CBI Based Curriculum Design For MTI Program From The Perspective Of Translation Industry

With the globalization of economics, politics, science and culture, there areemerging more and more international exchanges, which leads to higher requirementsfor translation industry in China and calls for more qualified translators andinterpreters. With the establishment of MTI, over the years, growing attention hasbeen drawn to MTI program research, especially its curriculum design innovation. AsChina’s translation industry has shown a tendency of industrialization andprofessionalism, curriculum of MTI program should be designed based on theindustry situation, because MTI program aims to cultivate qualified graduates fortranslation industry.Content-Based Instruction (CBI) is an approach in which teaching is organizedaround the content or information that students will acquire, rather than aroundlinguistic or other type of syllabuses. This theory is based on second languageacquisition and cognitive psychology, focusing on meaningful contexts forunderstanding language and building relationships between new content with existedexperience. Over the last few decades, CBI has gained great interests in westerncountries, and proved to be effective in various language teaching programs.Actually, the CBI application to MTI program is the first time for instructors tointegrate translation training with content learning. It represents a significantdeparture from traditional translation teaching methods. Language proficiency isimproved by shifting the focus of instruction from translation teaching itself totranslation teaching through the study of subject matter. This is in deed an innovationin traditional translation teaching. Researches have shown that most innovativecourses of MTI program are cross-disciplinary, thus Content-Based Instruction canhelp MTI students bridge the gap between various disciplines and languages, and better understanding will help translation process. Besides, this research can enrichthe study of curriculum design for MTI program as Content-Based Instruction hasnever been applied to MTI teaching.This thesis applies qualitative and quantitative analysis method in the researchof current situations of MTI program and translation industry; comparative analysisand contrastive comparative method are applied in the research of innovativecurriculum design of nine MTI experimental universities; literature analysis method,microscopic and macroscopic methods are engaged as well. It analyzes the statisticsgathered from investigations, evaluates every model in CBI, explores specificapplication of CBI to MTI program, and makes suggestions on how to apply CBI inMTI classrooms in various situations.