On The Application Of The Difficulty Coefficient To Difficulty Evaluation And Scoring In C-E Translation

Researches on translation difficulty are of considerable significance to translation training,including the enhancement of students' translation competence and the effectiveness of aptitude accreditation tests for translators.In spite of the immense significance,translation difficulty,especially Chinese-English(C-E)translation difficulty,has not been much studied yet.Against this background,the research into C-E translation difficulty has been undertaken to find out the factors that may reflect the difficulty of C-E translation tasks.In addition,a possible way of evaluating C-E translation difficulty is explored as well as its application to C-E translation training,C-E translation scoring and English proficiency testing.The possible factors that reflect the difficulty level of translation tasks were first summarized by drawing on the researches into English and Chinese readability as well as the difficulties that translators may encounter during the translation process.After that,an empirical study was carried out by questionnaire to confirm whether the factors reflect C-E translation difficulty.Thirty-nine undergraduates(Chinese students who had translation classes as a way of learning English)and 35 postgraduates of the English Department at Xiamen University(Chinese students who specialized in translation between Chinese and English)participated in the case study.Seventy-four students in total filled out the questionnaires,and 62 valid copies of the questionnaires were acquired.The answers of the questionnaires served as the source of the data used to select major factors that make a C-E translation task difficult for Chinese who study English as a foreign language(hereinafter referred to as Chinese EFL learners).The major factors include subject matter,register,lexis(proper nouns,abstract nouns,polysemy,frequency,etc.),syntax(sentence length,structure,etc.),type of language used,text type,and cultural knowledge specific to some countries and regions.Afterwards,"Difficulty Coefficient",a technical term that often appears in athletic competitions,was introduced into this study,in which the term is called“Translation Difficulty Coefficient(TDC),”for the purposes of evaluating the degree of difficulty of C-E translation tasks.The way of evaluating translation difficulty having been approached,its application to translation studies and language testing is explained,including how translation teachers and students can use the TDC to help them achieve better results out of translation training.At last,the implications for translation studies are expounded as well as the limitations of the current research and advice for future research on C-E translation difficulty.