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ABSTRACT
The newborn MTI (Master of Translation and Interpreting) program in China is a new platform that induces abundant opportunities for translator training, meanwhile poses methodological and professional challenges. Thus, an interactive teaching and learning model is proposed. This study is devoted to finding out whether the interactive model improves the MTI students’ satisfaction and the learning outcomes of a compulsory course in the MTI program. This model consists of three modes which are implemented in three respective stages of lesson design, by applying a task-based, workshop-based and project-based methodology, and/or a seminar method. The assessment of the learning outcomes is conducted based on the exam results and other information gathered from a teacher performance appraisal system and a survey completed by the MTI students. This study shows that the interactive model creates an environment that can significantly foster instructor-student and student-student interaction, enhance students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and consequently promote the translation competence and translator competence of the MTI students as potential professional translators. Hopefully, this approach will facilitate the teaching of other courses within the curriculum of MTI programs and shed light on other training programs as well.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Due to the fact that our School is lack of academic faculty for interpreter training program, no degree of “Master of Interpreting” is awarded, i.e., MTI program is actually MT program. This is also the case in some other universities. For example, Southwest University, a key university sponsored by the Ministry of Education of China, does not provide interpreter training program and no degree of “Master of Interpreting” is awarded. So, this research is confined to translator education or training.
2 Our survey reveals that only a few higher institutions in China can boast teaching staff or instructors qualified for training interpreters or translators. Currently, in most colleges or universities approved to run MTI program, most teaching staff for the MTI program are former foreign language teachers who have little or no interpreting or translation experience, and the language-teaching tradition remains strong in their pedagogical approach. Who is to train the trainers themselves is still a tricky issue.
3 See: http://catti.net.cn/2015-10/17/content_706373.htm. CATTI is short for “China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters”, similar to Australian NAATI. CATTI’s certification system is designed to evaluate whether an individual is competent to practice as a translator or interpreter. It does this by setting minimum standards of performance across a number of areas of competency. Individuals who demonstrate that they meet these standards are awarded CATTI Certification. In 2018, CATTI moved to computerized translator and interpreter tests.
4 MTI students are required to prepare a graduate thesis either in the form of translation management internship report, project report, experiment report or research report, among others. Specifically, students are required to translate a text of about 10,000 words from their mother language to another language, or vice versa, and to compose a report of about 8,500 words, with commentary or theoretical discussion of their translation activity in their mother language or another language.
5 MTI programs fall in the professional stream designed for those students seeking CATTI accreditation at the professional translator and/or interpreter levels, and need to be distinct from the traditional MA programs in translation and interpreting, i.e., a research stream designed for academically-minded students who want to qualify for direct entry into a Higher Degree by Research (e.g. Ph.D.). However, the prevailing pedagogical trend in translator training through the newly emergent MTI programs is still transmissionist methodology which is widely employed in MA programs, instead of a transformationist one. This transmissionist methodology assumes that students are not subjects but objects of their own learning, thus has harmful effects on their critical spirit, learning autonomy and professional competence.
6 Actually, we took initiative to reform the traditional teaching philosophy in 2011 when our school began to run MTI program in 2011. We began to develop a parallel corpus, which turned out to have greatly facilitated the process of translation and effectively improved the translation quality. Meanwhile, we occasionally assigned some translation tasks which were entrusted to our translation company to several prominent students, and they accomplished the tasks satisfyingly through workshop cooperation. And task-based language teaching and/or workshop seminar, although adopted sparsely and unsystematically during teaching practice, turned out to be effective. Further, our school has revised the curriculum several times so as to improve students’ translation competence.
7 Mentoring has traditionally been defined as a top-down, one-to-one relationship in which an experienced staff guides and supports the career development of another person (e.g. a student, a new or elderly member). But mentoring, as used in this paper, is confined to academic instruction, supervision or assistance provided by the professionals from the translation company and me as the course instructor, through which we propose to provide a broader, more flexible network of support to help students navigate the shoals of their academic careers.
8 QQ, as a social media and networking platform widely used in China, is renowned for its communicative functions, including instant messaging (e.g. text, voice and video) or forums (e.g. chat groups), QQ group, and other functions (e.g. video chat filters). In this research, the QQ group serves as an optimal coordinating platform for chatting or discussion purposes, allowing a large number of people to work in a coordinated period of time in a cyber world.
