A Comparative Study of EFL Learners’ E-C Sentence Translation Quality开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

1.introduction1.1 research backgroundwith the development of economic globalization, translation is becoming more and more crucial in our society. according to liu (2005), there were about 3,000 translation service providers in our country with estimated annual earnings of around 1.3 million yuan. by the end of 2005 ,this figure has exceed two million. there were about 35,000 full-time translators and more 100,000 part-time translators. the translation market is very prosperous and there is so much potential. but in fact, there is too few excellent translators to meet the needs of the market. errors in foreign language signs can be seen almost everywhere in public places such as hotels ,restaurants, tourist attractions and even museums, which seriously affects the image of the city. for the sake of meeting cooperative and the city-building needs, translation teaching and translators training is playing an increasingly important role in cultivating foreign language talents. many teachers have made lots of researches on translation teaching during these years. there are also many people who study the factors that affect the quality of translation in order to promote translation teaching. there is no denying that we can see a progression in this field and large numbers of outstanding translators have been trained. however, there are still few breakthroughs in translation pedagogy during these years. nowadays the current situation and the integral strength of translation are still far from the requirements and the development of our society.1.2 research purposetoday many english majors are in an awkward position. although they are english majors, they are still poor in english translation. they are not competent on the task of translation. in order to improve the quality of translation teaching and the translation ability of english majors, and cultivate more excellent translation talents, we need to find the factors that affect the quality of translation.due to the limited space of this thesis, it is impossible to discuss all of the influence factors. in the opinion of the author, proficiency level of translator could be a factor influencing the quality of translation. the intention of this study is to compare the e-c sentence translation quality of english majors at different proficiency levels.2.literature reviewthroughout the history of translation, countless scholars have carried out researches on the essence of the activity. similarly, a great many studies have been launched on them, through some of which new definitions have been put forward. the interpretation of translation in the modern chinese dictionary is to express the meaning of one language in another language. the interpretation of translation in the oxford english dictionary is the action or process of turning from one language into another. before the 1990s, translation was a simple transformation of language. after that, under the leadership of british scholar susan bassnett and american scholar andre lefevere and with the development of linguistics and translation theories, translation studies have witnessed a cultural turn. henceforth, translators begin to interpret from the cultural level instead of word by word. therefore, translation plays an increasingly important role in cultural heritage. translation has made great contributions to the inheritance of chinese culture. for an instance, china has established lots of confucius institutes in many countries to spread chinese culture and promote national spirit of china. in these times of globalization, it means interchange and rapprochement between ideas and values at an unprecedented pace and density. so the "interlingual translation" put forward by jacobson is not only a transformation on the level of language, but also a transformation between two cultures. chinese have access to knowledge and skills from abroad by the foreign-chinese translation. we have learned marxism, newtonian mechanics, philosophy of socrates, aesthetics of baumgarten ,etc. the cultural value of translation is immeasurable. ji (2005) once said that as long as the language is different, translation is necessary. otherwise, ideas cannot be communicated, culture cannot be communicated, and human society cannot be promoted. translation is the secret of chinese culture to be eternal youth. cultural value is only a part of translation value, and social value is the most essential value of translation. translation overcomes the language barrier which hinder mutual communication so the human society could contact more with outside. the thoughts of foreign nations have changed people's thoughts, and thus promoted social change and progress such as the translation of buddhist scriptures by zhiqian(300) and daoan(380) in the ancient han, sui, tang and song dynasties, the translation of science and culture by xu guangqi(1630) in the ming and qing dynasties, the translation of western learning by yan fu(1898) and liang qichao(1898) in the late qing dynasty and the early ming dynasty, the translation of social science and literature by lu xun(1910) and mao dun after the may 4th patriotic movement, and the translation by qian zhongshu(1990), ji xianlin(1955) and other translators after the founding of new china.during the may 4th movement, translators' translations not only played a role in transforming the society, but also exerted a subtle influence on the people at that time. not only the translators, but also the translation works played a crucial role in promoting the vernacular movement at that time, which is the language value of translation.at last but not least, the historical value of translation played an important role which couldn't be ignored as well. translation have influence on every historical and cultural renaissance, such as the renaissance of ancient greek culture, the renaissance of ancient roman culture, the renaissance of europe, etc.zhang (1987) thought that a qualified literary translation is a new life of the original instead of the regeneration of the original. therefore, the original works get a new face, a new vitality and a new life, so that it can face new cultural readers in a new form. what he said is the translations value in creation. chinese and english belong to different language families, the former belongs to the sino-tibetan language family, and the latter the indo-european language family, which consequently result in some differences in their essence. chinese and english do not belong to the same language family. they are different in word, sentence structure, grammar, part of speech and so on. house (1997) believed that a qualified translations semantic meaning, pragmatic meaning and text meaning should be completely and accurately conveyed from the original text to the target text. during recent years, the question of quality has always been of top priority in the discussion about translation activity. house（1997） thought geographical origin, social class and time, social role relationship, social attitude and province, which are the some influence factors of translation quality. williams（2004） considered the influence factors of translation quality should be narrative strategy, figures of speech, arguments and so on. later on, zhang (2005) thought that the quality of translation depends on wording, grammar and understanding of the source text. after a detailed analysis on the characteristics of chinese publicity materials, li (2006) mentioned cultural and linguistic factors affecting translation quality, such as thought pattern, beliefs, environments, customs, history, politics, synthetic analytic, hypotactic paratactic, compact diffusive and rhetorical plain.lots of research about the influence factors have been done and at the same time countless research about the assessment of translation quality occurred. house (1997) was the first man who studied translation quality assessment as an independent subject in the history. his model was not only based on the hallidayan systemic functional grammar, discourse analysis of the text and pragmatic theory, but also payed attention to the influence of social elements. after that williams (2004) made some innovation on argumentation theory about translation quality assessment. his innovation was great in spite of some drawbacks, such as the arbitrariness in the setting of parameter. some scholars in china also proposed some standards. based on modern linguistics, wu and li(1984) put forward the equal value translation. they held the view that the quality of the translation depends on the degree of the equivalence between source text and target. they assessing the quality of the translation on 15 levels--word, expression, sentence and so on. however, many people agree that faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance is the three criteria oftranslation.(yan fu, 1897) there are many influence factors and assessment standards. it is impossible to consider so many factors one by one. so the author chose one of themthe english proficiency level of translators, to study. this paper sums up five points according to the analysis of the differences between english and chinese in english-chinese translation by yin and ruan (2007) and a course in english-chinese translation by zhang (2009). and choose these as the assessment standards to test the e-c sentence translation quality of english majors from these five aspects. considering the maneuverability of this study, the author chose to research only from the aspect of e-c translation. referencescrane, r. james, f. oxford english dictionary. london: oxford university press.williams, m. (2004). translation quality assessment: an argumentation-centered approach. ottawa: university of ottawa press.bell, r. (1991). translation and translating: theory and practice. london new york: longman press.catford, j. c., a linguistic theory of translation. london: oxford university press.christopher, w. (2001). different methods of evaluating student translations: the question of validity. meta, 46 (2),25-31.cook, v. (2003). effects of the second langue on the first. clevedon: multilingual matters.house, j.(1997). translation quality assessment: a model revised. narr: tubigen.li, y. b.(2006). factors and strategies in chinese-english translation of publicity material--from the perspective of nidas functional theory(master dissertation).university of international business and economics, beijingnewmark, p. a. (1988). a text book of translation. new york: prentice hall international.wang, j. j.(2009). a corpus-based quantitative study of college english e-c translation quality（master dissertation). harbin institute of technology.williams, m.(2004). translation quality assessment: an argumentation-centered approach. ottawa: university of ottawa press.williams, m. (2004). translation quality assessment: an argumentation-centered approach. ottawa:university of ottawa press.黄慧（2016），汉语语法欧化现象研究,《青年文学家》,2:116-117。

