1. Chinese 747 Advanced Chinese Translation Practice
Class Time: 9-11 am Wednesday
Classroom:
Teacher: Dr. Yan Ding (Lydia)

2. Recap of Week 2 Translation Process Quality Control
Gile’s Sequential Model – Translation Unit
3-Dimentional Translational Anaysis
Nida & Taber – Analysis and Restructuring
Vinay and Darbelnet - descriptive, affective and intellectual/metalinguistic context/stylistic effects
Liu Miqing – 六步法
Quality Control

3. Week 3: Translation competence: besides dictionary, what else?
Translators’ Tools

4. Translation Competence
Competence as a summation of linguistic competencies
Wilss (1982): the translator “must have an SL [source-language] text-analytical competence and a corresponding TL [target-language] text-reproductive competence” (118).
Competence as no such thing
Competence v Performance/Proficiency
Competence as multicomponential
PACTE Group
Competence as just one thing
Pym’s Minimalist Approach

5. Translation Competence
PACTE 2003: 18
Process in the Acquisition of Translation Competence and Evaluation

6. The bilingual sub-competence.
Predominantly procedural knowledge needed to communicate in two languages. It includes the specific feature of interference control when alternating between the two languages. It is made up of pragmatic, socio-linguistic, textual, grammatical and lexical knowledge in the two languages.

7. Extra-linguistic sub-competence.
Predominantly declarative knowledge, both implicit and explicit, about the world in general and special areas.
(1) bicultural knowledge (about the source and target cultures);
(2) encyclopaedic knowledge (about the world in general);
(3) subject knowledge (in special areas).

8. Knowledge about translation sub-competence.
Predominantly declarative knowledge, both implicit and explicit, about what translation is and aspects of the profession.
knowledge about how translation functions: types of translation units, processes required, methods and procedures used (strategies and techniques), and types of problems;
knowledge related to professional translation practice: knowledge of the work market (different types of briefs, clients and audiences, etc.)

9. Instrumental sub-competence.
Predominantly procedural knowledge related to the use of documentation sources and an information and communication technologies applied to translation: dictionaries of all kinds, encyclopaedias, grammars, style books, parallel texts, electronic corpora, searchers, etc.

10. Strategic sub-competence.
Procedural knowledge to guarantee the efficiency of the translation process and solve the problems encountered. This is an essential sub-competence that affects all the others and causes inter-relations amongst them because it controls the translation process.
to plan the process and carry out the translation project (choice of the most adequate method);
to evaluate the process and the partial results obtained in relation to the final purpose;
to activate the different sub-competencies and compensate for deficiencies in them;
to identify translation problems and apply procedures to solve them.

11. Psycho-physiological components.
Different types of cognitive and attitudinal components and psycho-motor mechanisms.
cognitive components such as memory, perception, attention and emotion;
attitudinal aspects such as intellectual curiosity, perseverance, rigour, critical spirit, knowledge of and confidence in one’s own abilities, the ability to measure one’s own abilities, motivation, etc.;
abilities such as creativity, logical reasoning, analysis and synthesis, etc.

12. Minimalist Approach Two-fold functional competence (cf. Pym 1991):
The ability to generate a series of more than one viable target text (TTI, TT2 … TTn) for a pertinent source text (ST);
The ability to select only one viable TT from this series, quickly and with justified confidence.

13. Translators’ Tools www.dict.youdao.com

14. Practice
C-E

15. Mini-Presentation and Discussion
Volunteer pair, discuss the following:
Practice
Translation process
Problems/difficulties
Solutions/strategies
Any revisions made?
General comments/suggestions/sharing

16. Summary