商务英语口译能力的培养与对策.doc

Abstract

English is the most widely used language in the world. It is also China's first foreign language; therefore Chinese universities open it up as major frequently. Along with the deepening of reform and opening up and the speed up of internationalization, as well as the continuous improvement of China's international status, China's foreign trade and cultural exchanges develop rapidly. At the same time, problem has been raised that there are not enough interpretors meeting the require of market, further, what the market really need is the one who can really handle English well. To English language learners of china, their general strength is "reading" and "listening", but their speaking level is generally lagged behind other countries’ English learners.
From "China's first English-Chinese Interpretation Theory and Teaching Seminar"(1996) to "the Fifth National Interpretation practice, teaching and research conference"(2004), an eight years’ basic outlines has been made. The development of China's interpretation of is bumpy, however it changes with each passing day and the direction toward profession has been developped. The literature of interpretation emerge quickly. Such as "personnel training interpreters and interpretation research" Guo LanYing (2007) "Interpretation theoretical study" Zhang Wen. Han Changhui (2006) "Interpretation Theory Overview" Bao Gang (2005). From there reports, we can tell that more and more people focus on the field of interpretation.

Key words: negotiation; oral English; training
中文摘要
英语是世界上使用最广泛的语言，也是中国的第一外语，甚至是中国高校开设最多的专业。随着改革开放的深入、国际化进程的加快以及我国国际地位的不断提高，中国对外贸易和文化交流迅猛发展，社会对口译人员的需求越来越大，人才需求的定位也越来越高。口译工作存在着优秀口译人员数量缺乏、口译队伍整体业务素质较低的状况。而中国的英语学习者在英语学习上的普遍强项是“阅读”与“听力”，只是口语水平则普遍落后于其他以英语为第一外语的国家。
从1996年“首届中国英汉口译理论与教学研讨会”，到2004年“第五届全国口译实践、教学与研究会议”，基本勾勒出8年来中国口译发展的轨迹，道路虽有崎岖不平，却是日新月异，向着专业化的道路发展。针对口译方面的文献也不断涌现。如《口译与口译人才培养研究》郭兰英（2007） 《口译理论研究》张文.韩常慧（2006） 《口译理论概述》鲍刚（2005）。由此我们不难看到国人对口译领域的越渐重视。

关键词：英语; 口语; 培训

1. Introduction

Language is a communication tool for learning. To improve the ability of communicating in English, foreign language teaching is of foundational importance. In various activities, students are encouraged to put what they have learned into practical use, teacher’s spare time and energy to help improving all steps develop smoothly. The training is very demanding to both teachers and students. Professionally and scientifically both sides need to reach a level which should be well adapted to the reality of the trade fields. Unlike common language training, business interpreter training is aimed at producing capable human recourse to deal with all kinds of situations and cases; therefore curriculum designing and special skills training both need to be arranged flexibly and thoughtfully. All possible relative factors must be taken into consideration in the training so as to fulfill the task effectively. There is no doubt at all to be aware of the true condition and situation of the trainees so as to adopt better methods in the training effectively. This article will look into objective causes making students unable to utilize English feasibly, and then propose the solutions to the corresponding problems.
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2. The Necessity of Looking for a Way to Enhance the Ability of Interpreters

In China, along with the rapid development in economy, more talents are needed in the fields of business and trade market. Business interpreters are required to meet the higher standard of services both in quantity and quality, for their performance directly connects some reputation of our country, our culture and our people. Whether our interpreters have higher professional ethics; whether our interpreters are well-established with their professional background; whether they display welcome personalities will all be shown objectively in their behaviors or by the partners.
In China, the training of specialized expertise lags behind the social needs. In fact in schools normal English training is carried out traditionally and generally, which cannot be fit for the special needs of the active broad market. Naturally, how to develop a set of well designed curriculum and methods are of great practical importance to help booming the powerful economic development of our country in the import and export fields.
So far it is worthwhile to take the subject as a topic to make some study and research. Language training with specula aim has its own characteristics in nature. English business interpreters are supposed to be proficient at least in speaking and listening. They are required to be advance in language application. Yet business field is not fixed as what the normal training books simply put. Therefore business training is a very challenging job.

3. The Countermeasures of Business Interpreting Ability

If we want to improve our oral English, we need to do a great deal of imitation, recitation and retelling exercise. The purpose of it is to train our intonation and fluency, which do us a great favor to cultivate the sense of English. At the same time, through various ways, such as reading; exercises; listening to English tape; reading English videos and films, enlarge our vocabulary. It also helps us adapt to the habit of English expression and enlarge our knowledge of English. Before taking part in communication, we need to familiar with the common words and phrases. Familiarization is the premise of communication. Only familiar with a language, can we talk to the others smoothly. The standard of familiarization is talking without thinking. Many advices will be made to deal with the problem of oral English.

3.1 The change of mind and brave innovation develop students’ oral English ability
With the development of society and the increase of external communication, the requirement of English talent becomes increasingly strice; therefore they should be trained to a typical level to meet the need of society. Under such a situation, students must have strong language skills. During the process of teaching English, teachers are necessary to change their mind conscientiously. Innovation and change of teaching methods are also very important. The three ways being mentioned above all do favor to students to improve their English skills and develop their oral English ability.

3.2 Emphasis on resource and facilities of English learning
Improving the English communication capability means to train students’ listening and hearing ability. The cultivation of listening and hearing ability is a long-term accumulation and imperceptible influence. It is very difficult to achieve the purpose only though class teaching; therefore, Offering a special hearing classroom, video facilities and materials and oral English environment are the necessary conditions to support and help students. A long-term adherence to listen to a variety of news and daily dialogue with special materials help students strength and improve their language foundation. We need to know that students are hard to improve while they only depend on the learning materials.

