Error Analysis Theory And Its Application To Translation Teaching

Nowadays people are paying more and more attention to translation teaching as they take the studies of translation teaching more and more seriously. In Chinese universities and colleges today, the course of English translation is usually offered for the third-year English majors who have learnt the basic knowledge of English in the first two years. Its basic task is to introduce to the students the basic translation theories and skills and teach them to do translation practice for the purpose of improving their translation competence. Error analysis undoubtedly has made great contributions to the study on second language and foreign language learning. It not only throws some light on the process of second language and foreign language learning, but also helps teachers gain some insights into the strategies the learners employ in the learning process. A careful study of the errors will reveal the common characteristics shared by the language learners, which is believed to be of great help to both the language teachers and the language learners. This thesis is intended to analyze the errors in students'Chinese-English translations in the hope of providing practical implications to translation teaching in China.Though much research has been done on the errors made by EFL learners, statistical analysis and studies of the errors of translation are still insufficient in China. The author has conducted a case study in Foreign Language College of Shandong Normal University. The subjects are the third-year English majors who are attending the translation course. The present study explored the common linguistic errors of the English majors'translations. The error analysis of the 100 student's C-E translations shows that their linguistic competence and translation competence are quite weak. The errors can be classified into four types: substance errors, including misspelling and punctuation errors; lexical errors; grammar errors and syntactic errors. What's more, the most frequent errors are the lexical errors. Then the study reveals that the errors committed by the students generally come from the following four main aspects: interlingual transfer, intralingual interference, induced factors and communicative strategies.The author has also made a survey by the use of a questionnaire. A total number of 285 third-year English majors from Foreign Language College of Shandong Normal University participated in the study. They were asked to complete the survey instrument consisting of five parts: students'view on the translation course; students'attitude towards translation learning; students'view on the teacher's teaching method and attitude; students'strategies in translation; students'view on difficulties in doing translation. The questionnaire shows that 63.5% of the students do not pay enough attention to the learning of translation theories and 42.5% of them show dissatisfaction with teaching method.On the basis of the survey, the paper offers some suggestions for translation teaching. To improve translation teaching and to improve the students'linguistic competence and translation competence, it is necessary to realize the importance of translation theories teaching and learning while improving their Chinese and encourage students to read extensively. Translation is not only the students'individual activity in the translation teaching classroom, but a cooperation work of all the students and the translation teacher as well. Therefore, to improve the quality of translation teaching, it needs the cooperation and joint efforts of both the teachers and students.