Changes In Content And Design: An Empirical Study On MTI Students’ Resume Translation In A Technical Writing Course

Since the booming of translation market in China, more and more professionaltranslators are urgently needed. Theorists and scholars have argued for the positiveeffects of technical writing courses on cultivating more professional translators.However, most of the studies focus on the significance of this course only from thetheoretical perspective. This paper probes into the changes both in content and designaspects among MTI students in the Chinese-English resume translation process afterlearning a lecture on resume writing in a technical writing course. It employs thetheoretical framework of Activity Theory and empirical qualitative method to find outthat proper training in technical writing can help students to adapt to the expectationsin English writing, which is different from mechanically converting the Chinesecontents into English without considering the genre in the target language. The datahas shown that the knowledge of resume translation in a technical writing is effectivein the training process and a majority of the translation products have shown greatchanges in the aspect of content and design. This provides us an empirical angle toprove the effectiveness of a technical writing course in MTI programs.