An Empirical Study Of Chinese EFL Learners’ Reading Strategy Use In The E-C Translation Process

The studies on the translation process conclude translators’skills and strategies through revealing the moves in translators’mind. Since the think-aloud method was introduced into this field more than thirty years ago, studies on the translation process have enjoyed remarkable developments. However, as an important component of the translation processes, reading was seldom investigated by researchers. Therefore, in order to fill this research gap, the current study probed into Chinese EFL learners’reading activities during the translation process. Through combining the think-aloud method with retrospective interviews, the study aimed at revealing both similarities and differences in reading strategy use for advanced and intermediate Chinese EFL learners during translation.Six advanced and intermediate readers formed two groups of participants. Each of them was required to use the Think-Aloud Protocols (TAPs) individually to report her every thought during translation. Retrospective interviews were conducted to facilitate the paraphrasing and coding of the think-aloud data. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied for data analysis.This thesis consisted of five chapters. Chapter One introduced the history and development of studies on translation process. It also described the purpose and significance of the study. Chapter Two reviewed the translation studies using think-aloud method and introduced categorizations of reading strategies. Chapter Three introduced the methodology of this study. Chapter Four elaborated and discussed the results of data analysis from both quantitative and qualitative perspective. Chapter Five drew the conclusions by presenting implications and proposing suggestions for further improvement.The data analysis indicated that there were altogether21reading strategies that could be classified into three groups, namely, the identifying strategies, the monitoring strategies, and the evaluating strategies (Pressley&Afflerbach,1995). The identifying strategies included ten strategies that were used to understand words, sentences, and meanings of the whole passage; monitoring strategies included eight cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies that were applied to monitor the process, make plans, and to test understanding; and the three evaluating strategies were used to make evaluations about the writing style and content.During the experiment all the three kinds of reading strategies were applied. The most frequently used strategies were monitoring strategies. Following these were identifying strategies. And evaluating strategies were least frequently used. In general, the most frequently applied strategies were "use a dictionary,""perception of linguistic characteristics,""relate information to prior knowledge," and "infer meaning of words based on context clues." And the least frequently used ones include "decision to reread for understanding" and "read for particular information." When the two groups of participants were looked separately, it was found that the Chinese EFL learners of high proficiency were advanced in that they applied a wider range of strategies with a higher frequency than those of intermediate proficiency. Moreover, the case studies suggested that the advanced learners bore individual characteristics in using strategies. For instance, an advanced learner preferred using referring strategies to identify unknown/unfamiliar words or phrases. And another advanced learner was distinctive in her conscious application of cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies. Also, both advanced learners in case studies were good at making combined uses of strategies.In regard to the significance, the current study was meaningful in the following aspects. Firstly, this study proved that during the same translation task there were differences in reading between the advanced and intermediate EFL learners. Translation-targeted reading was an important component of the translation process, which required understanding and code-switching of languages. Therefore, studies on reading activities during the translation process could be insightful for translation studies. Secondly, translators can gain practical experience from the advanced participants in this study, for they tended to use strategies consciously with plans, which then largely guaranteed the effectiveness of their strategy use. Lastly, limitations of the study were brought by the comparatively small number of participants and the processes of data collection. And it is hoped that further studies can make some improvements on these parts.