Teaching Translation With the Notion of Discourse Analysis Under Different Communication Patterns

The study of teaching translation has always been influenced by the theory of foreign language teaching, regardless of the theoretical or practical approaches the researchers used. In the classroom, students are frequently bored with translating grammar because they are seldom taught how grammar works. In view of this teaching gap, this study offers new translating skills for students to enhance their understanding and readability of the translated texts. Dr. Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture,” available in both video and text, was used as the study material because of the special language features of speech and written texts. Using Dr. Pausch’s spoken and written material, the study adopted Hall’s (1976) intercultural communication patterns together with discourse analyses by Halliday and Hasan (1976), so that students can learn how to analyze coherence and cohesion in their translations with different communication patterns. The subjects for this study were 80 English-major students, and the tools are four texts from Dr. Pausch’s speech and published books. Data from student learning journals and their pre-test and post-test results were collected for statistical examination. Rather than simply translating words and following grammatical rules, the study provides new ideas for teaching translating, enhancing the quality of student translations by melding the latter with their personal experiences of the words they read and hear.