翻譯學習者之翻譯錯誤分析：以語料庫為基準之應用研究

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(1) . 國立臺灣師範大學翻譯研究所博士論文 Doctoral Dissertation Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation National Taiwan Normal University . 翻譯學習者之翻譯錯誤分析：以語料庫為基準之應用研究張裕敏 An Error Analysis of Translation Learners: A Corpus-‐based Study by Yu-‐Min CHANG . 指導教授：陳子瑋博士、廖柏森博士 Advisors: Dr. Tze-‐Wei CHEN ＆ Dr. Posen LIAO 中華民國一百零一年六月 June 2012 . .

(2) . Abstract This study aims to investigate the errors of translation learners from both their translation product and their translation process, as well as to test the practicality of a corpus-‐based method for such analysis. The data collected from 31 undergraduate and 39 graduate student participants were their translations of six informative English texts, which were compiled into a Chinese learner translation corpus and annotated using MMAX2, and the 70 interview transcripts and background questionnaires. Error analyses from the product were carried out through annotating the learner translation corpus and by comparing the differences of error frequency in each text among groups by statistical tests such as the t test, the Mann-‐Whiney U test and the Kruskal-‐Wallis H test, while error analyses from the process were conducted by retrospective interviews and the coding procedures proposed by Strauss and Corbin (2008). The results of the compilation and annotation of the Chinese learner translation corpus, have been successful not only in the error analysis for research but also in its output of the query and statistics function as concrete feedback to individual students and as materials suitable for data-‐driven and student-‐based classroom discussions. The flexibility and customization of MMAX2 has also allowed future expansion and modification of this annotated corpus. In addition, results of this study indicate that the undergraduate and graduate students showed a significant difference in some types of errors and their errors were not simply the results of incompetence (lack of abilities) but were also formed under the influence of some interacting factors such as willingness (norm and motivation), time, meta-‐cognitive strategies, and the . .

(3) Skopos of the translation task. The achievements and findings of this study may offer empirical evidence for increasing our understanding of the translation process of learners through error analysis and present a practical corpus-‐based method conducive to translation teaching and research. Keywords: translation error analysis, learner translation corpora, corpus annotation . .

(4) . 摘要本研究從翻譯過程及翻譯成品探討學習者之翻譯錯誤，並探討將語料庫方法應用於翻譯錯誤研究之可行性。研究對象為 70 位學生，其中 31 位來自大學部，39 位來自翻譯研究所；所收集的資料為參與者譯自六篇資訊類文本的中文翻譯共 420 篇，以及 70 份訪談謄寫稿與背景問卷。研究者將 420 篇中文翻譯建置為一學習者翻譯語料庫，將其中翻譯錯誤以標記軟體 MMAX2 標記，並以統計方法（T 檢定、Mann-‐Whitney U 檢定、Kruskal-‐Wallis H 檢定）檢驗不同組別學生的翻譯錯誤次數在各項類別上是否有差異。訪談資料之分析方法則參考 Strauss and Corbin （2008）的開放編碼、主軸編碼、以及選擇性編碼三步驟，歸納出學生產生翻譯錯誤的原因。研究結果顯示，語料庫方法可有效應用於翻譯錯誤研究，本研究以 MMAX2成功標記中文翻譯語料之錯誤，並可將其搜尋、統計、內容呈現的功能應用於翻譯教學。此外，研究發現大學部學生和研究所學生在某些翻譯錯誤類別上有顯著差異；訪談資料分析結果顯示，學生的翻譯錯誤並不單是因為能力不足所造成，也可能是因為翻譯過程中其他因素相互作用下（如動機、規範、時間、後設認知策略、翻譯任務之目的等）而產生的選擇。本研究之學習者翻譯語料庫建置與標記成果，以及兼顧翻譯過程與成品的錯誤分析之發現，應可作為實徵研究證據，提供翻譯教師和學者參考。關鍵字：翻譯錯誤分析、學習者翻譯語料庫、語料庫標記 . .

(5) . Dedication To my beloved parents, my husband, Patrick, and my daughter, Lyseann . .

