The Application Of Translation Continuation To College English Teaching

Translation,as a basic skill in second language learning,comprehensively reflects the ability of language learners' language output.However,translation is always the weakness in teaching procedures for non-English majors.On the basis of the theory of Second Language Acquisition(SLA),such as interaction and alignment,input and output,Professor Wang Chuming proposed reading continuation task,and then developed it into “continuation theory” or “the X-argument [X refers to Xu in Chinese or CEC(completion,extension and creation)]”.The translation continuation is a new variety which consists of both reading and translation in language learning.Learners should not only understand the key language points,translation skills,language style and characteristics of the given bilingual materials,but also need to apply them to the subsequent translation of the target language below.In the translation continuation task,language learners interact with the given bilingual materials and the target language translation,which is beneficial to the interaction between understanding and output,so as to strengthen the alignment and improve the learning efficiency.In recent years,many scholars have done a lot of empirical researches on the reading continuation task to verify its promotion effect.Scholars have applied it to different subjects and different experimental materials to explore its deep alignment effects.The research results of reading continuation are of theoretical and practical significance to the study of translation continuation.Compared with reading continuation,there are few reports on the study of translation continuation.Based on the theory of input and output and the alignment effect,the translation continuation tasks are applied to the non-English majors from an independent college,to discuss the following questions in detail:(1)What is the effect of the translation continuation on the overall quality of students' translation?(2)What is the effect of the translation continuation on faithfulness,accuracy and syntactic maturity of students' translation?(3)How do we improve the translation continuation in translation teaching?The methods of the text analysis and the interview are adopted to carry on the research.The subjects are 54 sophomores of non-English majors from the independent college.The translation continuation tasks are used to intervene in the subjects.The experiment lasts for 14 weeks,and the pretest is performed in the firstweek before the experiment.During the intervention,the subjects are required to complete the tasks of translation continuation.The teacher provides bilingual materials for students to read,and then let them translate the remaining parts of Chinese into English after the reading is completed.After the experiment,the post-test and interview are conducted.And all the translated parts are input into the computer for late analysis.SPSS22 is used to analyze the significant differences in the translation scores of the pretest and post-test,and the faithfulness,accuracy and syntactic maturity,as well as the significant differences in the three aspects are evaluated in detail.Some of the students are interviewed to find out their attitudes to this new method and suggestions on the translation continuation.Finally,the whole experiment is summarized and conclusions are drawn.The research shows that: 1)After the implementation of the translation continuation teaching,the overall level of students' translation has improved;2)The faithfulness,accuracy and syntactic maturity of translation have been influenced to varying degrees.In the aspect of faithfulness,students at all levels have been promoted,particularly in the translation of verbs and adjectives;In terms of the accuracy of translation,low-grade group and middle-grade group students have improved significantly,especially low-grade group students.And some of high-grade group students have got the highest score in the post-test,but most of the high-grade group students improve the accuracy of translation less than the low-grade group students.In terms of syntactic maturity of translation,low-grade group students have a greater improvement in syntactic maturity,while middle-grade group and high-grade group students have a little improvement in this stage.After the translation continuation experiment,the number of simple sentences decreases,and the sentence patterns are diverse,but the number of words that should have been added to each T-unit reduces.Therefore,the increase in the number of sentences is not notable;3)Improvement of the translation continuation teaching is mainly reflected in the selection of materials,the teacher's guidance of the pre-reading materials and the length of the content of the translation continuation.Finally,based on the results of the study,some suggestions are put forward for the teachers and students.