Speakers

Prof. Lin Zhu

College of Foreign Languages, Huaqiao University, China

Research Area:Translation Theory and Practice, Cognitive Translation Studies, Literary Translation, Academic Translation, Translation Teaching

Speech title:Optimizing the Learner's Knowledge Structure in Translation Instruction: A Case Study of the MTI Education in China

Abstract: To optimize the learner’s knowledge structure in translation teaching is an effective channel of developing translation competence. To this end, this paper firstly explains the systematic, hierarchical, and constructivist nature of one’s knowledge structure and then illustrates what knowledge system an experienced translator should have and thus sheds light on translation teaching in terms of the learner’s knowledge construction. It then goes on to explain how to shape a translator’s knowledge structure through the embodied translation practice, with an emphasis on the embodied nature of this process. The above theoretical discussion underlies this paper’s discussion of how to optimize the translation knowledge structure in translation teaching. It explains the specific ways of teaching in terms of three principles for the MTI (Masters of Translation and Interpreting) education as a case study and suggests four interrelated teaching models based on a WCAT (web-computer-aided translation) system, whose greatest advantage is to provide a knowledge-rich environment and enable the coherent process of the learner’s cognitive development. It is expected that the theoretical discussion and teaching suggestions can be useful for furthering both theoretical and practical research on the translator’s education.

A. Prof. Charles David LOWE

Division of Humanities and Social Science, Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (UIC), China

Research Area: late 19th century and early 20th century British Literature, writing pedagogy, creative writing

Brief introduction of your research experience:Dr. Charles Lowe is the Associate Dean of the Division of Humanities and Social Science at United International College.  He is also an Associate Professor in the ELLS Programme.  He received his BA in English and Economics from Drew University and his PhD in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  He has been thrice selected as a Resident Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and has been selected as a Resident Fellow at the Norman Mailer's Writers' Colony.  His fiction has been anthologized in a collection on literature on the electronic media and has appeared in numerous internationally recognized journals such as AGNI, Prairie Schooner, and J Journal: New Writing on Justice.  His criticism has been included in a collection, recently released by Routledge, entitled Reading Against the Grain and has been anthologized in China and the Humanities: At the Crossroads of the Human and the Humane, published by New Directions in the Humanities.  He is co-editor of the forthcoming COVID-19 Pandemic, Crises Response and the Changing World, forthcoming from Springer Nature: a collection to which he has contributed two chapters. His research interests include late 19th century and early 20th century British Literature, writing pedagogy, and creative writing.

Speech title:The Practice of Translation: Teaching Literary Interpretation in English in a Classroom in China

Abstract:My talk considers the applications of Lawrence Venuti’s translation theory to the teaching of literary interpretation to students in China. Venuti’s distinction between instrumentalist and hermeneutic practices of translation becomes a helpful guide to understanding the different ways that students in China receive literary texts in English. This awareness of the analogies between practices employed by translators and those deployed by my students led to the design of exercises where students were encouraged to journal about the decisions they made in locating the meaning of the source text and to situate those discoveries in the context of their own cultures.