Intention and inversion: evaluating coursebooks on translation theories under the perspective of comparative translation studies

ABSTRACT

The comparison of the theories of Chinese and Western translation traditions contribute to the insights regarding the nature of translation and the improvement of translators’ competences, which requires authors to compile translation theory coursebooks in inverted ways that cater to the needs of readers. Based on theoretical retrospection, the author analyses the relation between translation theories and translator training. After comparing sixteen highly cited and widely disseminated translation theory coursebooks, the author summarizes the features of the coursebooks compiled by Western and Chinese scholars from ontological, epistemological and methodological perspectives. In the case study of A Coursebook of Chinese and Western Translation Theories, the features of the coursebook could be summarized as ontologically classical, epistemologically systematic, and methodologically reader-oriented. Based on the in-depth evaluation of the case coursebook, the paper provides suggestions for the whole category of coursebooks on translation theories. Ultimately, the paper concludes that the coursebook authors’ intentions may exert substantial influence on the readers and further influence the development of translation theories and practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation theories
• coursebook evaluation
• comparative translation studies

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my deep gratitude to Professor Zheng Zhang, who has offered selfless support in writing this paper. As one of the book authors in the case study, he contributed to clarify his ideas on how to compile a coursebook on translation theories, which inspires the research scheme of the paper, and to verify whether the findings match with his compiling intentions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Citation indices in Tables 1 and 2 are updated on February 11^th, 2021.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the [Key Project of the Beijing Municipal Philosophy and Social Science Fund] under Grant [number 19YYA003] “Research on the Construction and Application of Translation Cloud Platform for Multi-lingual Corpus on Scenic Spots of Cultural Relics in Beijing” and the [General Project of Shanxi Federation of Social Sciences Fund] under Grant [number SSKLYY2020013] “The Construction and Application of the Training Mode of Translation Majors under the Perspective of “Blockchain + Education”.

Notes on contributors

Yun Wang

Yun Wang is a lecturer at Taiyuan University in Taiyuan, and a PhD candidate on Translation Studies at Beijing Normal University in Beijing, China. Her research interests include English translation of Chinese classics, corpus translation studies, and training of translators. Email: [email protected].