Translation Teaching In The Process Of Language Teaching For Non-English Majors

With the development of globalization and internationalization, there has been more andmore communication between China and the world. International tourism has become anordinary phenomenon. However, as far as the current situation of domestic translation teachingis concerned, college English teachers are inclined to stress isolated language points andtheoretical explanation, with little attention paid to tourism translation for students of tourismmanagement. Many students make great efforts to learn English and acquire professionalknowledge, but neglect everyday practice of tourism translation. Consequently, it is difficult forstudents to meet the needs of society and their future career.Some scholars have conducted many researches on different methods of translationteaching, but only with fragmentary or contradictory results. Based on theories of explicit andimplicit instruction, as well as relevant researches about them, the author means to find out theeffectiveness of these two different teaching methods employed in translation teaching and thusprovide some implications or suggestions for translation teaching in China.In order to make the quasi-experiment more valid and reliable, a preliminary study iscarried out before the formal research. Then the planned experiment is implemented in collegeEnglish course for about sixteen weeks. The subjects selected in this study are 83 sophomores oftourism management major from two natural classes of Shanxi Normal University. Among them,44 students constitute the experimental class, while the control class is made up of the other 39 members. In these two selected classes, the method of explicit instruction is employed in theexperimental class, while implicit instruction is utilized in the control class. The instrumentsemployed in the study mainly consist of four parts, namely, two translation tests before and afterthe experiment, the teaching process, one questionnaire which is utilized both in pre-test andpost-test, and one interview. After analyzing the results of tests, the effects of explicit andimplicit instruction respectively and comparatively are made clear. As to the results of thequestionnaire, people can notice various consequences caused by these two different teachingmethods in the aspect of improving learners’interest, motivation, attitude and personal ability intranslation, as well as their expectations towards different teaching methods. Some participantsfrom both the experimental class and the control class are randomly chosen to attend aninterview after the post-test, in order to better understand their opinions on the experiment andtwo different methods of translation teaching.The study mainly aims at solving two questions: (1) By different means of translationteaching during the language teaching process, whether students’abilities of tourism translation canbe improved? Which method, explicit or implicit instruction, can better improve their tourismtranslation abilities? (2) Through conscious translation training for tourism management students,whether their overall interest, motivation, attitude and personal abilities can be effectively enhanced?Is explicit or implicit instruction more preferable?Based on the analysis of those results which are processed by SPSS, both the explicit andimplicit instruction are proved to be practical and effective in college tourism translation class,and students instructed by explicit teaching method outperform their implicit counterparts. Bothteaching experiments contribute to the improvement of students’tourism translation ability andalso help to develop their interest in translation learning. Although students from the explicitclass perform better than their implicit peers in all those aspects involved, it is worthwhile toadopt appropriate teaching method according to specific situations.All in all, this thesis has conducted a tentative study on tourism translation teaching incollege English class. According to the major findings of this empirical study, some pedagogicalimplications and suggestions are put forward by the author. Further researches are still needed tobe carried out in order to find out more effective ways in the field of translation teaching andlearning.