Learning Objectives
In the process of curriculum design，we have identified three learning objectives for translation courses:
(1)To foster learners’awareness of translation;
(2)To improve bilingual proficiency;
(3)To grasp basic translation skills.
As required by Monash University，each unit is taught 3 hours a week in a 12-week cycle.This means a total of 36 contact hours per semester for each unit.Any professional translator would seriously doubt the effectiveness of professional translation training in a time span of 36 hours.However，if the priority of translation teaching is placed on raising translation awareness—a realization of distinct syntactical and semantic features of both languages through comparison and contrast of source texts and target texts in the process of translation，teaching will be made practical and the learning objectives achievable.Formation of such awareness also includes practices aiming to foster good habit of translation，such as writing of translator’s notes，syntactical analysis，background research，translation appraisal.Nevertheless，I need to stress the importance of translation skills which have been put last in the list，and it is a critical link in serving the purpose of overall translation awareness.
With respect to enhancement of bilingual skills，a main function of translation courses at undergraduate level shall be the training of respective language competence of the two languages involved.It is a consensus in translation and education research that proficiency of native language determines that of the second language(Cohen，1998).If native language level is raised through learning translation，translation studies and practice at higher level will eventually benefit from the process as a result.For instance，native Chinese students learning translation in an English language environment such as Australia have the following trends in their language proficiency maintenance(see Fig.14.4).
Fig.14.4 Non-native-English speaker learning translation in Australia
To students with different language backgrounds，the above shows that in second language acquisition，compared with Chinese students，native English language background students learning Chinese have no advantage due to the lack of Chinese language emersion，while native Chinese language students studying in Australia have advantage in that they have better chance in improving their second language English in an English language environment.What we can deduct from reading this chart is that the aim of translation teaching at undergraduate level shall not be focused on training translation skills but rather on improving their bilingual proficiency and cross-cultural vision.