On A Project-based Model For Translation Teaching

An escalating trend of economic globalization has bred global integration in many industries such as technology, financing, publishing and film-making, which is entailing more and more effective inter-language and intercultural communication. In this context, translation as a modest but rapidly developing industry is made unprecedentedly prominent. Correspondingly, translation teaching courses or programs are operated by most universities in China nowadays, supposed to produce translation talents for the growing demand of the translation market. The market, however, is still witnessing an increasingly larger gap between the demand and the supply of competent translators.Concerned with the shortage of competent translators against this background of globalization, this thesis seeks to come up with a project-based model for translation teaching through the identification of what makes a good translator and the analysis of problems underlying the shortage, which are, to a great extent, handicaps in traditional translation teaching classrooms. The new model suggested here is theoretically based on Constructionism Learning Theory, Project-based Learning, and the perspective of seeing translation as a process, an interdisciplinary subject and an ecological system. Also, inspiration and reference have been got from other theoretical sources such as materialism, and cognitive linguistics. The model is aimed to cultivate in students basic qualifications that will help them achieve professional competence in translation in future. It seeks to bring home to them what translation is and how translators do their job by bringing them on the scene, having them experience the process of translation in a real sense, and properly instructing to them translation knowledge at the right moments around projects.For the model proposed herein, a serious contemplation is given to the significance and operability of importing real translation projects to classrooms from the market. A translation project may include one or a series of smaller individual tasks. At the operational level, these tasks are to be accomplished by team work. A team is deemed to be composed of one teacher and several students, who are supposed to collaboratively finish the work. Completion of a project as required is a quite important part of the program, but not the whole, because the ultimate goal of the model is about improving students’ translation competence. Therefore, the program must be carried out in proper procedures so as to best achieve aimed teaching effects. In a word, this model as a case typical of experiential learning method in light of constructivism is featured by offering a platfonn for empirical dealing with real tasks. A lot more details will be discussed in the main body of the paper.