project management competence, organization andcoordination competence, professional ethics, and good psychological quality.Translation enterprises pay great attention to terminology translation and employ theirfeatures on terminology translation as the advantage in enterprise propaganda. Themain findings of questionnaire survey are as follows: four qualities are viewed as themost important, i.e., bilingual communicative competence, domain knowledge,quality control skill, and professional ethics. The opinions of the participants aredivided on computer skill, documentation and information search skill, translation technology skill, and working under pressure. Students’ cognition of these fourqualities is lower than that of professional translators. Students’ cognition oftranslator’s terminological competence is also lower than that of professionaltranslators in terms of documentation competence, management competence,thematic competence and technology competence.This research selects three groups of subjects with different translationexperience (BA group, MTI group and professional group, five for each group) toparticipate in the empirical research, employs multiple methods to elicit and collectdata, and triangulates the data from various sources. With both quantitative andqualitative methods, the results are analyzed from four dimensions, i.e., efficiency ofterminology translation, decision-making in terminology translation, use ofinstrumental resources, and cognition of terminology translation, so as to investigatethe characteristics of three groups of subjects.The major findings are presented as follows:Efficiency of terminology translation: the BA group spend the least time onterminology translation, and the quality is the lowest. The MTI group spend the mosttime on terminology translation, and the quality is of medium level. The professionalgroup spend more time on terminology translation, and the quality is the highest.Seen from the group level, with the increase of translation experience, the time spenton terminology translation will first rise sharply and then decrease slightly, and thequality of terminology translation will rise gradually. When not being familiar withthe domain concerned, translators will spend some more time on informationsearching.Decision-making in terminology translation: The major cognitive support typesadopted by the BA group are two simple ones, i.e., SES and SIS. The frequencies ofIS-ES adopted by the professional group and the MTI group are both much higherthan that of the BA group, which indicates that the professional group and the MTIgroup are better at combining internal knowledge with external knowledge obtainedthrough information searches. The professional group perform best in this aspect. TheMTI group adopt the highest frequency of DES, the professional group lower, and theBA group the lowest. The DES type adopted by the MTI group is the greatest in number and the most complex, which indicates that the MTI group’s dependency onDES is greater than the other two groups. SES and SIS are the main causes of errorsin terminology translation.Use of instrumental resources: The BA group use fewer types of instrumentalresources, dictionary software is the major type, and they seldom use internetresources. They tend to quickly accept the results provided by dictionary look-upsand are not good at using internet resources to search for information. The MTI groupuse various instrumental resources, including dictionary software and a variety ofinternet resources. The MTI group can make better use of the various resourcesprovided by dictionary software, but they do not pay enough attention to specializeddictionaries. The effectiveness of the key words used by the MTI group in theirinternet searches is lower than that of the professional group, and the MTI group arenot good at applying strategies to quickly find out relevant information from searchresults. The professional group also use various instrumental resources, includingdictionary software and a variety of internet resources. They pay attention tospecialized dictionaries and consider the results provided by specialized dictionariesas important support for terminology translation. They do more searches of internetresources than the MTI group, and the key words used are more effective. They canquickly find the relevant information from the search results and are better atdifferentiating the authority of the results.Cognition of terminology translation: All of the three groups considerterminology translation as the difficult point of the translation tasks, but theprofessional group have a better understanding of terminology translation, with theMTI group coming behind. The BA group do not have the habit of terminologymanagement. Their knowledge of terminology translation is simple and general, andthere are some discrepancies between their knowledge and actual performance. Mostof the MTI group do not have the habit of terminology management, and theirknowledge is more specific than the BA group. Most of the professional group havethe habit of terminology management, and their knowledge is the most specificamong the three groups.According to the results of the empirical research, the tentative componential model of translator’s terminological competence is revised, and the working model ofterminology translation is constructed. On this basis, some pedagogical suggestionsare proposed for the terminology competence cultivation in translation major: it issuggested that the terminology teaching of translation major should achieve sixteaching objectives, i.e., theoretical competence, language competence, thematicknowledge, information literacy, psychological quality, and application competence;it is suggested that translation major should adopt two-phase modular terminologycurriculum design to gradually develop the six qualities in the revised componentialmodel of translator’s terminological competence, especially information literacy andapplication competence; it is suggested that translation major should adopt diversifiedteaching approaches, including classroom lectures, translation workshop, case methodtranslation teaching, project-based translation teaching, internship, paper writing etc.;it is also suggested that translation major should establish informationtechnology-based resource system for terminology teaching, which involves theconstruction of various data banks and the implementation of internet-based teachingplatform, with a view to enhancing the development of students’ information literacy.This dissertation is only an exploratory study of translator’s terminologicalcompetence, and its results and findings warrant further investigation. This researchhas deepened our understanding of translation competence and extended the scope oftranslation competence research. The pedagogical suggestions proposed are of helpfor China’s translation education to meet the actual demand of translation industryand to cultivate the praxis-oriented translation talents urgently needed in society.