A STUDY OF DICTIONARY USE IN CHINESE-ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY CHINESE EFL LEARNERS

Abstract

This study investigated, with a think-aloud protocol, how four college Chinese learners of English actually used dictionaries when doing L1-L2 (Chinese-English) translation. The research questions were: (1) What are the target lexical items for dictionary consultation?, (2) What types of dictionary do the subjects use?, (3) What are the purposes of dictionary use?, (4) How do the subjects utilize the dictionary information?, and (5) What is the effect of dictionary use? The main findings were: (1) most of the target lexical items for dictionary consultation were Chinese, most of which are difficult to express in English; (2) the use of the Chinese-English bilingual dictionary prevailed in the translation task; (3) searching for English equivalents of the Chinese lexical items was the primary purpose of dictionary consultation; (4) most expressions utilized in the subjects' target language translations were English definitions of the Chinese headwords in the dictionaries consulted, the typical means of utilizing the dictionary information was the direct transfer method, and the first-equivalent tendency was prevalent; (5) dictionary use showed a positive effect in terms of appropriateness of the expressions used in the subjects' translations.