(6) . . Acknowledgments . . The completion of this dissertation has to be credited to many people for their support to me. My deepest gratitude first goes to my advisors, Dr. Tze-‐Wei CHEN and Dr. Posen LIAO, who have been my best mentors and caring friends during the long journey toward this goal. Without their inspiration, guidance, and encouragement, I would not come to this point. I would also like to sincerely thank my committee members, Dr. Peter Y. H. CHEN, Dr. Sharon LAI, and Dr. Chia-‐Chien CHANG, who have generously offered their insight and help to me in improving this paper. Their recognition and encouragement has meant a lot to me. I have been most grateful to Dr. Wallace CHEN, Dr. Shu-‐Kai HSIEH, and Dr. Zhao-‐Ming GAO, for their introducing me to the exciting fields of corpus linguistics and corpus-‐based translation studies, where I have greatly enjoyed the search for surprises. My appreciation also goes to the teachers in GITI: Dr. Sharon LAI, Dr. Emily HER, Dr. Chung-‐Tien CHOU, Dr. Shou-‐Cheng LAI, Dr. Keng-‐Fan LEE, Dr. Bi-‐Jou CHEN, Dr. Michelle Min-‐Chia WU, Dr. Chris Wen-‐Chao LI, and the visiting professors Dr. Michael Miching LIU and Dr. Xin-‐Zhan LUO, who have led me with their wisdom and insight on the academic track. It has been a great honor and pleasure for me to be their student and to become an engaging teacher like them in the future. I would like to express my most special appreciation to Ms. 李秋慧, who has taught me the most valuable things that cannot be possibly learned from . .

(7) elsewhere: unselfish love and respect to all the creatures on earth. To me, she is the best embodiment of love, compassion, and tenderness. Without her loving care, it would be difficult for me to hang on up to this day. I would like to sincerely thank my best friend and listener,宜懃 , who has been supporting me for all the years and has never hesitated to offer me wise advise and warm friendship. Besides, I would like to thank my wonderful companions and classmates: 俊宏, 容嫣, 碩禹, 冠宇, 加真, 欣欣, 宏淑, 淑彩, 傳門, 羽先, 宜瑄, 淑慧, 勇傑, 延輝, 家銘, who have helped make the hardship in study more endurable. Finally, I would like to express my greatest gratitude to my parents, my parents-‐in-‐law, my husband, my sisters and brother, and my daughter. It has been their unconditional love that keeps me moving forward with smiles to take next challenges. . .

(8) . Table of Contents LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................................. III LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................ IV CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION .............................................................................................. 1 RESEARCH PURPOSES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................................................................... 3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................... 5 ERROR ANALYSIS IN TRANSLATOR EDUCATION .......................................................................................... 6 Error Analysis from Language Teaching to Translation Teaching ........................................ 6 Error analysis in language teaching ................................................................................................................................ 6 . Error Analysis from the Translation Product .................................................................................. 9 Translation errors in the classroom ............................................................................................................................. 12 Translation errors in testing and certification ........................................................................................................ 17 . Error Analysis from the Translation Process ................................................................................ 19 . Translation process research .......................................................................................................................................... 19 Errors in the Translation Process ................................................................................................................................. 20 CORPORA AND TRANSLATOR EDUCATION .................................................................................................. 22 . Corpus-‐based Translation Studies ...................................................................................................... 25 Corpora in Translator Education ....................................................................................................... 35 Translational learner corpora and translation errors .......................................................................................... 39 . CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHOD ........................................................................................... 41 RESEARCH DESIGN .......................................................................................................................................... 41 PARTICIPANTS, MATERIALS, AND INSTRUMENTS ..................................................................................... 43 Participants .................................................................................................................................................. 44 Materials ........................................................................................................................................................ 48 Instruments .................................................................................................................................................. 50 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE .................................................................................................................. 52 The Translation Learner Corpus and the Error Annotation ................................................... 52 Translation Error Analyses ................................................................................................................... 55 Retrospective Interviews ........................................................................................................................ 57 DATA ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................................... 60 The Translation Learner Corpus and the Error Annotation ................................................... 60 User interface ......................................................................................................................................................................... 61 Folder structure .................................................................................................................................................................... 65 . Translation Error Analyses ................................................................................................................... 73 Retrospective Interviews ........................................................................................................................ 86 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................................... 88 THE TRANSLATION LEARNER CORPUS AND THE ERROR ANNOTATION ............................................... 88 Customization-‐Interface ......................................................................................................................... 89 Query display & statistics ....................................................................................................................... 98 ERROR ANALYSIS FROM THE TRANSLATION PRODUCT ........................................................................ 128 Errors of Each Group Examined by Text ....................................................................................... 131 The Grad Group and the Under Group ...................................................................................................................... 131 Within the Grad Group: the interpretation students (GI) and the translation students (GT) .......... 136 Within the Grad Group: the advanced students (GA) and the beginners (GB) ........................................ 139 Within the Grad Group: the interpretation-‐advanced (GIA), the interpretation-‐beginner (GIB), the translation-‐advanced (GTA), and the translation-‐beginner (GTB) ............................................................... 143 . Errors in Each Text Examined by Group ....................................................................................... 152 The Under Group ................................................................................................................................................................ 152 . . i .

