A Preliminary Study Of Translation As A Pedagogue In TCFL

The paper analyzes problems in English annotations and translations in TCGL textbooks. Examples for error analysis in the paper come from four latest popular textbooks published by renowned Chinese publishing houses. Different from most papers on the same subject, this paper not only analyzes errors in annotations of words but studies, under the guidance of translation theories, errors in translation of sentences and dialogues. Summarizing the causes of the problems in annotations and translation, the author attributes the fundamental cause of the problems to the failure to recognize the proper status of translation as a pedagogue in TCFL. And to bring translation into full play in TCFL, pluralized translation criteria should be adopted to better meet the specific purposes and needs of TCFL. The paper has four chapters. Chapter1introduces the background and significance of the research. Chapter2analyzes errors in vocabulary annotations and points out the major source of the errors. Chapter3applies translation criteria to analyzing errors in sentence and dialogue translation and identifies Chinglish as the major problem.In Chapter4, the author argues that the root of the problems in English annotations and translation lies in the failure to recognize translation as an effective pedagogue in TCFL. To bring translation into full play in TCFL, pluralized translation criteria should be adopted to better meet the specific purposes and needs of TCFL. After that, examples are given to show how to apply plural translation criteria according to different teaching purposes. Chapter5is the conclusion of the paper. The author proposes that, to apply English annotations and translation as a pedagogue to TCFL,(1) the writers of TCFL textbooks and teachers must realize the importance of interlanguage in Chinese teaching (2) textbooks should designed and written according to the principles of contrastive linguistics,(3) TCFL teachers should try hard to improve their bilingual competence, and (4) foreign teachers with a good command of both English and Chinese should be involved in compiling TCFL textbooks.