An Empirical Study On Developing Chinese Competence Of English Majors Based On Process-Oriented Approach

The development of society requires the colleges and universities to train more qualified translators to meet the demand of market. Thus, translation teaching should mainly aim to develop the translation competence (TC) of students, so as to improve their translation quality. In recent years, Chinese competence, as a branch of TC, draws much attention of scholars.This thesis takes the Chinese competence in a narrow sense as the research subject and applies both the quantitative and the qualitative methods. The writer conducted an empirical research on 32 English majors for the purpose of finding out how to develop English majors'CC on the basis of process-oriented method. The experiment includes three steps:the pre-test, the process of developing CC and the post test. The 32 subjects were divided into two groups at random. One is experimental group which participates in a process-oriented classroom and the other is control group that studies in a traditional class. The whole experiment lasts two months.Questionnaires,pre and pilot test as well as the translation diary are adopted in the current study as research instruments to investigate the following information:Firstly, to find out junior English majors'general situation of TC and CC as well as whether they try to develop their CC consciously. Secondly, to seek out whether they sometimes make mistakes or faults in translation because of their inadequate CC and whether they think it necessary to possess good CC to be qualified. Thirdly, try to prove that the experimental group can do better in detecting and solving Chinese-related translation problems after the training. Fourthly, to find out if the improved CC can effectively benefit the translation quality to some extent.According to the data elicited from the questionnaires, tests and the translation diaries, this thesis manifests several conclusions as follows:1. The participants'general situation of CC is rather weak and they seldom try to develop their CC consciously, thus their translations were sometimes regarded as the "inappropriate" ones.2. Nearly all the subjects improved their CC after the experiment. However, the experimental group made greater progress than the control group.3. The translation of experimental group enjoys higher acceptance of clients and deeper degree of accuracy from their teachers after the training.4. The development of the subjects'CC shows obvious individual differences. The different components of CC are in different degrees and a hierarchical system. This research lends itself to highlight the significance of CC of English majors and on the other hand, provides a new perspective for the improvement of translation teaching methods and curriculum setting.