The speech delivered at the seminar by Prof. Zhao Junfeng, Secretary General of the China National…

The speech delivered at the seminar by Prof. Zhao Junfeng, Secretary General of the China National Committee for Translation & Interpreting Education

The speech delivered at the National (MTI) Education and Employment (Henan, Shandong Province) Seminar by Prof. Zhao Junfeng, Secretary General of the China National Committee for Translation & Interpreting Education

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning!

The 2016 National Education and Employment Seminar for Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) and the High-level Forum for Translation Technique Teaching in Henan Province are being held in the beautiful Zhengzhou University. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to the organizers of the seminar for their invitation. On behalf of the National Steering Committee for Master of Translation and Interpreting and in my own name, I warmly congratulate that the seminar is held successfully and I wish it a complete success.

Collaborative innovation is a new paradigm of scientific and technological innovation and it’s also a new path of industrial development. The cooperation among language service companies, language technology companies, universities and research institutes, translators, and even customers could give play to their own advantages, integrate and complement resources, collaborate on activities for technological innovation and industrialization of scientific and technological achievements, which is the new trend of the development of language service industry. The implementation of "Belt and Road" national strategy cannot be separated from the support of higher education and universities, which provide necessary support on human resources and intellect. The professionals training of higher education plays a unique role in aspects of “Education Diplomacy, Culture Guidance, Think Tank Support, Industry Convergence”. Behind the " Belt and Road" national strategy is economy and culture, and a large number of supporting infrastructure projects and medium and long-term projects are launched in the countries and regions involved as well as provinces and cities in China. All these projects are related to information translation, language services, economic and trade docking, and tackling crucial issues, which are inseparable from the support of universities that aggregate professionals, because universities provide collaborative and integrated support on relevant scientific research, technology, resources and human resources.

In recent years, the number of Bachelor of Translation and Interpreting (BTI) degree and Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) degree is increasing. So far, in China, 230 universities have provided BTI education and 205 universities MTI education. Against the background of “The Age of Big Data”, and “Internet Plus”, the cultivation of translation professionals must face new problems and challenges brought by the "professionalization" of the translation industry and even the language service industry. However, it is very realistic and urgent that teaching and student self-training should be implemented effectively and with high quality. According to the assessment on 144 universities completed by the National Advisory Committee on MTI Teaching, last year, 10 universities were asked to “make rectifications within a time limit”, and one university was “revoked the educational qualification of running the university”. We find that at present, there are notable and universal problems in the interpreter and translator training in China, for example, the practical ability of full-time teachers is weak; the team building of part-time teachers is inadequate; students lack of relevant professional knowledge; the construction of practice teaching base is not enough and so on. These problems can be further specified as follows:

(1) Lack of professional teachers in interpreting and translation. The number of professional teachers in interpreting and translation is difficult to meet the needs of the increasing interpreting and translation courses and students. At present, many teachers who engage in interpreting and translation teaching are deployed from literature, linguistics and other discipline. So the priority is to make these teachers effectively master the method of interpreting and translation teaching as soon as possible.

(2) Deficient systematization of interpreting and translation teaching knowledge. Faced with the insights of interpreting and translation phenomenon, methods and techniques by different experts in interpreting and translation studies, these teachers often impart personal experience and make subjective comments, and they lack the comprehensive sorting and construction of the knowledge system, which leads to the lack of theory support interpreting, translation and language when explaining practices.

(3) Limited interpreting and translation teaching resources. Classical corpus resources of interpreting and translation teaching are limited, and traditional teaching materials cannot be expanded and updated with cited examples in time due to the limitation of its nature, especially teaching materials translated from Chinese to English which lack high-quality and full range of up-to-date corpus.

(4) Monotonous interpreting and translation class model, and inadequate training and detailed comment. Interpreting and translation classes are mostly commentary-based, lack changing-over between learning and exercise, between explanation and practice, between students' inter-assessment and teachers’ marking, and between different themes and types of translation. These teachers are burdened with arduous tasks to correct students’ interpreting and translation homework. With the increase in the number of interpreting and translation courses and students, there is little chance for each student to have instructed translation training and detailed correction, which are also hard to be systematized.

(5) Interpreting and translation teaching management and quality control are not well optimized. In interpreting and translation teaching, there are insufficient follow- up investigations on the students' learning behaviors and learning outcomes. Especially when the number of students is large but opportunities for exercise and correction are few, it is more difficult to carry out scientific and effective teaching management and quality control.

(6) Lack of unified evaluation standard in interpreting and translation proficiency test. At present, the domestic interpreting and translation proficiency test has been unable to meet the needs of the existing interpreting and translation teaching, and the market is in urgent need of an authoritative and standard interpreting and translation proficiency test and evaluation system.

