Translation Teaching Of Undergraduate English Majors: Problems And Strategies

A new and dynamic atmosphere for translation has emerged since China adopted its"open door and reform"policy. With the booming economy, more and more qualified translators and interpreters are needed by all sorts of institutions. Although literary translation remains as a very important part of translation practice, translations concerning international trade, foreign affairs, technology, information science, etc. are the main tasks of translators. They not only translate into but also from Chinese for the promotion of Chinese culture, economy, science, etc. in the world. The urgent need for qualified translators and interpreters has prompted higher educational institutions with foreign languages departments to establish translation as a degree course.With the subjects being part of the translation teachers and the fourth-year English majors from five universities in Jinan, an in-depth and thorough investigation among these universities is carried out in order to find out the problems existing in the current translation teaching of undergraduate English majors in China. The five universities are Shandong University, Shandong Normal University, Jinan University, Shandong Institute of Commerce and Technology and Shandong TV University. The instruments adopted in this study consist of two questionnaires (one questionnaire for teachers and one for students), class observation and interview. The author puts the emphasis on analyzing the status quo of course setting, translation textbooks, teacher training, teaching strategies and translation test.The investigation shows that our translation teaching has become a lot better compared with that in the earlier days. However, we have to admit that there still exist some unsatisfactory respects in it, which affect its evolution, e.g. some students only gloss over the translation knowledge taught in the class without properly digesting them as a result of the limited class hours; although a great variety of translation textbooks come off the press, the good and the bad are intermingled; our translation teacher group is characterized by an unreasonable age structure, with middle-aged and young teachers being on the small number side; the traditional teaching model is still popular with some translation teachers. Ignoring the teaching principle"being taught to fish, they will fish for a lifetime", these teachers blindly offer translation skills to and instill theory into students in an isolated way without combining theory with practice, as a consequence, students produce little effect; in translation test, questions are given in a monotonous type, which causes a failure to correctly check out students; real ability, etc.Aiming at the problems that have been found, the author puts forward some proposals with reference to the requirements and needs from society as well as the perspectives held on the definition of translation, translation and culture, and translation theory etc. e.g. increasing translation class hours; compiling translation textbooks under the direction of translation theory; providing more training for translation teachers in order to improve their understanding of translation teaching and their capacity of translation teaching and translation practice; promoting the reciprocal effect between teachers and students; in the translation test, adding some objective questions to reduce the influence of the subjective factors etc.