| Error Analysis is an important study method on Second Language Acquisition that takes the errors produced by second language learners when using interlanguage as the study object and aims to explore the causes of the errors.With the rise of big data and corpora,new paradigms of Error Analysis begun to emerge and have been gradually applied.Among them,Computer-aided Error Analysis well integrates the theoretical framework of Error Analysis and the methodological advantages of corpus,while there are still few systematic research on Computer-aided Error Analysis at home and abroad.At the same time,based on the reality of translation practice in China,the process characteristics and translation quality improvement related to translation direction need to be explored urgently.Therefore,guided by the theoretical framework and methods of Computer-aided Error Analysis,the study explores the translation errors of Chinese English as a Foreign Language（EFL）learners from a comparative perspective of translation direction.The research is based on the Chinese partner corpus of the Multilingual Student Translation（MUST）corpus,a multilingual learner translation corpus constructed by international cooperation.By identifying the errors in 200 learners’ translations in accordance with the unified translation error classification framework of the MUST project（Granger,et al.,2018）,a total of 7137 annotations have been completed.Among all the two parts,ten categories and forty-three sub-categories of errors stipulated in the translation error classification framework,the relevant types of errors covered in the corpus of this study include two parts（at the Level One）,source text-target text transfer（TR）and language（LA）,which could be further divided into eight categories（at the Level Two）,content transfer（TR-CT）,lexis（TR-LE）,discourse/pragmatics（TR-DP）,grammar（LA-GR）,lexis and terminology（LA-LT）,cohesion（LA-CO）,mechanics（LA-ME）,style and situational context（LA-ST）,the first three belonging to the source text-target text transfer part and the last five belonging to the language part.There are also thirty-one sub-categories in particular at the Level Three.Aiming at more than 7,000 errors,this research applies Fisher’s Exact Test to compare and analyze Chinese EFL learners’ translation errors from the perspective of translation direction.Combined with text analysis and related Second Language Acquisition theories,this research attempts to explore the possible reasons for the errors.The questions to be addressed in the research are:（1）What typical errors do Chinese EFL learners have in English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation?（2）What are the similarities and differences between the typical errors made by Chinese EFL learners in Chinese-English translation and English-Chinese translation?The research found that:（1）Overall,Chinese EFL learners made more errors in Chinese-English translation than English-Chinese translation;（2）Specifically,there are some differences between the typical errors made by Chinese EFL learners in the translation from Chinese to English and in that from English to Chinese,and there are six types of errors—content transfer（TR-CT）,discourse/pragmatics（TR-DP）,grammar（LA-GR）,mechanics（LA-ME）,lexis and terminology（LA-LT）,style and situational context（LA-ST）—that show significantly different performance between English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation;（3）There is a weak correlation between the frequency of lexis and terminology（LA-LT）errors and the translation direction,and there is a moderate correlation between the frequency of content transfer（TR-CT）,discourse/pragmatics（TR-DP）,mechanics（LA-ME）,and style and situational context（LA-ST）errors and the translation direction,and there is a strong correlation between the frequency of grammar（LA-GR）errors and the translation direction;（4）There are two kinds of effects of translation direction on Chinese EFL learners’ error performance.Compared with Chinese-English translation,the English-Chinese translation promotes the frequency of content transfer（TR-CT）and discourse/pragmatics（TR-DP）errors,but inhibits that of grammar（LA-GR）,style and situational context（LA-ST）,mechanics（LA-ME）and lexis and terminology（LA-LT）errors.The research also combined interlanguage,psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology and other related concepts and theories to make inferences about the causes of those errors:（1）In the research,the learners’ errors were mainly attributed to the first language transfer,backward transfer,cultural interference and limited second language knowledge;（2）For those language-related errors,more frequent in Chinese-English translation,the reasons are mainly considered to be limited second language knowledge and first language transfer.In particular,limited second language knowledge tends to lead learners to adopt wrong communication strategies and to wrongly generate mindsets during translation,while the effect of first language transfer is basically at the grammar and vocabulary levels;（3）For those errors related with source text-target text transfer,more frequent in English-Chinese translation,the main reasons are limited second language knowledge,first language transfer and backward transfer.In particular,limited second language knowledge mainly affects learners’ understanding of the source text,while first language transfer is primarily reflected at the culture level,obstructing learners from producing translations that are faithful enough to the source text. |
