How do Chinese ‐ English Translation Practices affect L2 Reading Teaching?

: When translation is used correctly in the reading classroom, students' comprehension of the original text can be improved, their reading speed can be increased, they can learn new information, and their cognitive level can rise, which will improve their ability to think critically and solve problems. The teaching of foreign language reading classes emphasizes translation practice, which not only aids students in learning foreign languages and fosters an understanding of the "input" of the original language, but also significantly strengthens their "output" ability of the written and oral expression of their mother tongue, thus improving their comprehensive cultural quality and their ability to adapt to various jobs in the future


The Current Situation of Translation in College English Reading Teaching
For a long time, some teachers of reading courses in the basic stage of teaching English majors have favoured students' reading skills training, making English reading teaching go from one extreme to the other, so that students only seek to quickly search for parts related to comprehension questions or quiz questions when reading, and are satisfied with being able to answer multiple choice, correct and incorrect judgments in practice questions.They skim over the parts of the reading comprehension questions that are not covered, skip over sentences and passages that they do not understand, and are not really effective in improving their reading comprehension skills.Even learned reading materials do not leave much impression in the mind, so appropriate translation practice is very necessary(Peter Newmark, 1981).Translation in reading teaching is both a teaching tool and a form of language development.Appropriate use of translation in the reading classroom can help students to understand the original text accurately, increase their reading speed, acquire new knowledge and grow their cognitive level in order to enhance their analytical and problem-solving skills.

The Current Situation of College English Reading
The teaching of English at university puts the cultivation of students' reading skills in the first place and, as a result, the teaching of reading in university English has a very high weighting.However, in most cases English reading teaching focuses on the training of students' reading skills and their grasp of the general meaning of the text, which makes students' reading ability not solid enough and they do not seek to understand the reading text.This is because of the lack of teaching methods, teaching theories, and teaching environment and effects (Hornby, A, 2009).In order to make this teaching mode suitable for our teaching reality and to fully motivate the learners, it is necessary to make effective adjustments to the teaching methods of reading English at university and to further improve the overall framework of university English teaching.As a result, translation as a teaching tool has been applied to reading teaching (Elilis, R, 2003).Experts believe that translation can be used to a greater extent as a language teaching tool to help students understand and master the vocabulary and grammar of English, and to check students' understanding and expression of English at the basic level of English.In general, translation can be complementary and mutually reinforcing to the teaching of reading.On the one hand, translation can be used to check students' reading comprehension of a text; on the other hand, relying on the discourse material of the text, students can systematically develop their translation skills on the basis of their understanding, get rid of the bolts of exam-oriented education and promote deeper reading comprehension.

The Importance of Translation in College English Reading
Translation can be explicit or implicit, explicit translation, such as the translation of written materials; Implicit translation, when you read English, because you think about the certainty of the basic language, your brain naturally transforms the foreign language you are exposed to into understandable Chinese, which is a kind of implicit translation.In fact, most reading is implicit translation, the process of reading is the process of continuous translation, and it is very difficult to avoid translation in English reading learning and teaching.Only by translating the reading material in the correct words will the understanding be deeper and more thorough(Richards J. & Weber L, 1986).
Krashen's input hypothesis theory holds that the result of language input is "absorption" after the learner's emotional filtering, attention, and understanding.The so-called "absorption" refers to the internalization of knowledge by learners, which is the internalization of short-term memory of language input into the knowledge structure in long-term memory (Krashen, 1981).If a student is not able to make a verbal output or makes the wrong output, it means that the student has not entered or absorbed enough language or made the wrong linguistic input.Language output can only be effectively carried out if a large amount of understandable language input is made.In the past, due to the widespread use of multiple-choice questions in English test papers to test students' comprehension, students may guess the correct answers after a rough understanding of the reading material; However, if it were to translate certain segments exactly, it would be full of errors, involving various words, structures, and even full sentence structures.This reflects that although some candidates can choose the right questions in the multiple-choice test, there are still many problems in understanding the original text.Many students only seek to answer the questions in the right general direction but are actually vague about the details of the exact meaning, and they can judge right and wrong and make the right choice.Their answers are quite arbitrary and random.Under the pressure of time and speed, some students take chances with the original text without thinking, and make random judgments and choices.Today, reading comprehension in many English tests has been changed to include translations of some key or difficult sentences in essays on the basis of the original multiple-choice test, demonstrating the importance of translation in testing English comprehension.Therefore, in reading teaching, translation can be used to detect students' understanding of reading materials and whether effective language input is carried out, so as to promote the in-depth development of reading teaching.Without a good form of detection, the problem cannot be found.If you can't find a problem, you can't talk about solving it, and you can't improve your reading ability.