(9) . The Grad Group ................................................................................................................................................................... 155 Within the Grad Group: interpretation students (GI) ......................................................................................... 158 Within the Grad Group: translation students (GT) .............................................................................................. 160 Within the Grad Group: advanced students (GA) ................................................................................................. 162 Within the Grad Group: beginners (GB) ................................................................................................................... 164 Within the Grad Group: interpretation students-‐advanced (GIA) ................................................................ 166 Within the Grad Group: interpretation students-‐beginners (GIB) ............................................................... 168 Within the Grad Group: translation students-‐advanced (GTA) ..................................................................... 169 Within the Grad Group: translation students-‐beginners (GTB) ..................................................................... 171 ERROR ANALYSIS FROM THE TRANSLATION PROCESS .......................................................................... 173 . Binary Errors ............................................................................................................................................. 174 Non-‐binary Errors ................................................................................................................................... 178 Translation Error as a Result of a Reasonable Choice ............................................................ 182 Abilities ................................................................................................................................................................................... 187 Translation proficiency ............................................................................................................................................. 187 Language proficiency ................................................................................................................................................. 192 Subject knowledge ....................................................................................................................................................... 195 Problem-‐solving ........................................................................................................................................................... 196 Willingness ............................................................................................................................................................................ 198 Time .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 205 Meta-‐cognitive strategy ................................................................................................................................................... 209 . CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................. 212 REVIEW OF RESEARCH FINDINGS .............................................................................................................. 212 IMPLICATIONS AND APPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY ................................................................................ 215 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY ...................................................................................................................... 218 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ....................................................................................... 219 APPENDIX A: MATERIALS ........................................................................................................ 221 APPENDIX B: THE CONSENT FORM ....................................................................................... 226 APPENDIX C: THE BACKGROUND QUESTIONNAIRE ........................................................ 227 APPENDIX D: THE INTERVIEW GUIDE FOR THE GRADUATE STUDENTS ................. 228 APPENDIX E: THE INTERVIEW GUIDE FOR THE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS ... 229 APPENDIX F: INITIAL CATEGORIES AND CODES FROM THE INTERVIEW DATA .... 230 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................. 233 . . . ii .

