The Role Of Translation In Foreign Language Education

The beginning years of the 21st century witnesses a new round of efforts in China to innovate foreign language teaching for higher efficiency, which invites a more judicious understanding of the use of translation in foreign language teaching. In fact, foreign language teaching has always been developing side by side with the changing understanding of translation used in language education.So far many studies have been conducted home and abroad to explore the function of translation in language education, to find out its strengths and weaknesses. Now a prevailing conclusion among practitioners is that translation as a teaching method is helpful in one case and harmful in another and that it is used cognitively by learners as a learning strategy working in the process of their foreign language learning. However, most of these studies were conducted from a perspective of "teaching" to explore theoretically how to teach through translation. Those from the perspective of learners to explore how they learn through translation were relatively small in number; especially those conducted empirically were rarely found indeed.Given the gaps stated above, this study, based on College English teaching in China, attempts to empirically explore translation used in foreign language education from non-English majors' perspective. The significance of this study lies not only in its new stand to enrich studies regarding translation but also in its following the learner-centered trend of modern language education. As far as foreign language education is concerned, in the past century the unceasing attempt to renovate teaching methods couldn't secure once for all the high efficiency of foreign language teaching. Practitioners have learned that language education is issues involving more than one factor. Stressing only on teaching methods but ignoring learners' learning would never solve problems with which foreign language education has been faced. Therefore, to study translation used in foreign language education should take into account learners' understanding as well as their uses of translation.In order to learn how learners think about translation and how they make use of translation in their English learning, this very study tries to explore: (1) What are college students' beliefs about using translation to learn English? (2) What strategies employing translation are taken by students in their English learning? (3) What roles do foreign language level and gender differences play in the forming of students' beliefs about and strategy use of translation? (4) What are the sources of students' beliefs about using translation?A questionnaire survey was conducted among three hundred and sixty non-English majors from a science and technology military institute of Yan-tai, Shandong Province. Eight of them were interviewed. The quantitative and qualitative analysis found that: (1) Most of these participants endorsed the concept that translation played a positive role in their current English learning experiences, and the participants overwhelmingly believed that translating was helpful for them to acquire English language skills such as reading, writing and speaking, and to learn vocabulary, idioms, and phrases. (2) Students most frequently used translation to learn English words, idioms, phrases, and grammar, to read, write, and speak English, and to check their reading and listening comprehension. (3) There did exist some kind of negative correlation between English proficiency and participants' beliefs about or strategy use of translation; and students' English proficiency bore no statistically significant influence on their beliefs about translation but significantly influenced their use of strategies employing translation; gender differences had no significant influence on the students' beliefs and strategies use regarding translation. (4) Students' beliefs about and strategy use of translation were greatly influenced by factors such as teacher, syllabus, textbooks, tests or examinations, and the fact that the Chinese language is dominant in the society.On these findings of this study the author makes a conclusion that in a society dominated by the Chinese language the participants, limited by their English proficiency and influenced by instructional factors such as teacher, syllabus, textbook, test, and so on, whatever gender they were, to a large degree believed that translation could facilitate their English learning and that it was inevitable to take translation as a frequently used strategy in their learning of this language. Hence, it's nothing but a one-sided wish for teachers that learners should and could learn English language in an English-only way free from the influence of mother tongue or translation.