Back-Translation Makes Better Translators

Accompanied by the development of multi-cultural communications, translation study has gained increasing attention over the years. Despite the promising growth in this field, some sub-branches still remain oblivious to many scholars, back-translation included. Thus, this paper has made researches on the application of back-translation based upon English to Chinese (hereafter E-C) and Chinese to English (hereafter C-E) translation practices.In this research, all senior English students have taken a back-translation test designed to expose their weakness in E-C/C-E translation. Ensued with this quantitative research is an interview with9students evenly selected from three groups, the classification of which is based upon the translation scores of the subjects. This inquiry involves two questions:1) What is the biggest obstacle lies in the way of generating better translations?2) In what way does back-translation help solve such problems?The result of the back-translation test reveals the following five problems prevalent among students:1) grammatical mistakes2) overuse of repetition3) overuse of verbs4) inappropriate use of conjunctives5) collocation mistakes. Such mistakes are usually caused by the impotence of addressing the differences between English and Chinese. However, behind such phenomena are two oblivious causes:1) the inadequate knowledge of first language (Chinese)2) the negative transfer of first language. What’s more, the interview with the students also suggests that back-translation can help them better recognize the differences between English and Chinese as well as learn the translation skills and techniques from advanced translators, all of which are key to making the English majors better translators.