Author: JISHOU MU

Issue: 2023-2024

Abstract:

The language service industry around the world pays special attention to the competence of translators. Those who are engaged in translation research, translation work, and translation teaching all regard “translator’s competence” as the central topic, and believe that translator’s competence plays an important role in the entire translation process. Translator’s competence directly determines the quality of translation, and is the key to the success of translated works, whether in the field of interpretation or translation. Cultivating students’ translation competence is the key content of translation teaching in colleges and universities. The essence of teaching translation in colleges and universities is to improve students’ translation competence. In the course system of translation majors in colleges and universities, “translation theory” is a very important main course. How does this main course affect the improvement of students’ translation competence? How much does the translation theory course help students improve their translation competence? And after studying this course, in which aspects have students’ translation competence significantly improved? These are all confusing the author all the time.

Eco-translatology is a translation theory founded by Professor Hu Gengshen of Tsinghua University/Zhengzhou University. The research based on this theory was carried out in three steps. The first step is to design a belief questionnaire to understand people’s inner thoughts. It mainly investigates the beliefs and ideas of translation practitioners, translation teachers and students on the relationship between translation theory and translator’s competence. In the second step, a number of students are selected and divided into an experimental group and a control group. These students have comparable comprehensive qualities and English proficiency. The students in the experimental group receive Eco-thanatology course, while the students in the control group do not receive any translation theory course.

After the experiment, the students in the experimental group show a significant change in their beliefs, and they more recognized the role of translation theory in improving translators’ competence. From the data of the experimental group and the control group, the Ecotranslatology has significantly improved the students’ strategic sub-competence and knowledge about translation sub-competence. However, there is no significant improvement in students’ bilingual sub-competence, extra-linguistic sub-competence and Instrumental sub-competence. There is a positive relationship between translation theory and translator’s competence. For every unit of improvement in translation theory, the translator’s competence level will increase by 0.298 units. The resulting model formula is: Translation competence=33.078+0.058 * Belief+0.228 * Theoretical learning. Translation beliefs play a mediating and moderating role between translation theory and translator competence.

Keywords: Ecotranslatology, English as second language, translator competence