Date: Friday 17 November 2023

Abstract

The presentation deals with my experience of teaching translation theory in Japanese Universities. Translation studies is a relatively new discipline in Japan. Often humanities-oriented Universities will have a literature and/or language department, and translation may be taught in these departments in a practical and prescriptive way.  Translation history and theory is a far less common subject. Since 2020 I have been teaching translation theory at two Japanese Universities, namely Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto and Kobe City University of Foreign Studies.

For this presentation, I would like to shed light on the lessons I have learned about teaching translation theory to graduate and undergraduate students in Japan. In particular, I would like to focus on the difference between the lecture-style mode of teaching that was common in my Translation Studies MA at Cardiff University, and the more discussion-based approach that I had to develop in Japan in order to better foster students’ participation and critical thinking.

The presentation will also deal with the questions of what translation studies textbooks and reading materials may be best suited for English speakers of other languages, the difficulty of dealing with student with different levels of English, how to teach translation theory without actual translation practice, and how should students be graded. I hope this presentation will be as interactive as my classes are, and that we will be able to exchange ideas and suggestions to improve the teaching of translation theory abroad.

Speaker’s bio

Dr Matteo Fabbretti is a lecturer in Translation Studies at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies and Ritsumeikan University. He came to Japan in 2018 with a JSPS postdoctoral fellowship to carry out research on translation in Japanese institutions. His field of research revolves mainly around Japanese visual culture in translation, with a particular focus on Japanese manga and video games. Matteo is interested in amateur translators and interpreters, and has published several academic articles on the topic of manga fan-translation. More recently, his research has also looked at the field of professional translation in Japan, in particular in the context of freelancing and in-house translators working for video game companies.

The Development of Two E-Learning Platforms for Translation Pedagogical Purposes

Date: Friday 13 October 2023

Abstract

To showcase how information technologies could be instrumental to translation teaching, this presentation will be divided into two parts to introduce two recently developed e-learning platforms: a mobile phone application, and a bilingual corpus.

1. The mobile phone has become almost an indispensable gadget in daily life nowadays. Its application in the education sector, and particularly for language learning, has gained increasing attention. This study is set in Hong Kong, a Chinese city in Asia. According to Leung (2017), Hong Kong has among the highest mobile phone usage rates in Asia. This part aims to demonstrate how the mobile phone can assist in translation and interpretation training. It will record the development journey of a mobile phone application, its functions, its user experience, and the implications to future translation teaching studies.
2. Since the use of the corpus has become common, the corpus-based approach to translation studies, pioneered by Mona Baker (1993), has become a new paradigm in itself. The pedagogical use of corpus is becoming more popular, but the focuses are more on literary translation, at least in the English and Chinese language combination. Corpora for specialized translation are less common. Inspired by Li and Wang’s works (2010, 2011), this part discusses the launch and use of an English/Chinese bilingual parallel corpus of practical fields, including corporate communication, product literature, tourism, and advertising. I will demonstrate how a parallel corpus could help with the teaching of specialized translation. It will lay out how it was developed, the uses of the corpus, and the feedback from teachers and students, and recommendations.

Teaching Translations of the Environment – Intersemiotic Considerations

Date: Thursday 29 June 2023

Abstract: How do we understand the environment as a cultural concept linguistically embedded in multiple signifying chains? How do we experience it? That is, how do we see, hear, smell, touch and, yes, taste the world around us? Finally, how do we translate these sensory experiences into language? Embracing the idea of intersemiotic translation, this talk will reflect upon the teaching of the environment in the University of Toronto’s English and Chinese Translation (ECT) programme. We consider issues related to student understanding of what translation is, what and how the idea of ecology/environment means, as well as how retranslations of (implicitly) environmental terms from classical Chinese can aid us in thinking the environment differently. Ecotranslation (Cronin’s term) foregrounds what the course aims to accomplish; this talk aims to invite colleagues into a discussion of how translation is intersectionally implicated in conceptualisations of environment, ecology and being.

