Translation Teaching In TV Universities:the Contrastive Linguistics Perspective

Translation teaching as an essential part of translator cultivation has always been a compulsory course for English majors at the undergraduate level, whose purpose is to cultivate and improve the students’translation competence. Shanghai TV University (including its Baoshan Branch) has set up translation courses for several years, but most of the students feel unable to deal with translation in practice, especially when it comes to the translation of professional documents such as contracts and documents.Generally speaking, there are quite a few problems in translation teaching in TV universities:first, the teaching concept needs updating. Most teachers and students are accustomed to the traditional teaching mode----"key points+examples+key to exercises", ignoring the relationship between language and thinking. Secondly, students are reduced to passive receptors and there is little classroom interaction and feedback. Thirdly, the competence of the teaching staff is not satisfactory. Teachers with English language background alone are not qualified teachers of translation. A faculty with an interdisciplinary background should be constructed. Last, reform in syllabus and textbooks is necessary. The current translation textbook used in TV universities does not match the actual English proficiency of the students and thus greatly reduces their interest in translation. The content of teaching is too difficult and academic and the teaching facilities and methods are out of date.Therefore, the author randomly divides forty English major students in grade2009and2010into two different classes:one is the experimental class and the other is the normal class. A pre-test and a post-test are given at the beginning and end of the lectures. In the experimental class, theories of Chinese-English contrastive studies are introduced, which are combined with the teaching of translation skills like subject inference, subject shifting, thematic progression, and so on. The results of the post-test and feedback collected from the questionnaire show that students in the experimental class have achieved an awareness of C-E thinking modes, which leads to an awareness of the differences in the two languages. However, students in the normal class are still complaining about the usual problems at the end of the17-week lecturing. Thus, it is of great significance to explore and perfect current translation teaching in TV universities in order to meet the social demand for translation specialists.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter I is the introduction, offering the background, significance, and overall structure of the thesis. Chapter II is the literature review, reviewing the development of contrastive studies at home and abroad and explaining its relation with translation. Chapter III is the status quo of translation teaching in TV universities, presenting the current situation and problems in translation teaching and analyzing the reasons behind those problems. Chapter IV is the application of C-E contrastive studies theory in translation teaching. By employing the method of comparative analysis, it introduces the differences in C-E thinking, which, in turn, lead to the differences in C-E sentence patternS---parataxis of Chinese and hypotaxis of English. Based on this, the author recommends the skills of subject inference and subject shifting in translation and elaborates on the restriction of word order and voice in discourse translation. Chapter V is a case study of translation teaching in TV universities from the contrastive linguistics perspective, which shows what students have achieved in translation during the experimental period by providing convincing statistics. Chapter VI is the conclusion.