Thinking Path Schema of English Translation for Chinese Classics: An Empirical Study on Translation Schema in Translation Courses

In view of the complicated translation cognitive process, the study investigated and compared students’ translation process of Chinese Classics through translation thinking path schema. Seventy-six participants learning translation courses based on parallel level in two classes of one Chinese university, some of them trained for four months intentionally, were involved into some translation experiments with selected ancient Chinese classic poems. By the form of discussions, cooperation, or individual written translation, data were gathered from manuscripts, answer sheets, video recordings, think-aloud questionnaires, reflection papers, and interviews, which were integrated and categorized into the process classification evaluation tables in qualitative and quantitative analysis for the empirical study. Through some visible comparing and contrasted data elucidation, results indicated the obvious advantages of making use of the thinking path schema in Chinese Classics translation among trained students, who have presented more diversified translation thinking courses and superior evaluation scores in general. What’s more, author could be regarded as an element considered into the angle of translator, but not an independent angle as other non-Chinese-classic-text translation process, amending the former thinking path schema. Furthermore, the conclusions and amendments after translation experiments could be considered into the dynamic translation process for Chinese classics.