3.3 To understand the American culture, and enhance cross-cultural communicative competence
Language and culture are closely related. Language is the carrier of culture and language is a form of expression. In order to utilize language appropriately, students must have a better understanding of the culture of other countries, especially the Anglo-American countries. A great deal of reading is an effective way to understand the American culture. At the beginning, the English reading materials should be easier, involving all aspects of American society. Teachers should train students to observe and understand the social context of language ability. Moreover, teachers should let students know under different situations that it needs to be aware of using different kinds of language, which is to understand the status of the speakers. During the process of language teaching, it should be conscious to combine the language with environmental and social context. The purpose of it is to expand student’s knowledge and improve their ability of cross-cultural communication.

3.4 The characters of business negotiation
Business negotiation utilizes English in economic and trade negotiations to reach an agreement or find a solution to problems or talks, discussions, and even the whole process of purchasing or selling. In this area, the most important point is price negotiation which is also the most complex and sensitive parts. Although the purpose of the negotiations is to achieve a win-win result, the side you are in holds the same purpose in mind-- to earn as much as possible. While you are working to get higher interest, your opponent hopes for their interests too. So business negotiation can be compared with “a war without fire”. Then, we need a set of rules and techniques and keep a cool throughout the process in order to achieve the satisfactory results ultimately. In other words, successful business interpretation is an art of skills and sophistications. The outcome of business negotiation is reflected by agreement of both parts and contract. Contractual terms actually reflect the various rights and obligations of buyer and sellers.

4. The Role Teachers Should Play to Enhance Student’s Interpreting Skills

Clearly, knowing the skills of countermeasure is far from enough. The reason is that interpreting skills and some impersonal factors are both playing a pretty important role during the process of interpretation. For oral English teaching the teacher’s role is the leading part in planning and processing, which should be followed by students with interests and effects. All the trainees are eager to practice what they want to show after learning instead of getting higher grades only. Unfortunately the present situation in China’s training still puts too much attention on technical or theoretical points, even though many trainers are realizing the need to improve or reform their traditional methods. Hopefully in the near future, business interpreters training can step into a more practical stage to encourage trainees to get useful support and have strong confidence in their meaningful and effective performance.

4.1 Detailed analysis of the existing problems
Many scholars (Corder 1973, Yang Wenxiu 2000 Fan Ye, 2000, etc.) analyzed and discussed about the existing problem in actual training.
Here is the detailed analysis of the problem.
(l) Misunderstanding of the concept of "student-centered" concept.
Some teachers, in order to make students as the “centre”, are too biased in their practice They simply let students repeatedly do things like reading or speaking without clear aims or purposes. Accordingly they should provide students with authentic models and push students in some real tasks to learn.
(2) Some would-be interpreters have not been well-prepared
Some students do not get ready either in language skill or professional knowledge. They display weak performance especially in the whole process of transmission between the target language and mother tongue which stop the training from getting fine results.
(3) Slow and incorrect reaction towards various cultural situations
In practical training little efforts are put to strengthen trainees’ fine senses facing cultural shocks.

4.2 Two ways for improving Oral English Teaching Skills
1. Teacher should spare no effort to offer a real and an attracting oral environment to students.
Because of the misunderstanding of "student-centered" teaching concept, some teachers deem that as long as the students all participate in the activities in the classroom the "student-centered" teaching tasks can be accomplished. In reality, students are actually, unwilling to talk since they are not interested in the homework, especially when teacher pointed out their grammatical errors. Students, gradually tend to feel disappointed in the learning.
To change the bad situation, first of all, it is very important for a student to build sense of confident in speaking English. Therefore, teachers need to spend time trying to improve the level of students’ pronunciation. However, in college oral English teaching is limited; teachers can not spend enough time helping students. Consequently students have to do their practice out of class without good guidance. In the end, the more practice they do, the worse it will be for getting improvement. It turns out to be a vicious circle.
To further explain the point, here is my own experience taken as an example. When I worked as an oral English assistant in college, I used to operate an experiment on my team members. The experiment lasted for about two months and was set into two periods. In the first month, the group members were asked to listen to VOA special English an hour per day. Then, in the second month, one episode of a soap opera (Prison Break) was shown regularly. Imitation is the main purpose for the program: to get natural sense from the pronunciation of the native English speaker. At the end of the training members of the team felt very satisfied, for most of them had a wonderful improvement in the pronunciation. About three quarters of them had the same answer for the surprising satisfaction. That is they followed native speakers’ vivid and lively models and they found it interesting in learning. “Interest is the best teacher” reflects in the short period experiment. They were energetic in learning and would like to take more time watching and repeating. Intuitive learning did happen in the process which is the best state of learning in deed. They actually did care much about their own capacity and did spent more time actively on practice on their own. Trainees are becoming really centered.
Teachers are organizers in class. Students are the main part to be served in teaching.
It should be known clearly that making mistakes is the must for any progress. Error correction should be carefully done in suitable ways in order not to interfere the natural learning or simply damage students’ self esteem.
2, To set up rational reaction to cultural differences
Language learning needs to link with sensible consciousness to cultural contents and characteristics. Comparisons with lively facts between mother tongue and English can avoid making improper use in interpretation.
As Yang Wen-Xiu (2000) found that some students express themselves in a particular case, only putting some words together to form a sentence, which does not meet the require of grammar and expression. The production of this situation has a variety of reasons .In Yang Wenxiu (2000) opinion. One of the main reasons is that the English learners, in china, organize the English sentence in accordance with Chinese customs and logical way. The sentence they s