A Contrastive Study Of Textbooks On Translation For Graduate Students Of English Major

With the ever-increasing exchanges in the fields of economy, culture and education between China and other countries and with the establishment of China's image as a powerful nation in the world political stage, our society calls for an ever-growing number of able translators or interpreters and accordingly, what are in need in quantity are the teaching resources or course-books for translation-teaching. The compilation of textbooks on translation has undergone an evolvement of from turning out the course-books as an attachment to the teaching of foreign languages into that for translation as an independent course-offering, from turning out the single-type ones for translation-teaching into that of different varieties. The situation being so, a problem occurs that the book-market is flooded by the course-books on translation. Therefore, for teachers of translation to handpick the suitable one to the translation learners from among the great varieties has become a thorny issue. This thesis attempts to make a research on how to design the translation textbooks that meet the needs of the current situation by way of making a contrastive study of the two translation textbooks:A Course-book for English-Chinese Translation and New Contemporary Translation Theories. And both of them are very acceptable to English graduate students with the academic orientation of translation.This thesis consists of six paragraphs. The first chapter is an account of the research background and the status quo of the researches on translation textbooks, both at home and abroad, as well as the significance, objectives and method of the thesis. Though there are a lot of translation textbooks covering many subjects in the book-market in our country, which have provided very good materials for various translation learners, little attention has been paid to the studies on translation textbooks, especially a contrastive study between the influential course-books on translation. Consequently, it is quite crucial and urgent to conduct a contrastive study of the above-mentioned two translation textbooks that are regarded as representative course-books for graduate students majoring in English. The second chapter briefly depicts the development history of translation textbooks in our country from 1949 to present and those textbooks published during this period of time on the purpose of getting a better understanding of the significance of the research on translation textbooks. The third chapter describes different views on translation given by different scholars, primarily including those views from perspectives of communicative approach, functionalism and the linguistic philosophy of Wittgenstein, and opinions on translation teaching, roles and functions of translation theories. The fourth chapter gives brief generalizations of each paragraph of both textbooks, offering a general and complete understanding of their contents. The fifth chapter is the most important one of this thesis. This chapter starts from analyzing both strong and weak points of the two textbooks from the angles of printing, offering of translation models, after-class exercises, reference books, controversial viewpoints and layout, and then it goes on to make contrastive researches on them from the perspectives of compiling philosophy, linguistic theories, translation examples and layout, with a view to trying to find out their similarities and differences and the ways of how to design an ideal translation textbook for graduate students of English major. The last chapter arrives at the conclusion of this thesis according to the previous contrastive analysis. Aside from that, in this chapter some suggestions related to compiling an ideal translation textbook are put forth for future researchers and learners to take as reference.