An Exploratory Study Of The Impact Of Chinese Competence On Translation Quality

Language, culture and translation are interactive and interdependent. Language is acarder of culture and deeply rooted in cultures as well. As a visible form of cultural content,language, in turn, is influenced and shaped by culture. Translation not only involves in twodifferent languages, but also faces their respective cultures. Moreover, it plays a decisive rolein cross-cultural communication. As the international communication broadens, culturaldifferences arouse many troubles and obstacles in terms of translation. Culture-loaded wordsevoke different associative meanings. Translation activity becomes much complicatedbecause of the cultural connotations. The present thesis makes a comprehensive and thoroughscrutiny into the impact of Chinese competence on translation quality. Adopting thequalitative research method plus quantitative data from translation test, the paper aims tocollect the following information: Firstly, senior English majors' recognition towards theirdue possession of Chinese competence and the general situation of their Chinese competence;secondly, the perceptions and perspectives of teachers and students of the impact of Chinesecompetence on translation quality; thirdly, mistakes and faults they had made in the process oftranslation for lack of adequate Chinese competence; fourthly, the problems in the teachingsyllabus, curriculum setting, teaching methods, textbooks and testing in relation to the Englishmajors' capacity of Chinese language and culture.Through the analysis of the above information and data, it reveals that as far as theinvestigation is concemed, Chinese competence of English majors is rather weak. It manifestsas follows: (1) There are many incorrect Chinese characters and misused Chinese words orconfusing of Chinese idiom from one to another in their writings. (2) There are many illogicalsentences which are unclear and incoherent. (3) Tone and style of the Chinese rendering is notin line with that of the source text. (4) For those words embedded with deep culturalconnotations, students often make some low-grade mistakes in interpreting or translating without real understanding of them. (5) Possessing of a superficial Chinese culturalknowledge.Finally, through the investigation into English majors' Chinese competence and itsimpact on translation quality, the study highlights the significance of Chinese competence onpurpose of attracting the attention of the whole society, especially foreign languages teachingcircle. As the main force in cross-cultural communication, English majors should be equippedwith both qualified competence of English and Chinese. The target of English teaching shouldnot be restricted in English learning, also include the raising the students' Chinesecompetence so as to make them shoulder the responsibility of spreading Chinese culture,because one of the objectives for translation is culture diffusion. Nowadays cross-culturalcommunication is getting more and more frequent, the promotion of mutual understandingand cultural prosperity are the real task of translation.