(10) . List of Tables TABLE 1. NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS BY TRACK ............................................................................................................... 47 TABLE 2. NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS BY GENDER ............................................................................................................ 47 TABLE 3. AGE OF PARTICIPANTS .......................................................................................................................................... 47 TABLE 4. ACADEMIC BACKGROUND OF PARTICIPANTS .................................................................................................... 48 TABLE 5. NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS HAVING EXPERIENCES OF STAYING/LIVING IN ENGLISH-‐SPEAKING COUNTRIES/COMMUNITIES ....................................................................................................................................... 48 TABLE 6. TEST SCORES ON THE MOE 2007, 2008, AND 2009 TRANSLATION COMPETENCY EXAMINATIONS, ADAPTED FROM PAN ET AL., 2010, P. 19. ............................................................................................................... 50 TABLE 7. TRANSLATION ERROR TAXONOMY FOR INFORMATIVE TEXTS: ERRORS-‐BINARY ....................................... 81 TABLE 8. TRANSLATION ERROR TAXONOMY FOR INFORMATIVE TEXTS: ERRORS-‐NONBINARY ............................... 82 TABLE 9. THE ATTRIBUTES IN THE LEVEL OF TEXT INFORMATION ............................................................................... 90 TABLE 10. THE ATTRIBUTES IN THE LEVEL OF TRANSLATOR BACKGROUND .............................................................. 95 TABLE 11. THE ATTRIBUTES IN THE LEVEL OF TRANSLATION ERROR TYPOLOGY ..................................................... 97 TABLE 12. T TEST FOR THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I001_OIL ........................................... 132 TABLE 13. T TEST FOR THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I002_BIOTECHNOLOGY ................... 133 TABLE 14. T TEST FOR THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I003_DESIGNERS ............................. 133 TABLE 15. T TEST FOR THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I004_COMPUTERS ............................ 134 TABLE 16. T TEST FOR THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I005_WIKIPEDIA .............................. 135 TABLE 17. T TEST FOR THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I006_ANTI-‐GENETIC ........................ 136 TABLE 18. U TEST FOR GI AND GT WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I001_OIL ............................................... 136 TABLE 19. U TEST FOR GI AND GT WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I002_BIOTECHNOLOGY ...................... 137 TABLE 20. U TEST FOR GI AND GT WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I003_DESIGNERS ................................. 137 TABLE 21. U TEST FOR GI AND GT WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I004_COMPUTERS ............................... 138 TABLE 22. U TEST FOR GI AND GT WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I005_WIKIPEDIA ................................. 139 TABLE 23. U TEST FOR GI AND GT WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I006_ANTI-‐GENETIC ........................... 139 TABLE 24. U TEST FOR GA AND GB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I001_OIL ............................................. 140 TABLE 25. U TEST FOR GA AND GB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I002_BIOTECHNOLOGY ..................... 140 TABLE 26. U TEST FOR GA AND GB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I003_DESIGNERS ............................... 141 TABLE 27. U TEST FOR GA AND GB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I004_COMPUTERS ............................. 142 TABLE 28. U TEST FOR GA AND GB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I005_WIKIPEDIA ............................... 142 TABLE 29. U TEST FOR GA AND GB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I006_ANTI-‐GENETIC ......................... 143 TABLE 30. H TEST FOR GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I001_OIL ........................ 144 TABLE 31. H TEST FOR GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I002_BIOTECHNOLOGY 145 TABLE 32. H TEST FOR GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I003_DESIGNERS ........... 147 TABLE 33. H TEST FOR GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I004_COMPUTERS ......... 148 TABLE 34. H TEST FOR GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I005_WIKIPEDIA ........... 150 TABLE 35. H TEST FOR GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I006_ANTI-‐GENETIC ..... 151 . . . iii .