Speaker bio:  Dr Christopher Payne currently teaches Chinese and English translation, broadly considered, at The University of Toronto (Scarborough). His background is in East Asian Studies, with a particular focus on cultural production from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan and Hong Kong. His scholarly work can be found in a wide array of contemporary journals and his translations from Mandarin to English include authors Mai Jia, Li Juan and Jia Pingwa. His current research focuses on the nexus of translation, culture and understandings of the environment.

A literary translator’s perspective on teaching translation across genres

Date: Friday 31 March 2023

Abstract: A literary translator’s perspective on teaching translation across genres

In this talk, Austin will share insights and lessons from teaching a multi-genre, bilingual Chinese-English / English-Chinese translation workshop to undergraduates at Duke Kunshan University (DKU), Duke University’s China venture. In particular Austin will examine how concepts and habits of mind from literary translation (my own specialty) can be applied to teaching very different genres and text types, such as advertising, academic translation, technical translation, political discourse, and so forth. These concepts include: style, voice, image, metaphor, ambiguity, and the dynamics of imagination. In the process Austin hopes to open a conversation with colleagues about how literary and non-literary translation can cross-pollinate in the classroom, and to exchange ideas about how to teach aspects of translation that transcend all genres and text types, both “creative” and “practical.”

Speaker’s bio

Austin Woerner is a Chinese-English literary translator. He has translated a novel, The Invisible Valley by Su Wei, and two volumes of poetry, Doubled Shadows: Selected Poetry of Ouyang Jianghe, and Ouyang Jianghe’s book-length poem Phoenix. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, the New York Times Magazine, Poetry, and elsewhere. Formerly the English translation editor for the innovative Chinese literary journal Chutzpah!, he also co-edited the short fiction anthology Chutzpah!: New Voices from China. He holds a BA in East Asian Studies from Yale and an MFA in creative writing from the New School, and he is currently a lecturer at Duke Kunshan University, where he has taught academic writing, creative nonfiction, and translation.

How much Chinese language teaching is required in Chinese translation teaching?

Date: Friday 6 January 2023

Abstract

Over the past decades, a countless number of textbooks on English–Chinese translation have been published. It is not uncommon to see that a variety of translation methods such as ‘addition’ and ‘omission’, to name but two, are provided in the hope that readers are fully equipped for translation tasks at various linguistic levels and in different text types. This, nevertheless, rests upon the assumption that readers’ grasp of the Chinese language enables them to stand against interference from the source language in the translation process.

With reference to the concept of translation universals, I posit that translation is a linguistic activity that attempts to resist under-representation. Drawing upon my teaching experience of translation in Hong Kong and Manchester, I argue that language teaching is an indispensable part of translation training. Whilst thorough language proficiency training may not be feasible in a translation programme, incorporating the defining characteristics of the Chinese language in an English-Chinese translation module, together with the aforementioned techniques, may enhance the teaching effectiveness.

Speaker’s bio

Dr Yu Kit Cheung MCIL CL is Lecturer in Chinese Translation Studies at The University of Manchester, UK. He is also a Reviewer of the Target Multilingual Website and a Steering Committee Member of the East Asian Translation Pedagogy Advance.

He has recently edited the Chinese translation of an academic volume on Translation Studies and published several academic articles on Confucianism, literary translation, and translation pedagogy. In addition to scholarly works, he is keen to share his thoughts with his readers on language and translation on Fans of Translation, his personal website: www.fansoftranslation.com, where he publishes short articles on these two subjects on a regular basis.

“Little Private Jokes”: Western Literary Allusions in a Chinese Novel

Date: Tuesday 8 November 2022

Abstract

Cao Xueqin’s Dream is teemed with literary allusions. Hawkes’ Stone is equally rich in literary allusions, and the reader needs to be sensitive and knowledgeable with regards not only to the Chinese canon, but also to English and other Western literary classics in order to recognise and appreciate them. This talk will present the argument that literary translation in its highest form is the seamless merging of two literary worlds. It is conceived in the mind of a translator well versed in both worlds, one who has attained full mastery of both sides of the Mirror. Careful examination of Stone reveals the Greek and Latin elements abound in Hawkes’ translation. One of the most outstanding features of Dream is that it contains examples of almost all the different genres and forms of Chinese poetry. A text had to resemble works in that corpus to get any sort of audience among educated people.

