ECCET:Syllabus 高级英汉/汉英翻译课程教学大纲

NANJING UNIVERSITY

Professor KE, Ping

Department of English, School of Foreign Studies, Nanjing University, 163 Xianlin Dadao, Nanjing, 210023, CHINA 22 Hankou Lu, Nanjing, 210093, CHINA

EMAIL: kepingATnju.edu.cn

Course Supporting Website: http://keping.sprinterweb.net/TOC/T.html

10010150 ― Introduction to Translation (IT): Course Syllabus

(Designed in line with the recommendations outlined in The National Syllabus for Instruction in English for College English Majors [2000] instituted by the English Subcommittee of China’s National Steering Committee for Teaching in Foreign Language Programs in Institutions of Higher Education)

Time and Place: 8:00-9:50, Tuesday, Spring Semester; Nanjing University Xianlin Campus. Instructor: Prof. Ke Ping [kepingATnju.edu.cn]. Office: Rm. 419, Qiaoyu Building, Nanjing University Xianlin Campus. Office hours: 12:00-13:50, Tuesday (by appointment)

CONTENTS

Course Objectives. 2

Course Resources. 2

Textbooks (required reading) 2

Course Objectives

It is intended that this course should help to foster a strong sense of responsibility and a professional approach to tasks of E/C and C/E translation. Students will be instructed to fulfill translating and editing commitments in an honest and responsible way and are discouraged from working by wild guessing or on superficial understanding of the original.

By the end of the course, students are expected to:

■ internalize [] the basic principles of translation, master the procedures and skills for analyzing source texts (especially difficult ones) and for generating appropriate target texts;

■ understand the similarities and differences between English and Chinese in morphology, syntax, textual structure, lexical and grammatical meanings, pragmatic conventions, rhetoric devices, and thought patterns, and acquire preliminary capabilities for handling culture-specific elements (realia) in the original;

■ command the skill of selecting and utilizing local and online reference tools as well as other aids and techniques developed for linguists and translators to solve complicated problems in translation;

■ develop an awareness of technical terms, knowing how to distinguish a term from a non-term and how to translate technical terms accurately; and

■ be able to produce, independently and at the minimum speed of 250-300 words per hour for source texts of medium difficulty, translations that are essentially accurate and complete in content, natural in expression, correct in terminology, and cohesive and coherent in textual structure.

Course Resources

Textbooks (required reading)

Zhuang, Yichuan [庄绎传]. (1999).《英汉翻译教程》. 北京: 外语教学与研究出版社. vii+415 pp.

Ke, Ping [柯平]. (1991/1993).《英汉与汉英翻译教程》. 北京: 北京大学出版社. 206/209 pp.

Short texts for translation

Available on course website.

Course website

http://keping.sprinterweb.net/TOC/T.html

http://nlp.nju.edu.cn/kep/TOC/T.html

Methods of Instruction

Classroom teaching typically consists of lectures/discussions on one or more major theoretical or empirical problems in English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation. These problems are selected and their sequence of being addressed in class determined on the basis of the difficulties real-life translators typically encounter at successive stages of a translation project, and of the judgments taken of the language proficiency and cognitive receptability of the students taking the course. To ensure that these problems are fully apprehended and the principles and methods required to solve them properly mastered, the instructor will ask the students to do some in-class translation exercises (with the text projected onto the projection screen).

By way of complementing classroom instruction, home assignments (including short-text annotation translation exercises, mini-research projects, and optional long translation project) will be set. Students are asked in turn to present their finished assignments in class, which the instructor will discuss without fail.

The instructor will inspire students to explore into the principles and mechanisms underlying what they are learning at the operational level so that they can know not only the WHAT and HOW, but also WHY, of the general procedures followed and the specific strategies employed in translation. Students are encouraged to pose questions before or during the class.

Depending on time available, tutorial sessions may be arranged.

Assignments

There are three types of assignments for the course:

(1) in-class translation exercises (designed to help students to consolidate what they have just learned from the lectures or class discussions);

(2) home assignments, including short-text annotation translation exercises (short texts of different genres, usually of 300-600 words, assigned to be translated out of class and discussed in class) and/or mini-research projects; and

(3) (optional) long translation project (real-life translator’s situation simulated in which students are required to translate out of class a full-length work or part of it within a period of time of 4 to 10 weeks).

Students are requested to complete all assignments on time. Late completion will result in a deduction from their scores for coursework.

Requirements for Passing the Course and the Assessment Policy

Requirements for passing the course are as follows.

(1) reading at least one textbook intensively;

(2) attendance at all class sessions and full participation in class activities (students are reminded that skipping classes might cause them to fail the course);

(3) effective completion of all in-class translation exercises and home assignments; and

(4) passing the end-of-semester assessment (usually a written examination or a research report/paper).

The assessment of a student’s performance in each semester will be based on the following components:

(1) attendance at and contribution to the class (responding to questions and raising good questions or suggestions, active involvement in class discussions, etc.) (15%);

(2) scores obtained for presentations on in-class exercises and home assignments (25%); and

(3) scores obtained for the final examination or end-of-semester research report/paper (60%).

Course Schedule

Unit 1 Orientation (Week 1)

Unit 2 Translation and the Translator (Weeks 1-4)

■ The concept of translation

■ Types of translation

■ The makings of a good translator

■ Mini-research: Sight translation of the transcript of Chinese Foreign Minister’s and Chinese Premier’s answers to media questions during the annual session of the National People’s Congress

Unit 3 What Qualifies to Be a Good Translation? (Weeks 5-8)

■ Basic semantics for translation

■ The standard for translation quality

Unit 4 SPECIAL TOPIC: The use of reference tools in translating / TUTORIAL (Week 9-10)

■ Mini-research: Comparative reading of source texts and their translations

Unit 5 Source Text Analysis (Week 11-12)

■ Intralingual factors involved in the analysis of the source text

■ Extralingual (non-cultural) factors involved in the analysis of the source text

Unit 6 Target Text Generation (Weeks 13-15)

■ Word order

■ Splitting and merging sentences

■ Compensatory procedures/devices

Unit 7 Copy Editing (Week 15)

■ Checking the accuracy of the translation against the original

■ Removing translationese

Unit 8 SPECIAL TOPIC: Proper nouns and technical terms / TUTORIAL (Week 16)

* Depending on time available, some topics listed above here may not be covered in class in the present academic year.

(Page revised: September, 2014; March, 2015; June, 2015; February, 2017; April, 2017, February, 2018; January, 2020; March, 2021)