Design of MTI graduation examination syllabus and test paper

. At present, there is not any MTI graduation test system in China, although the enrollment of MTI students witnesses an increase. This paper presents MTI graduation written test construct and design of syllabus. It then elaborates on the test construct, modules, which is intended to clarify the purpose, significance and contents of MTI graduation test and shed new light on future large-scale test development and improvement of cultivation quality of MTI graduates.


Introduction
At present, there are 316 universities with MTI programs in China, cultivating and training advanced translation talents in China.However, there is no MTI graduation examination system in China.MTI graduation examination is a summative evaluation of MTI graduates' translation ability, measuring whether graduates achieve learning effect and evaluating their knowledge and skills, which is an evaluation of macro translation ability.In China, there are two kinds of summative evaluation methods for MTI graduate students: one is CATTI examination, and the other is MTI dissertation.However, CATTI mainly focuses on bilingual ability, but fails to comprehensively examine the subjects' translation ability, professional knowledge and instrumental ability.Also, there are some doubts about the form of MTI dissertations in China.Dissertations focus on theory, translation knowledge and language proficiency itself, and cannot comprehensively examine graduates' instrumental ability, strategic ability and psychological and physiological factors.[1] This paper puts forward the design scheme of MTI graduation examination syllabus, interprets and analyzes its structure and module, which is intended to clarify the purpose, significance and content of MTI graduation examination, and also provides valuable reference for future research and development of MTI examination and MTI teaching.

Construction of translation ability in MTI graduation examination
MTI students' translation ability includes "language proficiency (foreign language and mother tongue)" and "translation ability (interpretation or translation)", as well as relevant professional knowledge (politics, economy, culture, science and technology, etc.) required to develop and improve these two abilities (Ping Hong, 2019).[2] By referring to the PACTE model [3], China English Proficiency Scale (CSE), Evaluation Index System of Translation Master's Degree Training Units, China Translation Competence Evaluation Grade Standard (2022 Edition),this study set the core elements of translation competence in MTI graduation examination, that is, the competence that can be evaluated through the examination, including eight sub-competences of communicative language competence, encyclopedic knowledge, translation professional knowledge, translation strategy competence, instrumental competence, professional competence, international communication competence and physiological and psychological factors.MTI graduates should fully understand the core elements of translation task situation.

Design of MTI graduation examination syllabus
The examination is designed by different classification and modules.According to the MTI Graduation Examination Index System, a general module shared by universities across the country is set up, corresponding to the first-level index.According to the specialty of MTI universities, we design several special modules such as law, medicine, economy and trade.Universities can also design their own modules with their own professional characteristics.Each module is divided into sub-modules, corresponding to the second and third levels of indicators.
Examination syllabus plays an important role in guiding the development of MTI graduation examination.The establishment of examination syllabus is the premise and foundation of the development and compilation of examination papers, and its examination content, nature and requirements will play a decision-making role in the development, implementation and verification of further tests.The formulation and publication of MTI graduation examination syllabus is one of the necessary factors to ensure the reliability of the examination.The exam syllabus helps test takers and other people related to the exam to understand the exam correctly and comprehensively (Li Xiaoju, 2001: 78) [4] .MTI graduation examination syllabus plays an important role in the design, development and implementation of MTI graduation examination.The examination syllabus stipulates that the measured index elements can help to realize the construct validity test of the test, and help to test the validity of the test in the test evaluation stage (Yan Ming, 2016: 252) The following part is a detailed description of the examination purpose, examination nature and scope, and examination paper composition in MTI graduation examination syllabus.

Purpose of examination
MTI graduation examination evaluates the learning results of MTI students, measures the acquisition of relevant abilities and knowledge, and judges whether the training objectives are achieved, which is a summative evaluation of translators' macro abilities.The purpose of this exam is to assess whether MTI graduates meet the graduation requirements stipulated in the Evaluation Index System of Translation Master's Degree Training Units-Graduate Requirements Index, examine whether graduates meet the teaching requirements stipulated by the National Teaching Committee of Master of Translation scientifically, fairly and effectively, test the teaching quality of Master of Translation, ensure the teaching effectiveness, promote the improvement of teaching quality, and accurately measure the translator's macro ability of graduates.The examination results provide reference for the evaluation of graduates' professional ability, the evaluation of MTI universities and the employment of language service enterprises.

Scope of examination
This examination belongs to the standard reference academic examination, which includes seven first-class indicators: communicative language ability, encyclopedic knowledge, translation professional knowledge, translation strategy ability, instrumental ability, professional ability and physiological and psychological factors.With reference to the Chinese Translation Competence Evaluation Grade Standard (2022 Edition), "international communication ability" is included in the examination scope.

Examination time and test takers
This exam is held once a year in the graduation semester of MTI students.The subjects of the examination are MTI graduates.The general module of this examination is organized by the National Master of Translation Professional Teaching Committee.The first-level index of encyclopedia knowledge is tested by universities according to their professional characteristics, which also design their own characteristic modules.Universities with similar characteristic modules, such as legal, medical, economic and trade can share the same characteristic modules.

