An empirical research on negative transfer in college non-english majors' Chinese-English sentence translation

Abstract

Nowadays, the transferred errors in non-English majors' Chinese-English(C-E) sentence translation, which have been ignored by many teachers, are very remarkable. It has deeply affected the total translation process and the accuracy of the translation version. Moreover, it also has affected the scores in all kinds of English tests for non-English majors. This paper is an empirical research which focuses on the negative transfer of college non-English majors in their C-E sentence translation. The research approach is the C-E translation test paper. The software Excel 2007 and SPSS 16.0 have been used to analyze. With respect to the results, the transferred errors in C-E sentence translation, have taken up 73%, especially in the field of syntax. The essential causes are found and some suggestions are given to College English Teaching based on the findings. © 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.