Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Translation proficiency, like other aspects of language proficiency, has beenviewed as the comprehensive reflection and practical application of languageknowledge and skills which is quite significant for second language learners. Inrecent decades, with the increasingly close contact between China and Westerncountries in the fields of politics, economy and culture, accurate and appropriatetranslation has become a necessity, even urgency, in the process of two-wayexchanges which have actually swept through all aspects. Then translation learningand teaching have played more and more indispensable roles for learners. Due to thegreat difference between English and Chinese in terms of morphology, syntax anddiscourse, English-Chinese long sentence translation has been regarded as one of themost difficult points for Chinese learners, among which learners’ long sentencereconstructing capabilities is viewed as an indispensible skill. In the past decades,contrastive studies of English and Chinese sentences, as well as researches on long sentence reconstructing skills in English-Chinese translation, have already reached arelatively high level. With “hypotaxis” and “parataxis” as the most widelyacknowledged difference between Chinese and English, researchers havesuccessively make comparisons between English and Chinese from various aspectsand put forward a variety of approaches and specific skills for long sentencereconstruction.Generally speaking, the key to fluent and elegant translation and reconstruction inlong sentences lies in proper understanding of the original material as well asappropriate representation in target language, i.e. the proper identification of mainsentence and subordinate elements, the analysis of mutual relationship amongvarious parts, finally, representation of the whole sentence. The skills inreconstructing long sentences have been classified into “conventional approaches”and “flexible approaches”, including synchronization, transformation, shift,reversion, quotation, repetition, addition, omission, transplantation, etc (Liu, 1992).Wang compared English with Chinese in terms of forms, stating that Chinese ismainly analytical while English is called “synthetic-analytic language” (Wang, 2001,pp.55-59).
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1.2 Research Motivation
In recent decades, researches on SLA, particularly on learner differences, havebeen closely connected with classroom teaching, mostly in the fields of vocabulary,reading and writing, while few are focused on translation, particularly on learners’long sentence reconstructing capabilities in English-Chinese translation, which, as isacknowledged, is one of the significant parts in second language acquisition, anddeserves more attention from researchers home and abroad. What is more, mostprevious researches involve English majors of key universities or students of highschools in China as participants, ignoring non-English majors in independentcolleges2. Due to the relatively inadequate language proficiency compared with thosein key universities, it seems not very realistic to expect the non-English majors inindependent colleges, to find out reasons of problems, analyze the reasons, and finallymanage to ameliorate on their own. Therefore, it is quite essential for the instructorsto investigate inpidual differences of non-English majors in independent colleges inthe process of acquiring long sentence reconstruction capabilities in the process ofEnglish-Chinese translation, so as to guide the learners to make improvement inpractical translation capacity, which will not only lead the learners to gradually mastertranslation skills by analogy and make steady progresses in future self-learningprocess, but can undoubtedly motivate them with a greater sense of accomplishment.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Researches on Long Sentence Reconstruction in English-Chinese Translation
Translation, which is generally acknowledged as a complex process, is hard todescribe completely and thoroughly with a few words. Many translation theoristshave been studying the definition of translation in views of linguistics, culture andintercultural communication. According to Xu, the meaning of translation has beenchanging frequently and increasingly and is open to interpretations, so it should bestudied in various ways (Xu, 1997, pp.4-7). As a language activity which varies fromone language to another to express meanings precisely and accurately, translation isgenerally viewed as an important point in language learning; while long sentencereconstructing, rather difficult to understand and express appropriately, is commonlyconsidered one of the hardest points in translation. Thus holding the factors toconstitute long sentence reconstructing is of great significance.
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2.2 Researches on Inpidual Learner Differences in Second Language Acquisition
SLA can be viewed as the approach in which people learn a language other thantheir mother tongue, inside or outside of a classroom. Ellis has described SLA as “acomplex process, the product of many factors pertaining to the learner on the onehand and the learning situation on the other” (Ellis, 1985). In a more specific way, it isdescribed as the study of how second languages are acquired, how a new languagesystem is created with limited exposure to a second language (Gass & Selinker, 1994).People learn another language in a place where the target language is used orally, andin a place where the target language is not applied in everyday life. In the first case, itis referred to as “the second language learning”; for the second case, “the foreignlanguage learning”. SLA is a cover term, which includes both second languagelearning and foreign language learning. So to recapitulate, SLA is a study of secondlanguage learning as well as foreign language learning, in both naturalistic andclassroom settings, with a focus on the underlying competence of second languageknowledge through their performance that shows their knowledge of L2 rules.As a multidisciplinary field of study, second language learning process iscognitive, social, psychological and linguistic. The aim of SLA can be simply andclearly claimed as the description and explanation of L2 learning. It describes how thelanguage development is brought about, and how the internal and external factorscontribute to the mastery of a second language.
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Chapter 3 Methodology........... 27
3.1 Research Questions.......... 27
3.2 Subjects ..........27
3.3 Materials.......... 28
3.3.1 The Material for English-Chinese Long Sentence Translation Tests..........28
3.3.2 Questionnaire.......... 28
3.4 Procedures ..........29
3.5 Scoring and Data Analysis ..........31
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion.......... 33
4.1 capability inEnglish-Chinese Translation with Inpidual Differences..........33
4.2 Capability inEnglish-Chinese Translation with Inpidual Differences..........38
4.3 Summary ..........50
Chapter 5 Conclusion ..........51
5.1 Major Findings..........51
5.2 Implications of the Study.......... 52
5.3 Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Further Studies.......... 55
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
This chapter focuses on the results of the present experiment, which consists ofthe analysis of the two questions and discussions of the findings. It falls on twosections. The first section investigates whether there are differences of original longsentence reconstruction capability in English-Chinese translation with inpidualdifferences in terms of language proficiencies and genders. The second sectionexplores whether there are differences of progress in long sentence reconstructioncapability in English-Chinese translation with inpidual differences in terms oflanguage proficiency, gender, as well as the affective factors. The first research question is: Are there any significant differences of original longsentence reconstruction capability in English-Chinese translation between differentlearners? In other words, are there significant differences of the original long sentencereconstructing capabilities in English-Chinese translation between learners withdifferent language proficiencies and between different genders? If so, what are they?In order to compare the differences of the original long sentence reconstructingcapabilities in English-Chinese translation between different learners, the author usedUnivariate Analysis of Variance to compare the scores of different learners in test 1.The results are showed in Table 4.1 and Table 4.2.
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Conclusion
This chapter falls into three sections. The first section is devoted to the majorfindings. The second section is concerned with implications. The third section is aboutlimitations of the present study and suggestions for further research. The main purpose of the study is to examine whether there are differences oforiginal long sentence reconstruction capabilities in English-Chinese translation withlearner differences, and whether there are differences of progress with learnerdifferences under the same classroom instruction. The major findings of the currentstudy can be summarized as follows:First, the results reveal that for non-English majors in independent colleges thereare significant differences of original long sentence reconstruction capability inEnglish-Chinese translation between learners with different language proficiencies.Originally, learners with higher language proficiency have significantly greater longsentence reconstruction capability than those with lower language proficiency. Also,there are differences of original long sentence reconstruction capability betweenmales and females. Originally, males have significantly greater long sentencereconstruction capability than females.
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Reference (omitted)