Examination form
In order to effectively assess the macro-ability of MTI graduates with a view to the objectivity and feasibility of the examination, this examination includes written examination and computer operating examination so as to fully ensure the reliability and validity of the examination.

Modules of test paper
The examination adopts the design principle of classification and sub-module, and adopts the form of general module + characteristic module.According to the index system, a general module shared by colleges and universities all over the country is set up, which corresponds to seven indexes in the first-level index: communicative language ability, encyclopedic knowledge, translation knowledge, translation strategy ability, instrumental ability, professional ability and physiological and psychological factors.The general module includes seven parts: communicative language ability test, translation ability test, translation knowledge test (including translation knowledge + translation strategy ability), professional ability , instrumental ability, international communication ability and physiological and psychological factors.Ability level requirements refer to A-memorization, B-understanding, C-analysis, D-application, E-evaluation (Krathwohl, 2002: 2)

Communicative language ability
Communicative language ability refers to language comprehension ability and language expression ability of language learners and users when they use their own language knowledge, non-language knowledge and various strategies to participate in language activities on a certain topic in a specific situation (Fang Xiucai, 2021) [7].In addition to the commonly used reading comprehension questions, this syllabus adopts abstract writing to comprehensively evaluate cross-language comprehension and expression ability.This type of question originates from real communication tasks.In real life situation, there are usually some reports and article whose main points need to be summarized, in which cross-language conversion is realized.The input text of this question is about 1500 Chinese words, and test takers need to write 300-word English abstract.The examination materials cover the fields of politics, economy, culture, society, science and technology, etc.The styles of reading materials include narration, explanation and discussion, and the genre includes news reports, journal articles and speeches.Cross-language abstract writing evaluates graduates' ability to understand Chinese and express in the target language, and examine their ability to analyze, synthesize and evaluate information across languages.

Translation ability
Translation Competence Test examines graduates' ability to perform code-switching effectively.The present translation test items are simple, comprehensive and subjective, and most of them adopt the form of text translation, and the scores are mostly overall impression scores, which inevitably affects the reliability and validity of translation competence test.MTI graduation examination should adopt subjective questions of translation test as far as possible, so as to effectively achieve the training goal of "advanced" senior talents of translation major.The forms of items are phrase translation, paragraph translation, translation modification and translation commentary.In order to ensure the authenticity and practicality of the topic, the translated texts mainly come from real translation projects in the language service industry.

Translation knowledge
Part of the translation knowledge questions mainly examine graduates' translation knowledge, including multiple-choice questions, blank-filling and matching.The content covers declarative knowledge related to translation profession, including translation theory knowledge, translation practice knowledge, professional ethics standards, basic behavioral norms, pre-translation, during-translation and post-translation behavioral norms, translators' social roles, etc. Matching test examines the test takers' ability to judge the translation skills used in the translation process, including addition, deletion, part-of-speech conversion, concretization, perspective conversion and so on.

Professional ability
Professional ability refers to the moral standards and behavioral norms that all learners and practitioners in the translation industry must abide by, including reasonable handling of the relationship between social and economic benefits, faithful interpretation, abiding by contracts, respecting and protecting the intellectual property rights of texts or discourse, keeping trade secrets, safeguarding the right to know, interpersonal communication skills and problem-solving skills of authors, customers, clients and readers, etc., most of which is declarative knowledge.We refer to NATTI exam in Australia, and adopt multiple-choice questions, blank-filling and question-and-answer to test graduates' relevant abilities.

Instrumental ability
Instrumental ability refers to graduates' ability to improve translation efficiency and quality by means of information technology, network platform, digital resources, computer-assisted translation, machine translation and other technical means.The assessment methods can be software-oriented and task-oriented.Objective questions can be used for software use, based on modular knowledge.

International communication ability
According to China Translation Competence Evaluation Standard (2022 Edition), international communication ability refers to the ability of cross-cultural information exchange and communication by integrating Chinese and foreign countries, telling Chinese stories and spreading Chinese voices.Graduates of Master of Translation should be able to publicize and explain Chinese ideas, Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions in foreign languages.The items of this part include translation of terms with Chinese characteristics, translation of Chinese stories and texts, etc.

Physiological and psychological factors
Physiological and psychological factors, including cognitive factors, attitude factors and other ability factors, affect the whole process of translation and have a profound influence on translation ability.Richter scale is used to evaluate them.

Encyclopedia knowledge (Characteristic module)
Encyclopedia knowledge module is set by each university according to its own professional characteristics, which mainly examines the knowledge of a related discipline or a certain field and the knowledge of source language and target language culture.

Conclusion
The development and validity research of MTI graduation examination is of far-reaching significance to the development of MTI discipline, training talents to meet the needs of the industry, improving the teaching level of MTI, etc.It will better promote the development of China's high-level translation talent training system and provide measurement basis for the talent demand of language service industry.
Future research will focus on the research, development and promotion of MTI graduation examination assisted by modern educational technology.We will carry out small-scale pilot tests, collect validity evidence, and analyze the collected validity index evidence.We will further develop tutoring materials related to graduation examination, and give full play to the wash-back effect of graduation examination in the training of MTI students.