(11) . List of Figures FIGURE 1. DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE FOR THE TRANSLATION LEARNER CORPUS AND THE ERROR ANNOTATION ............................................................................................................................................................... 54 FIGURE 2. DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE FOR TRANSLATION ERROR ANALYSES ..................................................... 56 FIGURE 3. DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE FOR RETROSPECTIVE INTERVIEWS .......................................................... 59 FIGURE 4. MMAX2 USER INTERFACE-‐THE MAIN WINDOW ........................................................................................... 61 FIGURE 5. MMAX2 USER INTERFACE-‐THE ATTRIBUTE WINDOW ................................................................................ 62 FIGURE 6. MMAX2 USER INTERFACE-‐THE MARKABLE LEVEL CONTROL PANEL ....................................................... 62 FIGURE 7. MMAX2 USER INTERFACE-‐STYLE SHEET IN THE MARKABLE LEVEL CONTROL PANEL ......................... 63 FIGURE 8. MMAX2 USER INTERFACE-‐DEFAULT DISPLAY STYLE IN THE MAIN WINDOW ........................................ 63 FIGURE 9. MMAX2 USER INTERFACE-‐DISPLAY STYLE SHOWING ERROR TYPOLOGY LABEL AT THE RIGHT LOWER CORNER OF MARKABLES ............................................................................................................................................ 64 FIGURE 10. MMAX2 USER INTERFACE-‐QUERY CONSOLE IN THE MAIN WINDOW .................................................... 64 FIGURE 11. MMAX2 FOLDER STRUCTURE ........................................................................................................................ 65 FIGURE 12. SNAPSHOT OF MMAX2 PROJECT WIZARD ................................................................................................... 67 FIGURE 13. FINISHED DISPLAY OF ANNOTATION LEVELS ............................................................................................... 69 FIGURE 14. MARKING ELEMENTS IN THE BASE DATA ...................................................................................................... 70 FIGURE 15. THE POP-‐UP MENU OF MARKABLE LEVELS .................................................................................................. 70 FIGURE 16. BASE DATA EDITING ......................................................................................................................................... 71 FIGURE 17. THE POP-‐UP MENU OF CHOICES FOR BASE DATA EDITING ....................................................................... 71 FIGURE 18. EXAMPLE OF QUERY RESULTS OF MALE TRANSLATORS WITH EN23 ...................................................... 72 FIGURE 19. EXAMPLE OF QUERY RESULTS SHOWN IN STATISTICS ................................................................................ 73 FIGURE 20. DATA ANALYSIS FOR TRANSLATION ERROR ANALYSES .............................................................................. 85 FIGURE 21. DATA ANALYSIS FOR RETROSPECTIVE INTERVIEWS .................................................................................... 87 FIGURE 22. THE LEVEL OF TEXT INFORMATION IN MMAX2 ......................................................................................... 90 FIGURE 23. THE LEVEL OF TRANSLATOR BACKGROUND IN MMAX2 ........................................................................... 96 FIGURE 24. THE LEVEL OF TRANSLATION ERROR TYPOLOGY IN MMAX2 .................................................................. 97 FIGURE 25. THE SCRIPTS FOR SEARCHING ALL EB AND EN ERRORS OF STUDENT GT009 IN TEXT I005 IN THE QUERY CONSOLE ....................................................................................................................................................... 100 FIGURE 26. THE RESULTS OF ALL EB AND EN ERRORS OF STUDENT GT009 IN TEXT I005 IN THE MARABLE TUPLES OF THE QUERY CONSOLE .......................................................................................................................... 101 FIGURE 27. THE STATISTICS OF ALL EB AND EN ERRORS OF STUDENT GT009 IN TEXT I005 IN THE QUERY CONSOLE .................................................................................................................................................................... 102 FIGURE 28. A SEARCH ITEM SHOWN IN THE MAIN WINDOW ...................................................................................... 103 FIGURE 29. THE HTML OUTPUT OF ALL ANNOTATIONS OF GT005 IN TEXT I005 ............................................... 104 FIGURE 30. THE SCRIPTS FOR HTML OUTPUT OF ANNOTATIONS ............................................................................. 105 FIGURE 31. THE RESULTS OF EN14 ERRORS OF GT STUDENTS IN TEXT I005 IN THE MARKABLE TUPLES OF THE QUERY CONSOLE ....................................................................................................................................................... 107 FIGURE 32. THE HTML OUTPUT OF ALL ANNOTATIONS OF GT STUDENTS IN TEXT I005 ................................... 108 FIGURE 33. THE HEADWORD OF THE HIGHEST FREQUENCY IN TEXT I001: 能源 [NENG YUAN] ....................... 109 FIGURE 34. TRANSLATION OF “WEDNESDAY” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 1 (星期三 [XING QI SAN]) ..................... 110 FIGURE 35. TRANSLATION OF “WEDNESDAY” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 2 (週三 [ZHOU SAN]) ............................. 111 FIGURE 36. TRANSLATION OF “WEDNESDAY” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 3 (周三 [ZHOU SAN]) ............................. 112 FIGURE 37. TRANSLATION OF “TWO-‐THIRDS” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 1 (2/3) ...................................................... 113 FIGURE 38. TRANSLATION OF “TWO-‐THIRDS” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 2 (三分之二 [SAN FEN ZHI ER]) .......... 113 FIGURE 39. TRANSLATION OF “TWO-‐THIRDS” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 3 (二分之三 [ER FEN ZHI SAN]) .......... 114 FIGURE 40. TRANSLATION OF “TWO-‐THIRDS” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 4 (3分之2 [3 FEN ZHI 2]) ..................... 114 FIGURE 41. TRANSLATION OF “TUESDAY” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 1 (週二 [ZHOU ER]) ...................................... 116 FIGURE 42. TRANSLATION OF “TUESDAY” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 2 (星期二 [XING QI ER]) ............................ 117 FIGURE 43. TRANSLATION OF “TUESDAY” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 3 (周二 [ZHOU ER]) ...................................... 117 FIGURE 44. TRANSLATION OF “TUESDAY” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 4 (禮拜二 [LI BAI ER]) ................................ 118 FIGURE 45. TRANSLATION OF “TUESDAY” IN TEXT I001: OPTION 5 (週四 [ZHO SI]) .......................................... 118 FIGURE 46. TRANSLATION OF “ARTISAN” IN TEXT I003: OPTION 1 (工匠 [GONG JIANG]) .................................. 120 . . iv .

