Translation Expertise Studies

In the context of globalization, translation studies as a discipline has been profoundly affected. The1980s saw the shift from the study of translator and product to that of process and its influence upon the translation. From the late1990s on, the scope of translation studies has been extended from translation competence to translation expertise. In response to the opportunities and challenges brought by the globalization and the new status of language services industry, the translation expertise has entered into the forefront of TS and come to cover the domains like localization, terminology, adaptation and technical writing, etc. Higher Learning Education and translator training agencies have to cultivate translation talents with translation expertise to meet the social demands in the new era.Translating might be the most complicated activity in the world, which requires a great variety of competences nominated as translation competences. It is a pity that their general researches center upon the components of TC and among which the central role translation strategies play. Few of them study the translation expertise from the cognitive science on the basis of the competence and expertise researches. Nowadays, with the turns of language services industry to professionalization, informatization, internetization, etc. and the ever-intense international exchange, the need for the translator with translation expertise is increasing, and the role they act as in society becomes more vital. Against such a background, the translation expertise studies are in urgent need so as to build the developing models for general translators to better cater for market.Translation process is the complex cognitive thinking process of the translator. The translator’s cognitive abilities have profound impact upon the product quality. Only by recognizing the translator’s cognitive resources and the changes for the organization and composition patterns, can s/he be trained into an expert translator conforming to the requirements of the society. Meanwhile, we still need to discover the cognitive patterns at different developmental stages of the translation expertise for the trainee in the course of training.Given the above, the object of the present study is determined to be the translation expertise, namely we manage to discover the same characteristics and patterns of cognitive change of a general translator as that of the translator expert. Furthermore, we would like to investigate the theoretical support of translation expertise for translator training. The study will be made as the following5chapters:Chapter One opens with the introduction of the present study presenting the research background, the object, the supportive and pertinent theoretical basis as well as its methodologies; Chapter Two mainly discusses the researches on translation competence and translation expertise conducted by the translation scholars domestic and abroad. It includes the theories resorted to, the methodologies adopted and the achievements on the front gained. On such a foundation, the theory of the study based on is proposed---cognition-oriented translation expertise theory (COTET) put forward by the well-known American scholar in the domain, Gorge Shreve. Chapter Three deals with chiefly the implementation of the translation expertise in our modern society. It also analyzes the roles the translation expertise played in the domains of language services industry, localization, technical writing, etc. Chapter Four sets about a case study on the development of translation expertise. After a brief discussion regarding the theories of experimental study, it illustrates in detail the design, process, subject recruit, tools and methodology. The case study records all kinds of corpus and findings elicited in the translation process of the subjects. The experiment adopts the more scientific Triangulation in social science---the analogy and analysis of the data and corpus derived from the quantitative data of Translog, the qualitative data of TAPs and that of retrospective interview immediately after completion of the translation task. The reliable and valid findings empirically testify the explanation power and generality of COTET to a certain degree in Chinese context. Thereby, the structure, development stages of COTE are summed up, and the feasible route to acquisition of COTE is elaborated---deliberate practice. The focus of the last chapter centers upon the application of the data and findings derived from the case study in the translation pedagogy. Eventually, it puts forward the trajectory for the TE acquisition of Chinese general translation students with the existing methodologies in translation didactics.The present study achieves the predetermined targets, namely the clarification of the implication between translation competence and translation expertise; the testification of the experimental tools, the operability and accuracy of the Translog in particular; he explanation power is partially validated by means of Triangulation. The results of the study are helpful to the exploration of the translation expertise in the future days from the interdisciplinary perspectives.