On Process-Oriented Translation Teaching

A feature of language teaching in recent years has been the development of process-oriented approaches, which focus on learners'processes of knowledge construction and utilization. The emphasis is on a gradual transfer of control over thinking and learning processes from the teacher to students. Particularly in the teaching of translation, this focus on processes allows teachers to train students in their research, analytical and translation abilities, and to focus on improving their knowledge and professionalism, so as to facilitate their all-round development as translators.Taking into account the large amount of content to be covered in a limited class time, this paper aims to explore effective teaching approaches in a big translation class with over 100 students. The Chinese-English translation course offered at the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation of Beijing Foreign Studies University was one that emphasized process-oriented teaching for the entire semester. Through analysis of the course, this paper discusses ways to design and improve process-oriented teaching in a large class setting. The content covered includes feedback, peer review, translation revisions, format specifications, time control, book reports and final examinations. The paper follows with a questionnaire which aims to find out how the students fared and the problems they encountered.The questionnaire results show that a well-managed balance between self-learning and external facilitation of learning will maximize the learning effect of students. For instance, students typically take over 8 hours to complete a piece of translation of about 1000 words, of which research and analysis takes up 60% of the total time consumed. On average, there are more than 20 endnotes and 10 to 20 peer review comments in a translation piece. More than 90% of the students paid attention to formatting, while 78% of the students were never late in submitting their assignments. Following analysis of the complete set of statistics, this paper finds that through the one-year course, most of the students had met or exceeded the learning objectives of the class. Most students were confident that they had made significant progress in their translation abilities and professional knowledge.