The application of text type in non-literary translation teaching

Abstract

Despite the relevance of text type to translation practice, especially to Chinese-English non-literary translation in which the two languages display remarkable textual differences, there has been a general lack of attention to the text type-related issues in translation teaching in Chinese universities. Centered upon translation of literary works, the teaching has long focused on techniques at the lexical and syntactic level, and a text-based approach has yet to be adopted. This coincides with the clear tendency in the assignment of non-literary translation that students are quite active in making adaptation at the lexical and syntactic level, but much more reluctant to make decisions at the textual level. Despite their intuitive awareness of the textual differences between the two languages, they are not well trained to effectively deal with such differences so that the translated text can fulfill its communicative function. This article is an attempt to pinpoint this problem and highlight the necessity of including text type in translation pedagogy. It also experimentally proposes a new teaching framework within which text type is taught in a systematic manner.