A Study Of Correlation Between Discourse Analysis Competence And Translation Proficiency Of English Majors

English translation, as a significant means of language output to express ideas and exchange information, is considered to be one of the most difficult skills for language learners. According to the investigation and research by Xia Jimei in her The Factors Affecting the Quality of College English Teaching, most of the problems students encounter in their translation practice can be ascribed to their lack of overall grasp of the text. Students fail to understand the author’s intention, to analyze the characteristics of the source text as well as the discourse features. All of these do have affected the quality of their translation practice. One important cause for these phenomena is that most teachers in translation classes are still applying the traditional cramming approach of teaching. The role of the teacher is just an explainer of grammar and a demonstrator of a target language. They only focus on words, phrases or sentences, merely emphasizing the indoctrination of grammar and translation skills while neglecting the cultivation of students’ discourse analysis competence.Discourse analysis focuses on analyzing the macroscopic organization of the whole text and the tactics of phrasing. Students should not only understand the words,phrases, sentences and paragraphs of the text, they should also comprehend the whole structure of the text and the intention of the author as well as the social and cultural background information related to the target language. Through this process, they can improve their logical reasoning ability and analytic ability. However, at present, in the field of second language acquisition, most researchers and English teachers apply discourse analysis theory to high school English teaching, especially reading comprehension, cloze test. Only a small number of researches are linked with English translation teaching. However, most of these researchers just combine part of discourse analysis theory with translation teaching practice.For example, Discourse Pattern Theory, Cohesion and Coherence Theory and Thematic Progression Pattern.Quite few researches focus on the overall characteristics of students’ discourse analysis let alone the correlation between discourse analysis competence and translation proficiency. Hence, this study is intended to investigate the impact ofEnglish majors’ discourse analysis competence on their English translation proficiency and put forward some useful suggestions to improve their discourse analysis competence and English translation proficiency.This thesis is an empirical study conducted in Shandong Normal University. The participants involved in this study are English majors in their third year. The students’ discourse analysis competence is evaluated by Test of Discourse Analysis Competence and their English translation proficiency is evaluated by Test of English Translation Proficiency. SPSS19.0 is employed to analyze the data collected from the research. The present study is firstly intended to present the general characteristics of English majors’ discourse analysis competence and their translation proficiency, then find out what the relationship between English majors’ discourse analysis competence and their translation proficiency is.By the analysis of data, the major findings are presented as follows:The students’ overall discourse analysis competence is at a lower-middle level.They perform best in sentence structure while performing worst in reference and substitution. And there is a significant positive correlation between their discourse analysis competence and their translation proficiency. English majors’ discourse analysis competence and every dimension of it have a significant impact on their English translation proficiency. Stylistic awareness and wording meaning are the most important skills to improve students’ English translation proficiency.Based on the research results above, the author first puts forward some suggestions on cultivating students’ discourse analysis competence and improving their English translation proficiency. At last, the author proposes some pedagogical implications of this study and presents some suggestions for future study.