Rebuilding The Babel Progressively:Phaseology In Translation Pedagogy

Since implementing the reform and opening-up policy, China has had an insatiable demand for translators over the past three decades. The rush for translation learning leads to the development of translation discipline under English Major in various universities. However, unreasonable education and training structures often lead to repetitive courses or outperforming courses, which in the end, cause a great waste of money and resources. One important reason underlying this phenomenon is the separation between teaching syllabus and people’s learning process.In practice, translation teachers are often confused about different phases in translators’competence development. Translation teachers have no idea about what is the appropriate teaching methodology in the specific period of translator training. Besides, teachers harbored an outdate opinion that teaching methods remained unchanged throughout the translators’learning process. They didn’t realize that translation pedagogy should be adjusted in accordance with trainee translators’varying competence. Indeed, translation teaching method should be aligned with trainee’s proficiency instead of the growing age.Faced with problems in current translation pedagogy, the author reviewed training insights from translation scholars such as Daniel Gile and Silvia Bernardini, and took reference from the latest developments in developmental psycholinguistics. By reviewing teaching syllabi from six translation institutions and looking into his own translation learning experience, the author attempts to outline a more reasonable framework for translation training, a well segmented and time-specific translation training method, namely phaseology in translation pedagogy.The paper first clarifies a few misconceptions about translation pedagogy and then takes a bold step in embracing a person’s lifetime into the translation learning process and segmenting it into four phases with clearly-targeted aims respectively. It then elaborates on details of translators within certain phases through the diachronic and synchronic perspectives. The author upholds that on the basis of translators’ competence, translation pedagogy should adopt progressivism to promote translation teaching in translators’lifespan, which is altogether divided into four phases:threshold (consolidating the mother tongue and getting acquainted with the foreign language), translator education (expanding knowledge scope and getting familiar with translation skills), translator training (skill honing; translation theory and handling of translation tasks), in-site specialization (terminology building and chunk accumulation).The paper expects development in the following aspects:1. The introduction of a new perspective to translation pedagogy. Previously, phaseology (literally stage studies) is actually a branch in historiography, which depicts segmentation between different historical periods and the developing trend. A combination of phaseology and translation pedagogy is hardly seen in previous translation studies. By introducing phaseology into translation pedagogy, the author would offer a more precise segmentation between different phases of translator training.2. Coinage of new terms. In order to facilitate the understanding of phaseology in the context of translation pedagogy, the author, in compliance with the academic standard, coins new terms to better express ideas involved in the study. All the new coinage, such as "trans-phaseological makers", could find their own clear-cut definitions in the glossary attached thereafter. Besides, all the relevant terms could be easily located in the paper with the aid of index attached in the paper.3. Application of the theory. The practical use of the theory could be found in Chapter5, which exemplifies how the theory finds its way into actual translation pedagogy.By establishing a life-spanned phaseology in translation study and categorizing translation learners into different phases, the paper hopes to formulate a well-structured and practical plan to nourish budding translators in education and training.