“师范”大学/学院怎么译

说到我国高校校名英文

过去的一些研究已注意到了这一译法的不妥。笔者也多次询问来自不同国家的英语外籍教师，他们无一例外地表示无法理解normal university是什么大学，根本无法让人把这样一个校名与一个“教师培养机构”联系起来。再从国外情况来看，normal university/ college是一个并不存在的表达，在功能强大的搜索引擎Google上输入normal university/ college进行检索的结果是，凡是采用这一说法的学校全部是中国的，包括台湾师范大学，而国外则似乎没有一例。

那么，我国的“师范”类高等院校的英文校名为何会是normal university/ college呢？在众多英文辞典没有做出解释的情况下，Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary

著名的网络百科全书Wikipedia 对于normal school 的来历有着如下详细的解释：A normal school was a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose was to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name. Most such schools are now called teachers colleges, however in some places the term normal school is still used.

In 1685, Saint John Baptist de La Salle, founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, founded what is generally considered the first normal school, the École Normale, — that is, a school whose purpose is to train teachers — in Reims.

In New Zealand, for example, normal schools are affiliated with Teachers colleges. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, normal schools in the United States and Canada trained primary school teachers, while in Europe, normal schools educated primary, secondary and tertiary-level teachers.

In the United States, the function of normal school has been taken up by undergraduate and graduate schools of education. Many famous universities, such as the University of California, Los Angeles were founded as normal schools. In Canada, such institutions are typically part of a university as the Faculty of Education offering a one- or two-year Bachelor of Education program. It requires at least three (usually four) years of prior undergraduate studies.

从上述解释不难看出，无论是过去还是现在，在西方国家的normal school与我国的“师范大学/师范学院”基本上不是一回事。normal school或者是曾经存在但是现在大多已升格为大学的学校，在美国和加拿大主要是培养中小学教师的，或者只是少数大学中的教育学院或释放学院下属的部门而已。

由此可见，关于我国“师范”类院校英文校名的争议完全可以结束了，我们既不能让外国人觉得我们的高等院校有normal与abnormal之分，也不能丝毫不顾及国际惯例，更不能把自己降格以求，把堂堂正正的师范学院或师范大学贬低为师范学校。这里另外一个令人百思不得其解的问题是，事实上，我国的“师范学院”较多习惯采用teachers college这一英文名称而从来不是normal college，为何从“师范学院”升格为“师范大学”之后却不再是简简单单的teachers university而是normal university。对照国外情况，英国有London Teacher Training College