The Application Of Taps To Translation Teaching For Non-english Majors In Vocational College

The objects of translation research involve translation product, translation process andtranslators, among which translation process hadn’t been attached deserved importance all thetime because of the lack of efficient and effective methods until 1980s, when thepsychology-oriented“Think-aloud method”was employed to investigate linguistic research.The present study is an empirical research to describe the mental activities duringtranslation process while non-major students in vocational college make efforts to finishassigned English-Chinese written translation task, and analyze the cognitive features in termsof translation strategies and translation units. For methodology, psychologically oriented“Think-Aloud Protocols”(TAPs) was utilized to collect verbal data during translation process,along with written translation versions and the notes from participants as the complementary,all of which constituted triangulation system of data source for further analysis.All the Think-Aloud Protocols from triangulation system were transcribed and classifiedaccording to the specific code system which was formulated on the basis of Faerch’s PotentialStrategy Indicators and Krings’Specific Strategy Indicators as theoretical background.The application of“Think-Aloud Protocols”in this study covers two periods: datacollection and data analysis. During the former period, the subjects, 10 students of Grade 2from Shandong TV University were asked to translate a passage, which had been selectedelaborately from a text of the students’book and with appropriate length as well as content.The manners of translation that the subjects were asked to do in the experiment were differentfrom what they usually did in routine practice and exams in that the subjects were demandedto write down the translation and speak out what they thought simultaneously one afteranother while the researcher recorded what they said, observed what they behaved attentivelyto ensure a smooth experiment and took notes of subjects’body language and facial expressions. In addition, instruction and rehearsal were essential at the beginning of theexperiment.The protocols elicited from the present research have three data sources: the self-reportrecordings from the subjects, the written translation version and the notes that the participantsmade during the experiment, which constitute triangulation system of this study. Theself-report recordings have been gathered and uploaded into computer to be transcribedverbatim into written protocols after the researcher heard carefully for many times; the writtentranslation versions collected from the experiment and the notes that the participants madeduring the experiment has been neatened and synthesized with the protocols acquired fromthe self-reporting as adaptation and comments of them. All of the above data had been labeledand systematized in terms of defined signs. And subsequently the protocols were classifiedand coded according to the specially defined code system for further qualitative analysis inthe light of translation strategies and translation units in order to draw a conclusionconcerning subjects’mental activities during the translation process. Moreover, the integratedprotocols were analyzed quantitatively and finally revealed the frequency and distributionfeatures of specific translation strategies and translation units.Triangulation system of the present study exposes the“Retrospective-prospective”natureoccurring in students’translation process. As medium-level English learners, thesenon-English majors from vocational college mainly employed sign-oriented translationstrategies, tended to conduct the translating in smaller units below sentences such as syllableor the morpheme, word, phrase and they paid more attention to the semantic structures oftranslation tasks. The translation strategies they employed most are nearly conscioussearching for appropriate meaning equivalent language units rather than monitor andconsciousness on the control of the whole translation process, which accounted for thephenomenon that they concentrated on lower-layers information process in translation.The present study provide suggestions for further TAPs researches concerning translationprocess as well as translation teaching in vocational college.