Multiple Perspectives: On Theoretical Frameworks In Translation Textbooks

With China's entry into the World Trade Organization, there are frequent international communications and business opportunities. Society provides not only chances for more people to engage in translation activities, but also asks more for the quality and quantity for the translation talents. Translation teaching, undoubtedly, shoulders the task to train professional and nonprofessional translators. As one of the three fundamental elements of translation teaching, textbooks absolutely exert a profound influence, playing a role of the stepping-stone in the teaching activities.This thesis, setting out from the perspective of cultivating students'communicative translational competence, discusses theories presented in translation textbooks, and points out the multiplicity of theoretical frameworks of translation textbooks. Basing its study on a survey of the translation textbooks circulating in the market, this thesis points out the problems of the present translation textbooks, that is, overemphasis on skill and technique training and failure to integrate theory with practice. Therefore, this study illustrates a theoretical framework of translation textbooks which, on the foundation of contrastive analysis, explains translation process on the perspectives of logic thinking, language, cognitive science and cultures so that the students can eventually understand the different thinking modes of the two languages and improve their communicative translational competence. Finally, an experiment is conducted so as to testify that the theoretical frameworks proposed by this study improve students'communicative translational competence. The result of the experiment proves the hypothesis, that is, the theoretical frameworks–under the structure of a contrast of logic thinking, language, cognitive science and cultures between the two languages are important in the writing of the translation textbook, although there are some issues in the experiment deserving further consideration and improvement.The thesis consists of five parts. Chapter 1 concerns the present situation of translation textbooks. After presenting a chronological review of translation textbooks in China the two main problems of textbooks are pointed out, namely, overemphasis on skill training and the inability of integrating theory with practice. A study of the textbooks available in the market reveals their variety. As translation is multidisciplinary, translation theories are varied. Therefore, textbook writers have to make their choice of theories to be introduced into the textbooks.Chapter 2 makes a brief introduction to Contrastive Analysis, expounding the development of the discipline both at home and abroad. Basing on the fact that CA has seldom been conducted with empirical studies in translation teaching, the thesis attempts to fill in the gap and make its hypothesis that the theoretical frameworks of textbooks will be beneficial to students'communicative translational competence.Chapter 3 is the main body of the thesis. Targeting the problems of translation textbooks, it expounds the suggested theoretical frameworks of translation textbooks which are guided by Contrastive Analysis and integrated with other disciplines, such as linguistics, culture, cognition and logic thinking.Chapter 4 proves that the frameworks illustrated in Chapter 3 do improve students'communicative translation competence by a three-month experiment. The subjects are divided into the control group and the experimental group who are similar at the outset, taught by the same teacher with the same textbook. The experimental group, through a three-month study of the frameworks, makes greater progress in their second translation test, which indicates that the frameworks help students select translation strategies and improve their communicative translational competence.In Chapter 5, the significance of the translation textbooks as well as the translation teaching is emphasized. The students'translation competence depends on the guidance and implication they get from the textbook and their teachers'instruction. However, the present researches into translation textbooks are far from meeting the requirement of the society. Therefore teachers and scholars should go into deep research of translation studies as well as translation teaching. Only in this way can the quality of translators be improved and the translation teaching cause be developed prosperously.The appendixes include two test samples used for the experiment and 51 articles of translation textbooks (teaching) published on the journals in China.