On The Role Of Communicative Competence In The Teaching Of Pragmatic Translation

Literary translation has dominated the translation teaching in China for a long time. Nevertheless, this model is not fit for cultivating practitioners who are competent in fulfilling the pragmatic translation tasks in the current translation market. In recent years, more and more scholars at home propose that more importance should be attached to the teaching of pragmatic translation. However, they have not reached a consensus on what the basic features of pragmatic translation are, and on what competence should be taught to students. The author attempts to testify both theoretically and empirically that 'communicativeness' constitutes the major feature of pragmatic translation. In compliance with the communicative feature, the major competence in pragmatic translation should be the communicative competence, which consists of bilingual competence, textual competence and the translator's competence to communicate with the client concerning the translation brief. Having defined the communicative competence, the author further puts forward some suggestions on how to develop such competence of students in classroom teaching.