An Experimental Study On First Language Transfer In Chinese-english Translating

First language transfer is a significant linguistic and psychological phenomenon intranslation, which involves two kinds of transfer: positive transfer and negative transfer.Positive transfer refers to the facilitation/improvement of the target language acquisition,because of the similarities between L1and L2. Negative means the hindrance/interferenceof the L1to SLA, when differences exist in L1and L2. For Chinese English learners,negative transfer of L1is usually described as errors or Chinglish. When reviewing theprevious research, most of the studies were constrained in comparison studies, likeContrastive Analysis and Error Analysis, in which the psychological processing of L1transfer are left untouched. The present thesis adopts the approach of TAPs to investigatethe inner process of L1transfer in Chinese-English translation, by comparing thetranslation process of two groups of college students. It intends to conclude the factors andprocess for the positive/negative L1transfer of Chinese students in the C-E translation.In light of cognitive school, L1transfer is a communication strategy by which allprevious linguistic resources will be mustered to solve communication problems. Theassumptions of the thesis are presented as follows: first, if there exits similarities betweenone’ L1and L2, positive L1transfer will facilitate L2learning; second, in C-E translation,the negative transfer of L1is proved to be errors affected by L1or Chinglish. Then the datacan be described, analyzed and investigated. Third, according to previous thinking,inputting comparative linguistics of Chinese and English will help students to get a betterunderstanding of English learning and make progress in translation. The present studyintends to describe and analyze this complicated psychological process of positive/negativetransfer of L1through TAPs and try to yield conclusions and implications for translationteaching.The subjects of the present thesis are10juniors who are major in engineering. Beforethe experiment, the author divided the10subjects into two groups, group A and group B.The subjects from group A have received an extra course of comparative linguistics forsupplement, while group B did not select the course. After that, subjects from both group Aand group B went through a warm-up phrase and received an experiment instruction. Thatis, upon translating, one has to think-aloud whatever in his/her mind and finish thequestionnaire afterwards. After the experiment, all the TAPs, TTs and questionnaires arecollected, coded and analyzed respectively. During the research, the author has marked “L1 transfer” as certain kinds of translation strategies and then by quantitative analysis andqualitative analysis, findings of the these are illustrated as below: subjects in group A didbetter in logic combing, check, mental organization, while subjects in group B showed atendency of word repetition, negative solutions. Furthermore, the investigation reveals that:(1) the negative transfer at lexical level are ubiquitous and complicated, for it results inmisuse of nouns, wrong spellings, and mistaken verb-tenses in students’ translation;(2) asfor syntactic level, positive transfer of L1can bolster text understanding, mentalorganization, while negative L1transfer leads to mistaken use of syntactical rules anddangling modifiers;(3) the repetitive use of “have” is a characteristic in Chinese butproblematic in English at discourse level.The implication of the present paper is in threefold:First, during translation process, the positive L1transfer prove to be helpful in mentalorganization, check, discourse organization and pragmatic comparison; negative L1transfer exert interference to the word use, predicate use, and syntactical construction, andresult in dangling modifiers and repetition of “have”.Second, as for the duration of translation, group A tends to be more cautious andlonger time-consuming in outputting the TAPs, but there is only a marginal differencebetween the two groups. Reasoning from the variation of individual subject and theinterference of TAPs, the results are valid and acceptable. The input information ofcomparative linguistics can improve subjects’ translation.Third, the research concludes that positive/negative transfer of L1exert greatinfluence on translation and translating. However, according to the study, when practicingC-E translation, most Chinese students prefer to “transfer” the meaning of Chinese intoEnglish. It means that the studies on the nature of “meaning transfer” still have a long wayto go and call for further investigations.