(12) . FIGURE 47. TRANSLATION OF “ARTISAN” IN TEXT I003: OPTION 2 (工藝師 [GONG YI SHI]) ............................. 120 FIGURE 48. TRANSLATION OF “ARTISAN” IN TEXT I003: OPTION 3, 4, AND 5 (工藝師傅 [GONG YI SHI FU]; 師傅 [SHI FU]; 工匠師傅 [GONG JIANG SHI FU]) ................................................................................................ 121 FIGURE 49. TRANSLATION OF “ARTISAN” IN TEXT I003: OPTION 6, 7, 8, AND 9 (手藝師 [SHOU YI SHI]; 手工藝師 [SHOU GONG YI SHI]; 工匠師 [GONG JIANG SHI]; 匠師 [JIANG SHI]) ................................................... 121 FIGURE 50. TRANSLATION OF “ARTISAN” IN TEXT I003: OPTION 10 AND 11 (手藝人 [SHOU YI REN]; 手藝師 [SHOU YI SHI]) ........................................................................................................................................................... 122 FIGURE 51. TRANSLATION OF “ARTISAN” IN TEXT I003: OPTION 12 AND 13 (藝匠 [YI JIANG]; 工藝匠 [GONG YI JIANG]) ................................................................................................................................................................... 122 FIGURE 52. TRANSLATION OF “ARTISAN” IN TEXT I003: OPTION 14 (藝術家 [YI SHU JIA]) .............................. 123 FIGURE 53. TRANSLATION OF “ARTISAN” IN TEXT I003: OPTION 15 (技師 [JI SHI]) ........................................... 123 FIGURE 54. TRANSLATION OF “ARTISAN” IN TEXT I003: OPTION 16, 17 AND 18 (師父 [SHI FU]; 工藝師父 [GONG YI SHI FU]; 工匠師父[GONG JIANG SHI FU] ............................................................................................ 124 FIGURE 55. TRANSLATION OF “THE HOUSE” IN TEXT I006: OPTION 1 (眾議院 [ZHONG YI YUAN]) ................. 125 FIGURE 56. TRANSLATION OF “THE HOUSE” IN TEXT I006: OPTION 2 (白宮 [BAI GONG]) ................................ 126 FIGURE 57. TRANSLATION OF “THE HOUSE” IN TEXT I006: OPTION 3 (下議院 [XIA YI YUAN]) ....................... 126 FIGURE 58. TRANSLATION OF “THE HOUSE” IN TEXT I006: OPTION 4 (議院 [YI YUAN]) ................................... 127 FIGURE 59. TRANSLATION OF “THE HOUSE” IN TEXT I006: OPTION 5 (議會 [YI HUI]) ...................................... 127 FIGURE 60. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I001_OIL ....... 132 FIGURE 61. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I002_BIOTECHNOLOGY ........................................................................................................................................... 132 FIGURE 62. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I003_DESIGNERS ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 133 FIGURE 63. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I004_COMPUTERS ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 134 FIGURE 64. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I005_WIKIPEDIA ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 135 FIGURE 65. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: THE GRAD GROUP & THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I006_ANTI-‐GENETIC ............................................................................................................................................... 135 FIGURE 66. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GI & GT ON TEXT I001_OIL ............. 136 FIGURE 67. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GI & GT ON TEXT I002_BIOTECHNOLOGY ........................................................................................................................................... 137 FIGURE 68. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GI & GT ON TEXT I003_DESIGNERS 137 FIGURE 69. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GI & GT ON TEXT I004_COMPUTERS ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 138 FIGURE 70. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GI & GT ON TEXT I005_WIKIPEDIA 138 FIGURE 71. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GI & GT ON TEXT I006_ANTI-‐GENETIC ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 139 FIGURE 72. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GA & GB ON TEXT I001_OIL ............ 140 FIGURE 73. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GA & GB ON TEXT I002_BIOTECHNOLOGY ........................................................................................................................................... 140 FIGURE 74. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GA & GB ON TEXT I003_DESIGNERS ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 141 FIGURE 75. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GA & GB ON TEXT I004_COMPUTERS ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 141 FIGURE 76. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GA & GB ON TEXT I005_WIKIPEDIA ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 142 FIGURE 77. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GA & GB ON TEXT I006_ANTI-‐GENETIC ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 143 FIGURE 78. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB ON TEXT I001_OIL ................................................................................................................................................................... 144 FIGURE 79. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB ON TEXT I002_BIOTECHNOLOGY ........................................................................................................................................... 145 . . v .