Speaker’s Bio

Fan Shengyu 范聖宇 is currently Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, and Deputy Director of Languages at the School of  Culture, History and Language in the College of  Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.

Tackling long sentence translation in the classroom: a study to investigate the usefulness of a systemic functional linguistics-based approach in teaching English-Chinese translation

Date: Thursday 29 September 2022

Abstract

Long sentence translation is a common challenge for English-Chinese translation students. While existing proposed solutions including segmenting a sentence and changing hypotaxis to parataxis are effective in describing what is needed when translating, they are not prescriptive enough for the translation student to use. As a result, students often feel tied up with the source text, producing translations that are unnatural in the target language. To tackle this challenge, a pedagogical approach based on the notion of logical meaning from systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has been used in a postgraduate English-Chinese translation classroom in Australia. With a focus on clausal connection, this approach has been found to be able to help motivate more translation shifts and produce more effective translations. In this talk, I will introduce what this approach was, how it worked, how it improved the students’ translations, and what the student participants thought about this approach. Although the study looked at English to Chinese translations, the approach can also work in other language pairs with typological differences in syntax structure.

Speaker’s Bio

Alisa Tian is an Associate Lecturer of Translation and Interpreting and PhD candidate in translation pedagogy at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She has been an active translation/interpreting practitioner and educator since 2010, specialising in court interpreting and subtitling. Her recent works include a book translation of Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is and What It Should Be, documentary The History of China (中国通史) and the leading TV program on debate and personal stories in Australia Insight. Her recent research interests include translation pedagogy and systemic functional linguistics, with an aim to bridge the gap between theory and practice in the translation classroom.

Challenges of Teaching Chinese Translation: A Case Study of Hong Kong

Date: Wednesday 6 July 2022

Abstract
In this talk, John will discuss the challenges of teaching English-Chinese Translation at BA and MA levels in Hong Kong. These challenges arise from the gap between Translation theories and practice, differences between Chinese and English languages and cultures, students’ pre-conceptions about translation and equivalence, and teachers’ beliefs about Translation education, etc. Drawing upon his own experience of teaching Translation at five tertiary institutes in Hong Kong and the pedagogical literature by Lee S. Shulman and David C. Berliner, John will argue that an expert Translation teacher is like an ‘improvisational performer’, who responds flexibly and creatively to classroom contingencies.

Speaker’s Bio
John Chun Yin WONG is Lecturer in Translation at The University of Hong Kong.
He holds BA, MPhil and PhD degrees in Translation from HKU and is studying for
an MSc in Teacher Education at the University of Oxford.

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) in Translation Teaching- a report on recent practice

Date: Wednesday 20 April 2022

Collaborative online international learning (COIL) is an increasingly popular form of pedagogic activity, providing students at institutions in different countries the opportunity to work together on a collaborative project. Since October 2021 Dr Shani Tobias of Monash University and Dr Martin Ward of the University of Leeds have started to implement COIL activities into their teaching of MA level Japanese to English translation once a semester.

This talk will provide an in-depth introduction to the activities conducted so far, incorporating student feedback, and highlight the huge potential for COIL in advancing the translation pedagogy of East Asian languages and maximising student gains. It will also show how the connections established through the EATPA network offer significant potential for more inter-institutional collaboration to advance pedagogy and research. The talk will be followed by a time for Q&A and discussion.