9 The English-Chinese parallel corpus in law was built in 2012, based on the bilingual legislation by the Department of Justice of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It has been further enlarged and extended to cover other legal documents, e.g. contracts, pleadings, judgments, etc., so that students can refer to certain documents during translation practice. Up to date, this corpus is partly accessible for public use, and enjoys high reputation among universities that offer such courses as legal translation and legal English.
10 Here we adopt the definition by Ellis, i.e., a task is a work plan that requires learners to process language pragmatically in order to achieve an outcome that can be evaluated in terms of whether the correct or appropriate propositional content has been conveyed. See: Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language teaching and learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, P.13.
11 EMT is a quality label for MA university program in translation. The DGT awards it to higher education programs that meet agreed professional standards and market demands. The EMT competence framework, drawn up by European experts, is at the core of the project. It defines the basic competences that translators need to work successfully in today’s market. By training highly skilled translators in close cooperation with the language industry the EMT seeks, in the long run, to enhance the status of the entire translation profession in the EU. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/info/resources-partners/european-masters-translation-emt/european-masters-translation-emt-explained_en
12 The translation company was established 3 years ago by 5 professional translators with CATTI accreditation or recognition, and has been providing professional and reliable translation service for legal professionals, law firms, local governments, courts, and other persons and agencies.
13 CATTI adopts a combination of a holistic method (through which the overall quality of a translation is assessed and graded accordingly) and an analytic method (through which points for each error found in a translation is deducted), and the test is marked on a rising scale from 1 to 3 as follows: (1)低/不及格(di / bu ji ge, i.e., low/fail, when point values are under 60), (2)中/及格(zhong / ji ge, i.e., medium/pass, when point values are between 60–79), and (3) 高/优秀(gao / you xiu, i.e., high/excellent, when point values are over 80).
14 ACTFL Proficiency Guideline describes five levels of proficiency: distinguished, superior, advanced, intermediate and novice.
15 Fu dao yuan (辅导员), similar to school counselors in western countries, are solely responsible for facilitating students’ personal development, encouraging students to make wise choices, helping them make the transition from school to career, advising students on the prevention of social or emotional adjustment problems, etc., but seldom involved in academic supervision of students. In institutions of higher education in China, fu dao yuan differ from supervisors, in that supervisors typically pass on knowledge of subjects to improve educational or academic achievement, i.e., they are charged with the responsibility of providing academic development programs on supervision. Of course, supervisors sometimes play the roles of fu dao yuan.
16 The lexical features (e.g. use of legal terms or formal words, archaic words, pro-forms, doublets or triplets, etc.), syntactic features (e.g. use of nominalization, passive voice, sentence length, complex propositional phrases, etc.), and textual features (e.g. the micro-structure of a legal norm, including hypothesis, disposition and sanction, which can be represented as “If X, then Y may/shall do Z”), are strikingly exemplified in the translated texts.
17 e.g. “ … … 的” (de-construction) serving as hypothesis in a legal norm, null-subject sentences introducing prohibitive provisions, etc., are characteristic of legal Chinese and well exhibited in the translated texts.
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Xueyu Wang
Xueyu Wang is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Huaqiao University. Her research interests are Pragmatics and translation. Her recent publications include “Towards the contributing factors for stress confronting Chinese PhD students” (International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being 14(1), 2019), “The Study of Counterfactual Expressions from Pragmatic Perspective” (Chinese Journal of Social Science, October 10, 2017), “The Art of Understanding Art” (a translated work from English into Chinese, Beijing: Publishing House of Electronics Industry, 2015), etc. She has a BA degree in English language and literature (Huaqiao University, 1999) and an MA degree in English language and literature (Fujian Normal University, 2005).
Jian Wang
Jian Wang is a Professor of Linguistics at Southwest University of Political Science and Law (SWUPL), and vice-director of Research Center for Legal Language, Culture and Translation, SWUPL. His research interests are critical discourse analysis, forensic linguistics and translation. His publications have appeared in local and international referred journals, including “Towards the contributing factors for stress confronting Chinese PhD students” (International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being 14(1), 2019), “Till Death, Purchase of Another House, or Occurrence of Other Events Do Us Part: Interests-Oriented Fake Divorce Cases in China” (Journal of Divorce and Remarriage 60(2), 2019), “Neutral, Biased, or Both? Discursive Construction of a Mediator’s Dual Role” (Negotiation Journal 31(1), 2015), “To Divorce or not to Divorce: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Court-ordered Divorce Mediation in China” (International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 27(1), 2013), etc. He has a BA degree in English language and literature (Southwest University, 1993) and an LLM in jurisprudence (Southwest University of Political Science and Law, 2001).