A Study Of Chinese-English Translation Competence From The Perspective Of Translational Writing Process

Chinese translators doing Chinese-English translation is a very common and important activity in present China. Translating from mother tongue to non-mother tongue, however, is quite different from translating from non-mother tongue to mother tongue. To ensure a high quality of Chinese-English translation, Chinese translators should improve their translation competence. The aim of this thesis is to explore the constituents of Chinese-English translation competence so that it can provide translators or translator-training program with guidance on how to improve translators’ Chinese-English translation competence.With the development of technology and translation profession itself, the translation models proposed by scholars tend to include more and more components and become too complicated for translators to improve on each of the sub-competence. Therefore, this thesis studies translation competence on the basis of translation process itself to work out a more applicable model of Chinese-English translation competence.The thesis is composed of five parts.Chapter One introduces the background, objectives and structure of this thesis.Chapter Two reviews the previous research of translation competence. Focuses are on the reviewing of the two types of translation competence models:multi-component models and "super-competence" models. In addition, the author compares two routes to study translation competence:the process-oriented approach and the product-oriented approach. Through the above literature review, the author concludes that taking the process-oriented approach to build a multi-component model is the best way to study Chinese-English translation competence.Chapter Three elaborates on the process model of translational writing, which is the basis of this research. Each stage of translational writing process is introduced, including perception, thought operation, expression and inspection. Chapter Four is the core of this thesis. Based on the analysis of the four stages of translational writing, the translation competences needed at each stage are explored. During the process of perception, the translator should have a thorough understanding of the content, form and style of the source text; therefore, Chinese reading competence is necessary. In this thesis, the author proposes the definition and constituents of Chinese reading competence based on Zeng Xiangqin’s Chinese Reading Theory. At the stage of thought operation, the translator should operate the information obtained from the source text in the target culture. Therefore, cultural competence is required. The components of cultural competence are mainly borrowed from Ma Huijuan’s analysis, adding to it the competence to choose appropriate genre for the target text due to the close relation between culture and genre. As for expression, the translator should be able to express the source text in an idiomatic way, so English proficiency is of great importance. These three competences constitute the Chinese-English translation competence.Chapter Five concludes the research results of this thesis, its significance and limitations and my suggestions for further research.