(13) FIGURE 80. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB ON TEXT I003_DESIGNERS ..................................................................................................................................................... 146 FIGURE 81. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB ON TEXT I004_COMPUTERS ................................................................................................................................................... 148 FIGURE 82. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB ON TEXT I005_WIKIPEDIA ..................................................................................................................................................... 149 FIGURE 83. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GIA, GIB, GTA & GTB ON TEXT I006_ANTI-‐GENETIC ............................................................................................................................................... 151 FIGURE 84. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: THE UNDER GROUP ON TEXT I001-‐I006 ......................................... 154 FIGURE 85. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: THE GRAD GROUP ON TEXT I001-‐I006 ............................................ 157 FIGURE 86. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GI ON TEXT I001-‐I006 ..................... 159 FIGURE 87. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GT ON TEXT I001-‐I006 .................... 161 FIGURE 88. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GA ON TEXT I001-‐I006 .................... 163 FIGURE 89. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GB ON TEXT I001-‐I006 .................... 165 FIGURE 90. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GIA ON TEXT I001-‐I006 .................. 167 FIGURE 91. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GIB ON TEXT I001-‐I006 .................. 169 FIGURE 92. FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GTA ON TEXT I001-‐I006 ............................. 171 FIGURE 93. MEAN FREQUENCY OF ERRORS: WITHIN THE GRAD GROUP-‐ GTB ON TEXT I001-‐I006 ................. 173 FIGURE 94. THE DECIDING FACTORS AND THE EVALUATION OF THE TRANSLATIONAL CHOICES OF LEARNERS 186 . . . vi .

(14) 1 . Chapter 1: Introduction Research Background and Motivation Error analysis (EA) has been nothing new in the field of language teaching and learning research; it enables teachers to locate the sources of errors and take pedagogical precautions towards them. For translation learners, various errors can occur during the course of learning, and the significance of their errors is no less than that of language learners’. The errors translation learners make can be viewed as steppingstones toward their goal of professionalism and therefore deserve careful and systematic investigations. In the field of English language teaching, teaching and learning resources have been made available from learner corpora annotated with systematically classified learner errors. Among the numerous learner corpora, the Chinese Leaner English Corpus (CLEC) 1 , for example, has stepped further to develop the web-‐based query interface for locating errors common to students in different years of study. Similar efforts have been rare in translation; one of them is the Learner Translator Corpus2 (LTC) of the Multilingual eLearning in Language Engineering (MeLLANGE) project in Europe. The LTC is a multilingual annotated corpus primarily composed of translations produced by trainee translators, and its primary purpose is to provide insights into the most significant characteristics of four text types in order to 1 The CLEC (中国英语学习者语料库) contains more than one million written English words collected from middle school students, the College English Test Band 4 and Band 6 testees , as well as junior and senior English majors. The error annotation of the CLEC has be made with its purpose of enhancing English teaching in China. The query page was available at http://www.clal.org.cn/corpus/ChiSearchEngine.aspx, accessed May 7, 2010. 2 The Learner Translator Corpus is a multilingual corpus of 440 student and professional translations covering four text types annotated with errors according to an error typology designed for the project. The MeLLANGE LTC also provides free access to its interactive query mechanism at http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk/mellange/mellange_query_interface.html. . .

