Effects of English Majors’ Translation Self-efficacy and Translation Learning Motivation on Their Translation Performance 英语专业大学生翻译自我效能感与翻译学习动机对翻译水平的影响文献综述

 2022-01-04 08:01

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文献综述

1. IntroductionIt is obvious that economic globalization and trade liberalization are becoming prominent features of the contemporary world, which requires deepening cross-culture communications. Under such a background, translation will be an essential method to build a communicative bridge between different cultures. With the rapid development of the translation curriculum system for undergraduate English majors, increasing numbers of students prefer to choose translation as their postgraduate study orientation. Translation as a higher-level skill of English proficiency becomes not only a crucial course during undergraduate years but also a vital part that will be examined in the TEM 8. Therefore, translation has been a hot research field among domestic and international EFL scholars. There is a host of theses focusing on the translation theory, translation teaching methodologies and compiling translation textbooks. Apparently, those researches study on the external influence factors of translation learning process, which means we have not paid enough attention to the subject of translation learning. It is generally acknowledged that English majors have significant differences in the translational level, even though they are under the same course arrangement and taught by the same teacher. It is critical that we have to take a further step on the study of the internal influence factor that the psychological process of the English majors when they are learning translation. Many factors have strong influence on the learning effect. What cannot be ignored is the impact of learning motivation on the learning process. Gardner (1985) suggested that motivation was one element that decided the degree of positive individual English proficiency. So, is translation learning motivation also promoting the improvement of translational level? Wu (2019) studied on the correlation between translation learning motivation and translational level, and drew a conclusion that learning motivation indeed improved the performance of translation. Besides, there are also many subjective factors exerting a comparably strong impact on the efficiency of English learning such as self-efficacy, which has been proved to be one of indispensable reasons leading to success. Since peoples assumptions about their own capacities to appropriately perform certain tasks seem to play an important role in the outcome of these tasks (Bandura, 1992). From this perspective, self-efficacious people are more likely to be highly motivated and seem to stick to doing something longer and to input more effort once an action has been initiated (Bandura, 1995). In that way, there would be a question whether translation self-efficacy can help raise translational level. While the domestic paper has not involved in this specific field. In order to meet the higher requirements of modern society, English majors have already put translational skills into a great position, they still feel a delicacy about some translation tasks. There are still many problems about learning translation needed to be further studied. In this thesis, an empirical study on the roles in translation self-efficacy and translation learning motivation in students translation performance. 1.1 Need for the studyThere have been plentiful comprehensive studies on self-efficacy, which covers wide areas including English learning. Whereas those studies focused on listening, reading or writing self-efficacy, there are fewer scholars keeping a watchful eye on translation self-efficacy. In addition, as one of critical influence factors during translation learning, translation learning motivation is worth investing efforts to study. Therefore, as mentioned above, this thesis combined translation self-efficacy and translation learning motivation in order to issue a detailed analysis of their effects on the translation performance. Since translation as a requisite higher skill for every English major, the study has both practical significance and value. On the one hand, it provides a statistic epitome of two main factors exerting implication on current English majors translation performance, which can bring some reference value for further study. On the other hand, the results are also meaningful for teachers to make acknowledgements of students psychological situation towards translation tasks. They can suit their teaching methods to the situation so that help students acquire different translation skills and improve their translation performance. 1.2 Research purposeThe main purpose of this research is to find out the effects of translation self-efficacy and motivation on English majors translation performance, and to provide some suggestions for translation teaching of English major undergraduates in China. In addition, the thesis also aims at causing translation teaching researchers to pay attention to the self-efficacy and learning motivation of translation learners, so that we can deepen our cognition on the internal factors that influence the translation performance. For one thing, based on these purposes, the research guided by self-efficacy theory and used relevant scales designed by previous scholars that have been validated. For another thing, to measure English majors motivation and self-efficacy in translation learning with scientific methods and probe into the effects of two factors on the translation performance. To sum up, the research is expected to prove the influence of self-efficacy and learning motivation on English majors translation performance and supplement the existing domestic and foreign related research. By true and reliable data analysis, the results can bring some practical and useful suggestions to teachers when they are teaching English majors. 2. Literature ReviewIn this part, the previous researches on the English learning self-efficacy and translation learning motivations. During the past decades, self-efficacy has drawn a lot of attention from different scholars in various fields of psychology, education, second language acquisition and so on. These theses have achieved some outstanding accomplishments and reached certain consensuses, which also provides a solid foundation to the further studies. It is imperative to make a brief review about the current situation of self-efficacy and translation learning motivation so that the depth and width of the research can be clearly found out.2.1 Theoretical researches2.1.1 Self-efficacy Self-efficacy technically is an educational psychology theory that was raised by the eminent American psychologist of the time, Albert Bandura who is the founder of social learning theory. Self-efficacy accounts for individuals beliefs in their own competencies to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations (Bandura, 1997). That contended self-efficacy refers to an individuals expectations of whether he or she has the ability to complete a certain behavior in a specific situation. If a person holds a strong belief that he or she is able to manage the task as well as expecting, when there come some difficulties, it will not be a serious obstacle. In addition, Linnenbrink Pintrich (2003) excogitated a framework which hypothesized that self-efficacy would exert evident