(1) Variables in translation practice and teaching

Since many of China's university foreign language students will eventually enter the T/I market, we have to prepare them for the new challenges they are going to face. As the world is going through the process of globalization, the volume of T/I work is growing at a tremendous pace. With the development of new fields in inter-disciplinary studies and frontier science, there are many topics and terms which the translators/interpreters cannot be expected to be familiar with. Yet they do require T/I, and the job has to be done within a tight schedule. This situation calls for help from terminologists and consultation with specialists. Hence the development and use of terminology dictionaries and software is essential. Students would be in a disadvantageous position if they were not taught the use of these translation tools. The ability to make use of some of the tools listed above is absolutely necessary in an Information Age when competition is fiercer than ever before and the tempo of life has increased dramatically. This new requirement is what I call variables in translation practice and studies because some of the subject matters which professors are familiar with are no longer as significant as before while subjects with which they are unfamiliar are coming to the fore. And this process of change will undoubtedly speed up in the 21st century.

I must add that this situation is not unique to China. Throughout Europe and the United States, academics and translators /interpreters are calling for reforms in language and translation teaching. In Europe, for example, a program called POSI, stressing the importance of a more practice-oriented curriculum, is under serious study. Here in China too I would like to see some changes take place, such as the setting up of T/I colleges and departments, revamping the curriculum and introducing new textbooks and teaching methods.

(2) Invariables in translation practice and teaching

Does it mean that all our previous knowledge about T/I is outdated? No, not at all. In this Information Age, I believe while students need to be familiar with new fields of knowledge and be capable of handling new tools, mastery of the basics in T/I has become more, rather than less, important. This is what I call the invariables in translation practice and teaching. To take full advantage of all the available new Information Technology (IT), students need to have a solid grounding in T/I skills. And for that, they need a thorough understanding of the source language (SL) and the ability to express themselves fluently in the target language (TL). In China, few people are bilingual, but acquiring both these capabilities is a prerequisite to quality T/I. Command of a foreign language cannot be achieved without a comprehensive understanding of the culture associated with the language. To achieve this, it is necessary both to study the history, philosophy and literature of that country or countries, and to live and study and possibly to work there in order to get a sense of the values, thinking process and way of life of the local people. With China opening to the world and the development of modern means of transportation, this latter requirement is now within reach to a good portion of Chinese language and translation students and perhaps to most translation scholars. The significance of this goal cannot be over-emphasized.

Here I would like also to stress the importance of mastering our mother tongue, the Chinese language. This is harder than it seems. In a world where television, computer and/or pop culture are occupying so much of our young people's time, when visuals are all pervasive, there is a malignant tendency to neglect the writing skill. People read and write less, not more. I am not a purist and I agree that languages need to change with the times. Yet one has only to peruse the Chinese press to realize how 'polluted' our language has become.

In the United States, we find an ongoing controversy over the same question and the appearance of advocates of so-called 'cultural literacy'. In China, too, we need to safeguard standard Chinese from the onslaught of sloppy use of our native language. While I am all for the teaching of translation studies in universities so that students can be initiated into both the hows and whys of T/I, they would not be able to really appreciate what the different theories are driving at

without previous translation experience. For example, to understand the significance of target-oriented theories, you must have first-hand experience in handling pragmatic texts and receiving feedback from customers. In this respect, internship in translation companies is also indispensable. Just as the best way to learn swimming is to swim, so the best way to learn all the ramifications of the translation process is to work on a translation project. There is nothing that can compare with the good old master-student relationship, which our forefathers devised centuries ago. Don’t get me wrong. I am not against translation studies, nor against the introduction of Western translation theories into China. All I am saying is the study of translation theories should come after translation practice and not before. A swimmer must be trained scientifically, but that can only be done in a pool and not on the ground.

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