A Case Study of Second Language Translation Competence of Chinese College Students

Translation competence has been defined in various ways over the years. This paper tends to observe students' competence of translating into a second language from the angle of target language competence, namely discourse or textual competence. A case that analyses the target texts of a group of non-English major sophomore students in Chinese university translating from Chinese into English as their second language is used in this paper to profile the textual component of Chinese college students' second language translation competence. After studying the case, we may hypothesize that the ability to translate into a second language develops in a systematic way. Target language competence is an important element of translation competence.