impact on student participation and learning. In this framework, self-efficacy influenced learning effect in three ways, namely, learners cognitive, motivational and behavioral participation. Therefore, self-efficacy can lead to more participation and better learning outcomes. From this theory, we can clearly figure out that successful learning experiences can enhance self-assurance and belief in one's concept of competence, while failed learning will reduce one's level of confidence and self-imagination.Furthermore, domestic scholars did many researches about self-efficacy as well, Zhou Guo (2006) summarized that self-efficacy was not a skill, not a persons true capability, but the individuals self-confidence in the ability to perform a specific task. Learning self-efficacy refers to the individuals academic ability belief, refers to the evaluation of learners confidence in whether they can use their existing abilities or skills to complete learning tasks, and is a subjective judgment of the individuals ability to control learning behavior and academic performance (Zhang Liu, 2009). While in the field of second language acquisition, Ellis (2013) held that the language learning process of second language learners was affected by individual beliefs, and this New Year included the individuals self-efficacy and confidence in language learning.2.1.2 Learning motivationLearning motivation is one of the most dynamic factors in language learning, and it actually explains why and what for people learn. Learning motivation to a large extent determines whether a language learner can effectively use most of the opportunities to practice the second language. At the same time, it also decides the enthusiasm of learners to learn the second language and the confidence to overcome learning difficulties (Qin, 2003). Motivation to learn a second language is regarded as the extent to which the individual works or strives to learn the language because of a desire to do so and the satisfaction experienced during this activity (Gardner, 1985). As motivation is vitally critical for the second language learning, it is crucial to know what the students motivation exactly is (Gardner,1994). After further research, Gardner proposed the socio-education Model, which divided learning motivation into instrumental motivation and integrative motivation. Instrumental motivation refers to language learning for the purpose of personal benefit, such as to facilitate job hunting, etc. Integrative motivation refers to learners' language learning based on their ability to integrate into the target language group. Compared with instrumental motivation, integration motivation is more important.2.2 Empirical researches2.2.1 Related empirical researches on self-efficacyWhen it comes to empirical studies on English learning self-efficacy, actually, the most of theses focused on the self-efficacy about specific aspect of English learning process, for instance, reading, writing and speaking. Zhang os-Medina ez (2018) made a thorough and rigorous investigation of translators self-efficacy. They developed a new scale for testing the self-efficacy beliefs of 74 subjects and the self-efficacy was divided into five parts to measure such as ST production and TT reception, client-related issues, and strategic competence. After data analysis, they finally reached a decision that self-efficacy was positively correlated with translation competence. The whole research process is very complete and comprehensive. Moreover, the original and effective scale is of great reference significance for future research. 2.2.2 Related empirical researches on learning motivationAlthough learning motivation has received extensive attention in the field of foreign language learning, there are few studies on learners translation learning motivation. However, it should not be overlooked that empirical investigations on translation learning motivation of translation learners need to be carried out. This will help us understand the real situation of learners motivation for translation and help us implement effective translation teaching guidance.To begin with, Wu (2013) studied on translation learning motivations and their characteristics of development among English majors. Moreover, Han (2015) did an empirical study on English majors translational learning strategies and motivation. He found that although there existed some differences of translational learning motivation in gender, it was very slight. As for the correlation between learning motivation and strategies, the subject with stronger learning motivation were more willing to develop different learning strategies according to the learning situation. In addition, Li Liu (2017) investigated the differences in foreign language learning motivation among undergraduates of different majors, foreign language proficiency and gender in four domestic universities. Besides, Wu (2019) further studied and pointed out that translation learning motivation among English majors was strong, additionally, students with higher levels of motivation in translation learning performed better in translation tasks. By and large, there are not many empirical studies on translation self-efficacy and translation learning motivation. The research mainly adopts the methods of questionnaire survey and translation test, and the research results are somewhat different. Thus, there is still room for further research. 2.3 Problems in the previous studiesBoth self-efficacy and learning motivation have been studied in a large number of academic papers. Though these two topics have attracted much attention, there are still some defects needing to be improved. Compared to the number of papers in English reading, writing and speaking, there are much fewer researches on translation. Especially, those studies of emotional and psychological factors on the translation proficiency are very rare. Furthermore, the perspective of current studies on the English learning process is simple. Most of studies focused on the effect of only one factor self-efficacy or learning motivation in the translation performance, or the correlation between these two factors. The majority of them measured by questionnaires or interviews and the questionnaire survey was relatively single. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to combine self-efficacy and learning motivation to study the influence of these two factors on translation proficiency, and to explore whether these two factors have a positive effect on English majors translation proficiency. It is hoped to fill the gap of research results in this field and provide more experiences to the future studies. ReferencesBandura, A. (1992). Exercise of personal agency through the self-efficacy mechanism. In R. Schwarzer (ed.), Self-efficacy: thought control of action (pp. 338). Washington: Hemisphere. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Worth Publishers.Bandura, A. (2006). Guide for constructing self-efficacy scales. Self-efficacybeliefs of adolescents, 5(1), 307-337.Bolaos-Medina, A., ez Juan L. (2018). A preliminary scale for assessing translators self-efficacy. Across languages and cultures, 19(1), 53-78.Ellis, R. (2013). The study of second language acquisition. Shanghai: ShanghaiForeign Language Education Press.Gardner, R. (1979). Social psychological aspects of second language acquisition. In H. Giles 以新疆高校学生为例，硕士学位论文。

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