Abstract
To meet the increasing needs for translators and interpreters, Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) program was launched in Chinese universities. Discussion on how to cultivate MTI students who are supposed to be excellent users of foreign language except their mother tongue attracts many Chinese researchers, while little is done from the perspective of students, the main stakeholders of the program. Therefore, this case study, informed by self-concept theories, tracked one MTI student in a Chinese key university, to investigate factors influencing students’ learning motivation and their response towards the influence. Using the student’s diaries reflecting on daily translation training and the semi-structured interviews, the study found significant others, self-perceived ability, curriculum, and coursework played significant roles in the ebbs and flows of translation learning motivation. The findings also reveal the dynamic interaction among students’ self-representations (including the ideal self, the ought self, the actual self, and the feared self) in the dynamic context. This paper not only provides a new understanding to the translation education by incorporating students’ voice into professional training, but also offers advice for MTI program management.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the study of professional translation education (e.g. Davitti & Pasquandrea, 2014; Jääskeläinen et al, 2011; Li, 2018; Washbourne, 2014)
Jimmy had a great interest in translation and projected himself as a future professional translator, an ideal situation that would be achieved after Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) program training (Int1)
Informed by SC theories, the study conceptualizes translation learning as a dynamic process in which different self-conceptions emerge and interact with one and another, extending the language learning motivation that has focused on L2 motivation
Summary
There has been a growing interest in the study of professional translation education (e.g. Davitti & Pasquandrea, 2014; Jääskeläinen et al, 2011; Li, 2018; Washbourne, 2014). There has been a growing interest in the study of professional translation education In the context of China, translation, which was once “an elitist programme taught at a small number of highly specialised colleges and institutes” 19), develops into a full-grown discipline at bachelor, master, and doctoral levels in an array of universities and colleges within several decades (for a historical review, see Tao, 2016). In 2007, Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI), the latest form of translation education, was introduced to train advanced, practice-oriented and professional translators and interpreters (China Academic Degrees & Graduate Education Development Centre, Ministry of Education, 2007). The program has expanded from initial 15 universities to 215 higher education institutions in 2017, attracting significant attention from an array of scholars. One prominent research conclusion is that the quality of MTI graduates is not satisfactory (Kong & Wang, 2011; Liu and Yu Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education (2019) 4:4
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