季羡林（2005），序言，《中国翻译词典》，湖北：湖北教育出版社。

刘习良（2005），让世界走近中国中国译协会长接受央视记者采访。

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

1.Research question This study was designed to test the E-C Sentence Translation Quality of English Majors at Different Proficiency Levels. This study would answer the following question:Is there any relationship between English majors English proficiency level and E-C sentence translation quality?The study was composed of two experiments. The first, Experiment 1, was a pretest of Experiment 2. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to ensure the participants of Experiment 2 did not know the answer of the following test. Experiment 2 explored whether the E-C Sentence Translation Quality of English Majors at Different Proficiency Levels varied. Experiment 2 controlled time for task.2.Participants and ProceduresThirty six English majors at Different Proficiency Levels who come from universities of Nanjing participated in this study. Participants were native speakers of Chinese. All of them are senior graduate students who have passed TEM-4. Data provided by 6 of participants had to be dropped because they are familiar with some of target sentences. Results of the study were therefore based on 30 of them.The study consisted of two experiments. Experiment 1 is the pretest of Experiment 2 to ensure the 20 target sentences in Experiment 2 are unfamiliar to all participants. In the first experiment, subjects were given a piece of questionnaire with 20 target sentences and 20 distracters, and were asked to distinguish whether they are familiar with these sentences. In order to increase the truthfulness of their responses, this questionnaire was non-tangible. Thirty of them who had passed Experiment 1 would be introduced to Experiment 2. They needed to translate 20 target English sentences into Chinese in 30 minutes and write their answer and TEM-4 score on the questionnaire. 3.Data collection and analysis The questionnaire included 20 English sentences and 20 distracters. The 20 target sentences can be translated into Chinese correctly according to five translation skills. The five translation skills are based on five differences between Chinese and English. These differences and skills are summarized from English-Chinese Translation and A Course In English-Chinese Translation. Most target sentences are typical examples extracted from these two books. According to Zhang, Ruan and Yin, these sentences could be divided into five categories, corresponding to following five differences between English and Chinese. 1. Hypotaxis in English and parataxis in Chinese.2. The passive sentences are widely used in English, while the active sentences are widely used in Chinese.3. The subject of English is matter, while the subject of Chinese is human.4. English discourses and sentences are usually front-weight while Chinese discourses and sentences are end-weight.5. Great part of speech changes will take place in E-C translationThe goal of Experiment 2 was to determine whether participants had known the correct translation of these typical sentences, not whether they knew the meaning of these sentences. No partial credit was given. One rater scored the questionnaire answers strictly according to the five points mentioned above. Five points would be got if one answer is correct. No point would be got if one answer is wrong. The total score of the test is 100.After attaining 30 participants translation scores and TEM-4 scores, SPSS 23.0 would be used for further analysis. By comparing the data of different proficiency levels participants, the author could derive the relationship between English majors English proficiency and E-C sentence translation quality. Paired sample t test was chosen to analyze the data.