A Functional Approach To MTI Teaching Materials

China is expanding its cooperation with other nations on politics, economic development, technology, education and cultural exchange due to its further opening up to the world and the improvement of its international image. As English has become the most widely used language in the world, China's prosperity in communication greatly increased the demand for professional translators and interpreters.Compared with traditional literature translation, the wide range in communication and cooperation brought translation into new fields such as text translation of law, science, and medicine…. And translation has become an industry involving more and more professional translators instead of part-time translators.In order to satisfy the huge market demand in professional and specialized translation services, the Academic Degree Committee of the State Council first ratified 15 universities to enroll students majoring in Master of Translation and Interpretation, MTI for short, focusing on the training of specialized translation expertise. While up till now MTI is still in experimental stage, and the compilation of teaching materials are comparatively lagging behind. Thus this thesis aims to apply German functionalism to guide the compilation of MTI teaching materials.There are four chapters. The first chapter introduces the relevant research both at home and abroad, the research method applied in this thesis and its practical meaning. The second chapter elaborates some representative functionalist theories and how to choose translation strategies under these theories. The third chapter brings up certain compiling suggestions based on the existent MTI teaching materials. And the last chapter sums up the research results and points out the shortcomings of this thesis.