Website in: 
|
Productive Bilingualism and Translator Education by Mr. Wanwei Wu Contents
---Mahatma Gandhi
Recently, two essays on bilingualism and bilingual education caught my eyes with their contradictory views. One is entitled “China to promote bilingual education” on xinhuanet saying that five to ten percent of the total courses in colleges and universities across China will be taught in English, claiming that bilingual education creates a “pure English environment” for students, improves their overall linguistic ability, especially oral English and enabling them to think in a second language. The other is a reader’s letter to the editor warning Chinese government against the negative impact of bilingualism. It is entitled “From Mexicans to Chinese, from bilingualism to ‘Democracy’” on Chinadailynet saying that Chinese government has made a grave mistake in fostering bilingualism in China. In the letter writer’s opinion, Spanish speaking Mexican immigrants do not identity themselves with mainstream Americans, lobby laws and enactment of such laws favoring their group at the sacrifice of larger interest of mainstream Americans, in the end they will transform California into a Mexican province. Similarly, the rise of bilingualism and the priority on English in its educative processes will change China’s development path and political and social systems. According to the writer, such a change is what western imperialists are longing for. And it is language policy that creates Hong Kong’s uncertainty and makes China’s reunification with Taiwan more difficult. This incident highlights the complex relationship between politics, bilingualism and identity. As an English learner and translation teacher in China, the author himself has come across ecstasies, perplexities, frustrations in the course of his English learning and teaching. In this paper, he tries to explore the feasibility of applying “productive bilingualism” theory in translator training, present the experiment findings and offer suggestions for future improvement. The whole paper consists of six sections. Chapter 2 is about the brief introduction of productive bilingualism. It points out the limitation of existing “acculturation models” and relates bilingualism to multilingualism, bilingual education. Chapter 3 focuses on opportunities and challenges of translator education after exploring the complexities of translation and translation competence. Chapter 4 presents the relationship between TEFL and translator training, highlighting the similarities and differences in pairs such as pedagogical translation vs. professional translation, TTBS vs. TTPS, linguistic competence vs. translation competence. Chapter 5 is concerned with the political and sociocultural environment of translator training and the far-reaching influence on translators’ personality and works. The last chapter discusses the pedagogical considerations. After pointing out the problems of translation teaching, it presents the findings of our experiments and offers suggestions for future improvements. Related Articles
Discuss this article at our translation forum If you found our website useful, take our banners or join our affiliate program to make money by referring us potential customers. submit an article to this article directory
|
Copyright © 2008 Translation Services Terms and Conditions |
