He has taught at a university since he graduated from the USA and moved to stay permanently in Thailand.[September 27, 2012]
He has touch [taught] at a university since he gruduated [graduated] from the United State[s] of America and moved to stay permanatly [permanently] in Thailand. [July 25, 2013]
In the first sentence, this student produced a perfect sentence in terms of grammar and spelling. However, for the second finals, she made many errors, especially in terms of spelling. When asked, she said she just kept writing without caring much about grammar and/or spelling. She just felt that she could do it and this sentence was really easy. She also paid attention to the full form of the USA, but she made typo.
Ex. 10 Student # 6
At 9.00 p.m., she felt asleep; therefore, she stopped read a book because of her very tried. [September 27, 2012] She felt very sleepy at 9.00 a.m., so that she stopped read the book because she was very tried. [July 25, 2013] As a matter of fact, it is quite clear that this student made some progresses in many places. For example, the use of the transitional marker because of + noun phrase is replaced by the because + clause correctly in the second finals.
However, there are many other places where the translator became confused, e.g. p.m. and a.m. The time of this context is at night; therefore, p.m. is already correct in the first sentence. The use of stop + read is incorrect in both finals.
In addition, therefore was already used in a grammatically correct way according to the contextual meaning in the first final examination. However, in the second one, it appears that this student made a bold change to so that, which entirely alternated the meaning of the whole sentence. The confusion of transitional markers can inevitably happen when students have learned a great deal.
All the mistakes this student has made may not exactly mean that she does not improve her English version. Rather, the author regarded this phenomenon as an in-progress status while becoming proficient in the TL or English language her. Another example is the use of the word tried, which should be tiredness and tired in the first and second sentence, respectively. The word is not revised even though it is a common mistake the author always emphasizes.
Like 5.3, there are not so many unrevised sentences, but some comments are provided by the participants which can best explain this phenomenon, as follows:
— As this course has provided me with knowledge about a lot of fields of study, there are times when I spend too much attention to one thing/rule and ignore another one I used to do correctly. The one I ignore because I think I know usually goes wrong. That made me sad. I love the revision my instructor made because it helps me to move forward.
— I learned a lot from friends. The instructor is mean sometimes and she always scolds us or makes jokes about our mistakes. But, unbelievably, those mistakes made me laugh in class but also made me remember better in the real job and the finals.
— The best way to translate well is to understand the text in the source language (SL) first. Then, we start translating.
If not, the TL text can never be good or precise.
— A good translator must be a good reader, a good listener, and a good writer.
— Before attending this course, I thought that I just come to class and translate. I have never known that to be able to become a good translator, I need good grammar and vocabulary. I just enlightened when joining this class.