A Case Study On Developing Students' Strategic Competence In Translation Through Project-based Learning Model

The objective of translation teaching is to develop student translators'translation competence and to produce qualified translators to meet the market demand. Therefore, research on translation teaching should ground on investigation of student translators'translation competence and its development.The current research starts with the definition and categorization of strategic competence in translation (SCT) in a broad sense, followed by a focus on strategic competence in a narrow sense (i.e. competence in textual strategies). It aims to find out, on an empirical basis, the feasibility of developing student translators'strategic competence through a project-based learning model. On one hand, research into the essence and components of translation competence has significant pedagogical implications. On the other hand, though new conceptions in translation teaching continue to emerge, research in teaching particular sub-competence in translation, especially through empirical-experimental method, is still far from adequacy.Since research into translation teaching through a project-based learning model is still an exploratory field, which is in lack of systematical theories and methodology, the current research adopts a case study combined with the experimental method. The subjects involve 5 English majors from upper class in Hunan XX University, and the experiment falls into three phases, namely the pilot test, the project-learning process and the final test. Four major methods, namely experimentation, natural observation, questionnaire and interview, are used to elicit data for further analysis. Based on the qualitative analysis on the data, the current research has drawn the following conclusions:1. After the project-based learning process, the subjects'SCT all shows some improvements.2. Subjects'development of SCT follows a certain sequential order. Strategic competence at lower linguistic levels (i.e. lexical level) develops at an earlier stage and the growth rate is notable. Improvements in strategic competence at higher levels (i.e. semantic, pragmatic levels) demand longer duration of time, but the increasing range is the most distinct.3. Subjects'development of SCT can be generalized in three stages, namely the beginner stage (the first 5 weeks), the advanced beginner stage (1—4 months) and the competence stage (after the fifth month). 4. In the process developing SCT, subjects have shown notable individual differences in personal interest and motive, existing structure of their bilingual knowledge (especially of their first language) as well as cognitive strategies and habits.In spite of certain limitations, the current case study serves undoubtedly as a preliminary research indispensible for more in-depth investigation of the SCT and its teaching. Furthermore, it proves the feasibility for more intensive studies on larger samples and provides insights in regards to research design, research method and data analysis for further endeavor.