Teaching the Art of Japanese Literary Translation

Date: Monday 28 March 2022

This session will be led by Dr Matt Mewhinney, Florida State University

Synopsis: In this presentation I introduce one approach to teaching Japanese literary translation. This semester at Florida State University I am teaching a course titled “Translating Japanese,” which introduces students to the theoretical issues that arise in literary translation. The course comprises three parts: a survey of conceptual writings on translation (from Walter Benjamin to Tawada Yōko), a critical examination of literary works in translation and the original, and a collaborative workshop where students translate a literary work on their own. My talk primarily concerns the second part of the course where I have students compare several translations of one literary work, evaluate the different choices made by each translator, and speculate what effect these choices have on their own aesthetic experience of reading the literary work in translation and in the original. Based on the data I gather from class discussion and students’ written responses, I will present my findings to the EATPA network and offer some preliminary thoughts on how translation shapes the affective experience of reading.

MT in Translation – A Holistic Approach

Date: Wednesday 1 December 2021

Machine learning (ML) and machine translation (MT) technologies have increasingly become involved in translation studies and practices. Compared with human’s intuitive reflections on language, machine perception is largely based on mathematical calculation and statistical inference. While a neural machine translation engine aims to mimic human’s cognitive behavior, it is a learning machine in nature and thus is able to create its own subconscious area. This talk will take a holistic approach to translation, with MT as a component of the traditional concept of translation. It compares the results of English-Chinese translation that are created by human translators and machine translators using automatic MT evaluation tools.

The talk aims to generate discussions about the impact of MT on the teaching of translation. Some questions that can serve as a starting point for the discussion are:

1. Is the concept of translation influenced by the rapid development of MT & ML? If so, how?
2. Will the use of MT and other ML technologies change the cognitive aspects of human translators? If so, do you see a more positive or negative influence of MT on their minds?
3. Will there be a relatively clear division of labor between human translators and machine translators in the future? If so, what do you think it will look like?

Keywords: machine translation (MT), machine learning (ML), statistical inference

Speaker bio: Dr. Peng Wang has taught, researched and practised translation and localization on three continents. She is the convener for EDUinLOC, a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa, and a member of the Conference Interpretation Advisory Panel for the Translation Bureau of the Canadian government. She is an instructor at the Localization Institute and her machine translation master class provides an independent perspective on MT implementation as well as its impact on the whole localization ecosystem. Her current research interests include human learning vs. machine learning, machine translation risk management, terminology and multilingual data analysis.

On Not Reinventing the Wheel: Sharing Resources, Ideas and Practices- Talk by Professor Judy Wakabayashi

Date: Friday 27 August 2021

The problem: One aspect of training professional translators involves acquainting students with a range of genres and specific fields that they might encounter in professional life. Instructors are faced with the challenge of discussing and evaluating translations in fields as disparate as the law, business, literature, current affairs, medicine, science and technology, despite having little or no training in these fields (much less all of them).

The ‘work harder’ approach: By dint of hard work it is possible to build up at least a basic understanding of such fields–the key concepts and structural differences (e.g., between civil and common law, or between the Japanese and American patent systems). Doing this in two languages, however, is arduous and time-consuming, and creating resources for students when one is not an expert in these fields runs the risk of passing on incorrect information.

The ‘work smarter’ approach: The alternative proposed here is to harness the knowledge of the EATPA community to create and share resources, alongside teaching tips and ideas. This session will focus on the idea of a resource-sharing ‘bank’ to which EATPA members can contribute and from which they may borrow. Pooling our expertise and building on and refining each other’s teaching materials can reduce our individual workload and lead to better-quality teaching resources that will benefit instructors and students beyond our individual institutions.

Pedagogy of MA Specialised Translation modules

Date: Friday 23 April 2021

At this event we will be discussing curricula, pedagogical methods and more, and the session is open to all subscribers of this network. For more information and to enquire about joining this network please email [email protected]

East Asian Translation Pedagogy Advance (EATPA) Introductory Forum

Date: Thursday 14 January 2021

The introductory forum for this network was conducted on Jan.14th, 2021, and was attended by over 20 academics engaged in teaching translation at undergraduate and postgraduate level at universities in a number of countries. The event provided the opportunity to discuss some of the challenges facing translation pedagogy practitioners in this field and begin to forge collaborative relationships for work to advance pedagogy in this field.