(15) 2 inform translation pedagogy. The error typology used for annotation was designed specifically for the MeLLANGE project, focusing on describing and studying specific translation phenomena rather than giving any quality judgment. In translation teaching, particularly in the context of Chinese-‐English language combination, a few research studies of error analysis have been dedicated to student translation from Chinese into English, i.e. from the native language (NL) of students into their foreign language (FL), but even fewer on the other way around. From the observations of the researcher, there appears to be some difference in the translation errors of students who are at different stages of studying translation when they translate into their mother tongue from English. Undergraduate students and graduate students seem to have made some different errors when they translate the same source texts. The analyses of these errors, if carried out with systematic and consistent methods, can be of benefit both in translation learning and teaching. Just decades ago, it was a common classroom activity that teachers corrected or commented on student translations by pen and paper and returned the paper-‐based materials to the class for further discussions; however, owing to the advance of technology, teachers now are able to collect and analyze the translations in digital formats without difficulty. While the student translations are presented as softcopy on a computer screen for classroom discussions, the actual analyses are still mostly done manually, without making use of tools that offer systematic and consistent analyses. . .

(16) 3 While analyzing the errors in student translations has been common practices, it is less likely to observe directly where the errors come from. Teachers can only tap into the cognitive process of students by the clues gleaned from the translation products. Methods used to investigate translation processes, such as Think-‐Aloud-‐Protocols (TAPs) and Translog, have given researchers access to looking inside the black box, yet both need to align with other methods (triangulation) to get a clearer overview of the inner active mind of the translators. Research Purposes and Research Questions This study aims to investigate the relationship between the error types/frequency and the developmental stages of students as well as to explore whether there exists a gap between the causes of errors from students’ perspectives and the causes speculated by teachers. Traditional error analysis in language learning has suffered from limitations such as learner avoidance and depicting a static picture of learning; this research intends to compensate for such limitations by trying a new approach to addressing errors both from the translation product and from the translation process—which helps to offer a better understanding of not only the locations but also the origins of errors and is expected to yield findings applicable to enhancing translation learning and teaching. More importantly, the researcher intends to adopt a consistent and systematic method in the investigation of translation errors by compiling a Chinese learner translation corpus for this study and annotating the corpus with .

(17) 4 error tags, and to pioneer in testing the practicality of such method in the translation error analysis of similar sorts. Serving as a complement to traditional pen-‐and-‐paper-‐based . error . analysis, . the . corpus-‐based . approach . can . simultaneously investigate students’ translations against one source text with the use of a learner corpus. The significance of witnessing different versions of translation are multifold: for the teacher, the corpus-‐based application is useful in its exemplifying (in)adequate translation solutions that require subsequent remediation; for the students, the focus of using the learner corpora can gradually shift to be corpus-‐driven and student-‐based for enhancing autonomous learning– an important element proposed by Kiraly (2000) in socio-‐constructivist classroom settings or by Colina (2003) in communicative translation classrooms – when they learn from errors of their own and of others. Perhaps more notably, the simultaneous display of different translations helps raise students’ self-‐awareness of the decision-‐making nature in translation, which relates closely to translation competence, following Pym’s definition (1992): to choose the most appropriate translation from more than one alternative versions. In view of the preceding research purposes, three major questions are to be addressed: (1) How to compile an annotated Chinese learner translation corpus and use it to shed new light on the application of translation error analysis? (2) What is the relationship between the error types/frequency and the developmental stages of students? (3) What are the reasons behind errors of each type in different groups of students? . .