Error Analysis of Students’ Homework from the Perspective of Cross-Cultural Translation

Abstract

Translation is one of the most important courses for English major students. When students do their translation exercises, they inevitably make mistakes. In previous studies, many articles have attributed such mistakes to students’ poor English proficiency or to their lack of writing skills in both Chinese and English. However, few articles have discussed these mistakes from a cultural perspective. In this article, the author collects these mistakes from students’ homework and analyzes them from the perspective of cross-cultural translation. She categorizes the mistakes into three types: lexical, sentence, and paragraph level. The author provides examples from the students’ translation homework, discusses the reasons behind these mistakes, and in some cases, offers better translations. Additionally, the author provides suggestions to help English major students improve their cultural awareness and translation skills, along with tips for translation teachers. It is hoped that this article will help English major students avoid such mistakes in the future and help them, as well as their translation teachers, recognize the importance of cultural awareness in translation.