The Positive Transfer of Translation to College English Reading
English and Chinese do share common linguistic features that can allow for transfer in learning between the languages, and which have been the subject of scholarly debate (see Yang et al. 2017; Melby-Lervag & Lervag 2011 et al).There is an inseparable positive transfer between translation and reading education.Although the function and place of translation in foreign language learning is a point of long-standing controversy, its positive effects in teaching foreign languages and the development of L2 learners' bilingual competence should not be neglected (Smentek, 2018;Mcloughlin & Lertola, 2014).J. K. Hall (2001) said that in the process of learning a second language, the mother tongue is always present in the learner's thinking.In the process of learning a second language, as long as the learner uses their mother tongue, the translation actually exists.Second language learners who use their mother tongue will consciously or unconsciously use translation to solve problems in the process of foreign language acquisition.Sociocultural theory holds that mediation is crucial in personal development, and mediation is a fundamental concept for understanding the learning process.According to Vygotsky, almost all human behavior is done with the help of intermediaries, that is, through interaction with more experienced people, or with the help of psychological tools.Second language acquisition, like the development of other higher mental functions, is a highly mediated, and mother tongue has proved to be the most powerful mediator in the process of second language acquisition.As Vygotsky said, in the process of second language acquisition, all the learner needs to translate when using the meaning of words that have been formed earlier in the mother tongue.In the process of second language acquisition, translation can explain the meaning of words in a timely and accurate manner as an auxiliary means rather than an end goal, and these words are often difficult to explain clearly in second language.The measured and rational use of translation as an aid is the best way to learn a foreign language.
Translation is the process of interaction between mother tongue and second language, which is intrinsically related to second language acquisition, both of which are crosslanguage and cross-cultural communication activities.Translation is a comparison of two different languages, rhetoric, grammar, structure, etc., and the macro level actually refers to the comparison of two different cultures and different modes of thinking.With this cultural and mindset difference, learners can clearly understand the structural similarities and differences between their mother tongue and the target language.Any form of translation is a human activity involving two languages, two cultures.In a sense, the process of translation is the process of comparing two languages with cultures; The translated product, the translation, is the result of this comparison and selection among the translated languages(Richards J. & Rodgers， 2001).The learning of a second language includes not only the mastery of the language itself, but also the understanding of second languages.The process of translation is a process of comparing two languages and cultures.Translation helps promote second language acquisition and is the mediator between mother tongue and second language interaction in the process of second language learning.Through the comparison of bilingual languages and cultures in the translation process, learners can better understand the differences between two languages and cultures, improve their second-language language level, and enhance their intercultural communication skills, so as to achieve the purpose of accurate and effective use of foreign languages.Therefore, the positive role of translation in second language acquisition is self-evident.

Misunderstanding of Translation in College English Reading Teaching
Reading is one of the necessary skills for English majors, and moderate translation practice in reading class and the positive transfer role of mother tongue will not only help students acquire foreign languages, but also be a good training and improvement for their mother tongue.Many foreign language learners feel the same way: the foreign language is learned, but the mother tongue is forgotten, and the result is that the foreign language is not learned well, and the mother tongue is not good at it(Prabhu, N. S., 1987).Whether the original foreign language can be accurately translated into Chinese is not only a standard for measuring students' professional ability, but also a benchmark for reflecting students' overall level and quality.Therefore, in the reading classroom teaching, the appropriate translation of difficult sentences can not only enable students to understand the full text, but also tap the internal potential of students' established cultural psychological structure, and train the comprehensive ability and skills of foreign language and Chinese, so as to cultivate truly qualified foreign language talents in society.In actual teaching, teachers often replace the reading teaching form with the form of translation, and replace the words and sentences of the reading materials with Chinese words and sentences that are easy to understand and remember one by one, which is easy to lead to the following undesirable effects: 1, Most of the focus of students' reading is shifted to the acquisition of the language knowledge system, and the grasp of sentence structure and sentence meaning is obtained without the synthesis of the text; 2, It is easy for students to translate word by word, turning reading comprehension class into translation class, ignoring the meaning of "understanding"; 3, It is easy for teachers to spend too much time and energy on word explanations in the pre-reading stage, so that students lose the ability to guess the content of the text through context.Therefore, although translation is necessary in the classroom teaching of English professional reading, the teaching should avoid falling into this single method, combining direct teaching methods, listening and speaking methods and other communicative teaching methods.

