A Study Of Negative Transfer Of Mother Tongue In College Non-English Majors' C-E Translation

Language transfer has long been the hot research target in the area of SLA.Transfer is the influence resulting from the similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously acquired.L1 transfer,which involves positive transfer and negative transfer,is a significant linguistic phenomenon.Positive transfer refers to the facilitation/ improvement of L1 to the SLA,which comes from the similarities between L1 and L2.Negative transfer refers to the interference/ hindrance of L1 to SLA.When differences exist in L1 and L2,negative transfer usually occurs.Although there are plenty of researches concerning language transfer in China,researches on negative transfer of mother tongue in college non-English majors' Chinese-English translation are comparatively lagging.Most researches have limited the subjects to English majors with intermediate or advanced level of English proficiency.The latest College English Syllabus(2017)points out that basic English knowledge,practical skills and cross-cultural competence should be the main learning objectives for college students.That means college students should be equipped with both the ability to listen,speak,read and write and the competence to conduct cross-cultural communication.Out of those considerations,the author thinks a study of negative transfer of mother tongue in college non-English majors' C-E translation is extremely necessary.The present study focuses on the following three questions:(1)Does mother tongue interfere in college non-English majors' C-E translation process?(2)In what ways does mother tongue interfere with college non-English majors' C-E translation?(3)In which language area does mother tongue interference have the biggest effect?The author conducted a questionnaire survey of 205 college freshmen and juniors who are from three different colleges of Chengdu University of Technology.The present research is supplemented by analyses of the translation samples of 108 college non-English majors.Both the questionnaire survey and the analyses of the students' translation samples show:(1)College non-English majors' mother tongue(Chinese)interferes with their C-E translation process;(2)Mother tongue interference occurs in college non-English majors' C-E translation at lexical level(word's part of speech,word choice and collocations,etc.),syntactical level(agreement of subject and predicate,tense and voice of the sentence,etc.)and discourse level(connectives and cohesive devices,coherence of the text,etc.);(3)No significant difference is found in the degree of mother tongue interference at lexical,syntactical and discourse levels.The survey results show mother tongue interference at syntactical level is slightly larger than at lexical and discourse levels.Results of the questionnaire survey and Chi-square test also show: there is correlation between the students' grade and the degree of mother tongue interference they experience during C-E translation.Juniors(with a longer time of English-learning)experience less mother tongue interference than freshmen in C-E translation.Based on the research results and findings,the author has some suggestions for college English teachers and college non-English majors in particular,hoping they can be of some help to the reduction of mother tongue interference in college students' C-E translation.