Bilingual and Bicultural Sense Development: A Hybrid Translation Teaching Approach

Abstract

This research proposes a hybrid translation teaching approach to fostering students' bilingual and bicultural sense in the language-learning classroom. Hybrid translation consists of intra-linguistic translation that adapts a cultural text from general Chinese (GC) into controlled Chinese (CC) in the first phase; inter-linguistic translation that translates a controlled text from Chinese into English through machine translation (MT) application in the second, and student post-MT editing in the third. Unlike the conventional translation method, this approach adds the steps of translating from GC into CC, and the application of machine translation as a self-checking tool. At the outset of class, a set of CC rules in the syntactical, grammatical and cultural aspects were provided as guidelines. To investigate the pedagogical effectiveness and students' reception, the errors in student assignments were analyzed, and a questionnaire was administered. The findings showed that intra-linguistic translation of cultural references was more challenging than that of syntactical and grammatical areas, but the number of student translation errors was significantly reduced after the training in hybrid translation. This research thus suggests that the educational goal of developing students' bilingual and bicultural senses can be achieved by teaching/learning English through the hybrid intra-and- inter-linguistic translation.