On Inspiration of Ma Jianzhong’s Thought on Translation to Contemporary Translation Teaching

Abstract

At the end of 19th century, Ma Jianzhong put forward his “Perfect Translation” theory based on comparative linguistics, which is different from the Chinese traditional views of translation, yet his theory was ignored by the then authorities and the Chinese academic community. Today it is of positive significance for us to draw on the profound connotation of Ma’s translation thought. The major aspects of the inspirations are that development of the students’ bilingual proficiency should be put in a central position in the teaching programs, with emphasis on linguistic analysis and functional analysis, and the teaching design and translation teaching method research should be emphasized, giving prominence to the functional approach, and the wide-ranging scope of background knowledge and social function of translation are also important.