Therefore, it is suggested that MTI should take national development strategy as its education orientation and take occupational demand, namely, the new development of language service industry as its course orientation. It should focus on  the selection, improvement, expansion and development of practice base and carry out teaching activities with practice ability as an emphasis. It should take the construction of teaching team as a key. Professional teachers should also take the initiative to improve their own knowledge structure, and enhance the professional competence of interpreting and translation teaching, which should be promoted in interpreting and translation practice, interpreting and translation studies, teaching research and other aspects. Universities should build as required a part-time teaching team constituted by professionals from the interpreting and translation industry or language service industry in order to instruct students in practice and project researches. Universities should also adhere to advancing with the times and collaborative innovation. They should carry out cooperation with enterprises at all fronts and improve the communication with the industry and the industry association. Meanwhile, they should conform to the national standards and basic requirements of teaching, give full play to their distinctive advantages, adapt to the national strategies, especially the local economic and social development needs, and take quality assurance system as the main method for improvement and enhancement.

Language service industry is a modern emerging service industry formed in the context of globalization and rapid development of information technology, which is a branch of modern service industry. Language service industry is gradually becoming a pillar industry for enterprises to go out, a strategic industry for Chinese culture to go out, and the basic industry for the development of modern service outsourcing, and it provides basic support for economic globalization.

The establishment of first-class universities and disciplines cannot be separated from the construction of first-class teachers and students. In order to cultivate excellent first-class interpreting and translation professionals, we must focus on the concept of "putting people first", make efforts on the following three aspects, "ability training", "quality cultivation" and "knowledge imparting". To this end, universities must clarify their educational concepts, hold the principles of education, keep up with the tide of the society, adapt to the needs of industry development. Educator Mei Yiqi once said, “Schools are like a pond, teachers and students are like fish in it. They are like fish swimming in the pond, big fish leading and small fish trailing. Once the students have swum for a long time behind their teachers, they would be influenced by what they constantly sees and hears naturally and involuntarily.” As for the cultivation of interpreting and translation professionals, to train excellent swimmers, teachers must be first-class swimmers themselves.

With the gradual emergence of language service industry and the continuous development of relevant emerging industries, the development of interpreter and translator training and research as well as translation-based language service has entered a new stage where the academic connotation, the research direction and the educational goal of the discipline have changed greatly, the characteristics of which are shown as follows: change from traditional linguistic ontology to application research of interpreting and translation teaching, proficiency testing and language services; change from traditional time-consuming and inefficient traditional teaching research for foreign language translation to ground-breaking and efficient training mode research for translation professionals; change from monolingual research to the multi-disciplinary and integrated research; change from pure academic theory research to language services focusing on economy and culture as well as the joint research and development of technology.

Cultivation of large number of high-quality professionals in language service, language services information collection, analysis and publishing, and development of high-end language service technology are large-scale, complex systematic projects, which require multiparty forces to promote jointly.

I think collaborative innovation can be carried out from the following points:

1. Collaboration between universities and enterprises

Through cooperating with translation industry enterprises, publishing houses and academic journals, universities can develop and establish teaching assistant platforms, network of translation proficiency training platforms, teacher training bases for computer aided translation, provide platforms for national interpreting and translation teaching reform, proficiency test for translation majors and professional quality training for interpreting and translation teachers. At the same time, they can promote and present the achievements of translation discipline reform through academic journals and publishing house.

2. Collaboration among universities

Through cooperation among national universities with interpreting and translation majors, national and shared translation corpus can be established, forming a large-scale corpus with disciplinary characteristics in medical science, teaching, art, sports, agriculture, forestry, water conservancy, oceanography, petroleum engineering.

3. Collaboration between universities and governments

Through cooperating with local governments, universities can build distinctive Chinese-to-English corpuses that serve to promote traditional culture with local characteristics and develop local economy, and establish training base and practice base for cultivating professionals of interpreting and translation and applied foreign language. For example: corpus of lighting, metal-ware, clothing, local culture, tourism resources and so on.

4. Domestic and overseas cooperation

Through collaborating with interpreting and translation teaching and training association, universities can promote the collaborative innovation of China and other countries, especially universities and language service enterprises along the route of “Belt and Road”, organize high-end interpreting and translation teaching and practice, academic communication activities, seminars, forums and teacher training of different topics, so as to accelerate and make contributions to the cultivation of international and interdisciplinary interpreting and translation professionals, national interpreting and translation teaching, development of interpreting and translation disciplines.

In addition, “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” is the new national development strategy. Since 2015, China has issued a series of guidance to support innovation and entrepreneurship, and in response to it, universities encourage students to carry out innovation and entrepreneurship practice. Laboratories, parks and incubators of entrepreneurship sprung up all over the place, and innovation and entrepreneurship competitions were in full swing. A good innovation and entrepreneurship eco-circle is coming into being gradually. At the same time, language service industry, as the basic supporting industry of social and economic development in the era of globalization, has shown the development trend of globalization, industrialization and digitalization, and has gradually been showing its strategic value. The construction of language information network will become a new model of collaboration between universities and enterprises, and will further push forward the development of innovation and entrepreneurship of the professionals cultivation in universities.

In the end, I wish the conference a complete success!

Thank you very much!