Enlightenment of Translation on College English Reading Teaching
In university English teaching, teachers should adopt various effective means to improve students' reading comprehension, not only to train students to understand the original text through multiple-choice fast reading, but also to cultivate students' ability to translate from English to Chinese.We know that understanding for the purpose of translation adopts a bilingual way of thinking, that is, thinking in the original language and the target language, and the two languages alternate in the translator's brain, but this does not mean that the way of thinking for reading comprehension for the purpose of appreciation and research is mostly carried out in monolingual (Long, M. H, 1985).Especially for most second-language learners, the activities they carry out in the process of reading in a second language, such as guessing words, understanding, and prediction, more or less have to use the help of the native language in their heads to do some English to Chinese translation, and some people call this phenomenon "silent translation".Of course, "silent translation" is not a real translation, but nevertheless, "silent translation" can help them understand the original text and play a stepping stone for real translation.The purpose of understanding in translation is to faithfully express the meaning of the original work and reproduce the beauty of the form of the original work as much as possible, so it requires a more thorough and detailed understanding of the work than reading comprehension for the purpose of appreciation and research, but just as reading comprehension for the purpose of appreciation and research, the understanding for the purpose of translation also uses the grammatical concepts mastered to judge the terms and terms in the sentence, the internal parts of the sentence and the relationship between sentences, and assist in inferring semantic meaning with professional and related field knowledge.Based on this common point, the semantic conclusion of constructing the overall is based on the targeted selection of some sentences and paragraphs for the purpose of reading for the purpose of reading, and the understanding for the purpose of reading is integrated with the understanding for the purpose of translation, so that on the one hand, students can deepen their understanding of the original text in the process of translating the original English into Chinese, and at the same time, improve the translation and execution through translation practice, and achieve half the merit.
There is no fixed method of teaching, and various teaching methods, whether traditional or modern, have their own strengths, and should be eclectic and flexible.Moreover, since our teaching purpose, teaching environment and teaching objects cannot completely get rid of the relationship with the mother tongue and carry out fully closed foreign language teaching activities without a mother tongue, in the face of this objective situation, teachers should improve the quality of teaching as the purpose in the process of implementing teaching, and everything starts from the specific situation of students.Specifically, the following points should be achieved: 1, L1 can be appropriately used to help reading teaching, especially for low-level students.It is inevitable for L2 teachers and learners to make use of L1 in the teaching and learning of foreign languages, with translation as a resource within this (Smentek, 2018).As we all know, when reading Chinese, students can foreshadow the following, and just as reading English should be able to foreshadow the following.English reading is a language problem and a reading skill problem, and "bottom-up" decoding is the process of using existing knowledge, linking existing knowledge plus reading intelligence with the symbols of the passage, and conducting "top-down" speculation, reasoning, judgment and analysis.Therefore, university English teaching should strengthen reading skills training, and at the same time make full use of the positive transfer of Chinese to English learning, and organize teaching at the discourse level.Reading can only be understood quickly and accurately if it rises to the level of discourse.In addition, since the discourse structure of English and Chinese is not the same, university English teachers should introduce as much relevant discourse knowledge as possible so that students can make better use of reading strategies; 2, the setting of reading topics can be appropriately set up some translation topics to examine whether students really understand the original text; 3, pay attention to the fun and integrity of the class, do not turn the classroom into a blunt "dictionary translation class"; 4, pay attention to the degree of word explanation, and cultivate students' ability to guess words in combination with the context.You only need to speak some special words before reading, and you don't need to explain all the unfamiliar key words one by one.

Conclusion
The world's languages have commonalities, but each language has its own particularities, and the research of second language acquisition shows that in the process of learning a second language, a person will always involve two aspects of language knowledge, one is the commonality of language, the other is the specificity of the mother tongue, the establishment of his second language model, and the establishment of new language habits, all in the identification with the commonality of the language and in the contrast and conflict with the native language model.In other words, learning a foreign language, in a sense, is a process of adjusting and changing the original knowledge and skills on the basis of the original language knowledge system.Proper translation practice is necessary in the teaching of reading in the foundation stage of the English major.Translation is both a teaching tool and a language ability development in the teaching of reading(Peter Newmark, 1988).The proper use of translation in the reading classroom can help students accurately understand the original text, improve reading speed, acquire new knowledge, and increase cognitive level, so as to enhance their ability to analyze and solve problems.Therefore, the author believes that the teaching of foreign language reading classes emphasizes translation practice, which not only helps students' foreign language acquisition and promotes the understanding of the "input" of the original language, but also greatly strengthens the "output" ability of the written and oral expression of the mother tongue, thereby improving their comprehensive cultural quality and their ability to adapt to various jobs in the future -which is also a clear goal of foreign language professional teaching.