1. Introduction

The development process of translation ability research was discussed, emphasizing the importance and challenges of translating from Chinese to foreign languages in the new era. The shortcomings of existing research were pointed out, and the necessity of constructing a model of translation ability for Chinese to foreign translators in the new era was proposed. Through literature research, expert interviews, and questionnaire surveys, the aim is to extract and condense the key competency elements of Chinese foreign translators in the new era, clarify the attributes, categories, levels, and interactive relationships of competency elements. This study aims to form a reverse translation discourse with Chinese characteristics and contemporary features, respond to the demand for translation talents in the new era, promote the transformation of the concept and practice of cultivating Chinese and foreign translation talents, and serve the improvement of national translation and international communication capabilities.

2. Concept definition and literature review

The concept of "Chinese to foreign translation" has been defined in detail, including various forms such as manual translation, machine translation, and human-machine collaborative translation, emphasizing its importance in the new era of China. At the same time, an in-depth exploration was conducted on the "translator's ability", which was defined as the comprehensive ability required to complete translation tasks. The chapter reviews the development process of translator competence research and points out the research characteristics, such as the refinement of application scenarios, diversification of research perspectives, expansion of model elements, and diversification of research methods. In addition, the limitations of existing translator competence models have been pointed out, such as mainly targeting Western contexts and positive translation, which fail to fully reflect the changing times and the needs of Chinese translation practices. Finally, the shortcomings of domestic research were emphasized, such as the lack of in-depth exploration of the requirements for the abilities of Chinese to foreign translators, which are mostly based on basic interpretation and translation practice. It was called for the use of empirical methods for scientific summarization and overall expression.

3. Research Design

This paper presents an empirical research design on the construction of a competence model for Chinese to foreign translators in the new era. Firstly, through literature research and expert interviews, a large amount of relevant literature and expert opinions were collected and analyzed, and 36 competency elements were extracted. Then, through focus group discussions, the ability elements were screened and merged to form an initial model containing 29 ability elements. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey was designed, including multidimensional scoring questions on basic population information, ability elements, and subjective questions, to determine the attributes, categories, importance levels, and internal influence paths of ability elements. Finally, using snowball rolling and regional stratified sampling methods, a questionnaire was distributed to all sectors of the translation field, including government, industry, academia, and research, through WeChat to collect data for analysis.

4. The process and results of constructing a competence model for Chinese to foreign translators in the new era

A competence model for Chinese foreign translators in the new era has been constructed through empirical research. A total of 637 questionnaires were collected for the study, and after screening, 558 valid questionnaires were obtained with a wide range of participants and high reliability and validity. The construction of the competence model first compared the reliability and validity of each element, removed the multilingual competence element A8, and finally determined that it contains 28 elements. Through cluster analysis and expert discussions, 28 elements were clustered into 7 categories, including strategic ability, symbolic ability, international communication ability, translation technology ability, cross-cultural ability, tacit knowledge, and professional ethics. Cronbach Alpha test shows that the classification of various genera is reasonable.

5. Analysis and Discussion

A competence model for Chinese to foreign translators in the new era has been constructed through qualitative and quantitative methods. This model inherits previous research results and innovates for the specific historical context of the development of Chinese to foreign translation in the new era. The model extracted a total of 28 ability elements, covering seven categories including strategic ability, symbolic ability, and international communication ability, reflecting the requirements of the new era for translators' diverse abilities. Research has found that the scarcity and difficulty of cultivating elements such as translation strategy ability and encyclopedic knowledge are relatively low, while procedural knowledge such as narrative ability that integrates Chinese and foreign elements is scarce and difficult to cultivate. In addition, the low score for the importance and scarcity of translation theory knowledge may be related to the insufficient attention of practitioners to the theory and the inadequate guidance of Western theories on Chinese foreign translation practice.

6. Conclusion

A new era Chinese foreign translator competence model was constructed through empirical research, extracting and classifying 28 competence elements, and clarifying the mutual influence relationship between competence elements. The research results are helpful in guiding the cultivation of high-end Chinese foreign translation talents, but they point out limitations such as traditional education models. Future research needs to construct an adaptive theoretical system, deeply analyze the practical process, enhance the ability to combine theory and practice, in order to promote the development of reverse translation theory discourse.