This course aims to provide students with basic knowledge of linguistics. Emphasis is put on those aspects of linguistics that are closely related to translating. Examples from both English and Chinese are used for illustration. Upon completing the course, students will be able to demonstrate enhanced competence and skills in language analysis, especially in the examination and analysis of translation problems from a linguistic point of view.

This course is designed to develop students' practical translation competence. A wide range of topics will be covered to build students' problem-solving skills during the process of translation. The topics are negotiated with the class, and the content may include the following: (1) translating texts with general topics; (2) translating advertisements; (3) translating science and technology; (4) translating commercial texts; (5) translating government and legal documents; (6) translating film subtitles; (7) translating literary works.

This course is specially designed to prepare students for a professional career in translating or multilingual communication. It aims to raise the awareness of the students to the different demands of the clients and the challenges of commissioned jobs. Emphasis will be placed on the knowledge, skills and professionalism required for functioning as members of the profession in the local and international markets.

*This course is a prerequisite for TRAN4046 Placement Porfolio I. For more details of Placement, click here.

This course introduces to students the various views and ideas on translation that have emerged within the Chinese and Western traditions of translation. It encourages students to reflect on past and present theories and philosophies of translation, build up for themselves a historical data-bank about translation scholarship, and thus construct a basis on which to develop their own thoughts and ideas about the art and profession of translation, and about how they can best formulate strategies to tackle translation in their daily practices.

This course aims to help students think critically about the issues involved in translation criticism.  Students will be introduced to the principles and ethics of criticism, a range of methods and models of translation criticism, and the relationship between translation and criticism.

This is a year-long course which will engage students in the production of either (1) an extended piece of translation or (2) a thesis on a topic related to translation, interpreting, or intercultural studies. In the case of (1), the text to be translated, either from English into Chinese or from Chinese into English, will be generally between 10,000 and 12,000 words/characters long; in addition to the translation, the student should submit an introductory essay which gives a rationale for the selection of the text for translation, provides an analysis of the source text and discusses the problems encountered during the process of translating as well as the approaches and strategies used for solving these problems. In the case of (2), the thesis will be between 10,000 and 12,000 words/characters long; the student should demonstrate in-depth understanding of the topic of investigation, well-developed research skills, as well as an ability to express ideas in a clear and coherent manner.

This course provides elementary training for students to understand and explore how different research methodologies can be applied in the study of translation. It aims at helping students design and conduct research and report research findings. Various rhetorical structures will be introduced so students learn how to make critical and creative use of different genres for their own research.

This course aims to enhance students' awareness of translation as an act of human communication, both spoken and written. Through a study of the spoken and written complexities of English, students will be able to strengthen their foundation for the use of language, and appreciate good language use. This will enable students to become more aware of the intricate process involved in bilingual communication and hence perceive translation from a more sophisticated perspective.

This course aims to develop students' critical awareness of style and conventional usage in selected non-literary genres of writing, and to enhance their ability to analyse such genres using appropriate methods of stylistic analysis. Its objective is to equip students with the means to better understand English written genres encountered in their translation work, and to produce idiomatic English texts and translations by applying appropriate genre conventions.

This course provides an introduction to Chinese literature through the reading of English translations. It allows both Chinese and non-Chinese readers to gain access to the world of Chinese literature, and to become aware of the linguistic and literary transformations in the process of translation. English translations are selected from pre-Qin to contemporary writings. Students will first read the English translations of selected texts and then conduct literary analysis.

This course is designed to sensitise students to the intercultural and intertextual connections among texts. They will be guided to reflect on different relationships between texts and how ideas change as they are adapted across cultures, languages and media.

This course aims to enable students to appreciate language differences and similarities between English and Chinese. It discusses English-Chinese contrasts in grammar and lexicon. Upon completing the course, students will be able to perform contrastive analyses, and demonstrate enhanced competence and skills in coping with language problems in translation.

This course aims to provide an introduction to translation and intercultural representation in museums and heritage sites, which are crucially important places for the representation of cultures. The course aims to provide students with an understanding of the key concepts in museum translation and the design of bilingual materials for a range of different uses in the multi-semiotic museum space, as well as fostering an appreciation of how museums function in a globalized world. At a practical level, it aims to provide training in writing and translating different types of museum text, from museum catalogues to audio guides and museum websites.

This course is a historically grounded and critically informed introduction to the culture and language of the Tibetan world. Students will become conversant with important Tibetan cultural, religious, social, political and artistic developments from the 7th to the 21st centuries and will also gain a basic familiarity with written and spoken dimensions of the Tibetan language. Students will develop critical and data-gathering competencies through engagement in textual/discursive analysis and digital-based research.

This course aims to enable students to be familiar with the operations involving texts related to the media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cinema, and public relations literature. Emphasis will be placed on the knowledge, skills and professionalism required for serving clients in those fields in local and international markets. There will be extensive practice in producing translations and bilingual versions of media texts.

This course gives students the first experience of Chinese/Spanish translation under guidance. Students will learn to translate texts from a range of text types and from both Chinese to Spanish and Spanish to Chinese.

This course emphasizes competence in consecutive interpreting between English and Chinese.  It provides intermediate training of interpreting skills, mainly for long consecutive interpreting, including analytic listening, speaking for interpreting, the coordination between listening and speaking, and note-taking.

This course aims to introduce students to the exciting challenges, problems, and methods of translating drama and films, paying attention not only to the inter-lingual and cross-cultural, but also to the multi-modal aspects of these genres.

This course aims to train translation majors to engage critically with some of the most important and influential translation theories that have emerged in the West since the mid twentieth century. It studies and interrogates the use and usefulness of translation theory by focusing on how theory informs practice and how practice, in turn, can necessitate a radical re-examination of theory. Students will become aware of research possibilities opened up by the theories they have studied and develop greater awareness of how they translate; they can explain with greater confidence why they translate in a particular manner, and thus obtain the key to effective self-empowerment.

This course adopts an interdisciplinary approach to issues related to gender and translation studies. It aims at helping students to develop a good awareness of gender politics in translation, and of the power-play in gender politics in general.

This course is designed to develop students' ability in analysing and translating legal and government documents. It will familiarize students with the existing genres of these documents in the linguistic context of Hong Kong and also equip students with the research skills of legal translator so they will be able to keep up with the new development of the market.

This course offers an in-depth study of selected themes and theoretical issues in translation and translation studies. These may include such topics as "Nida on Translation", "Computer-aided Translation", "Corpus and Translation", "Literary Translation and Translated Literature" and "Cultural Issues in Translation". The content of the themes and issues may vary from time to time, depending on student interests.

This is a specialized practical translation course, with a focus on scientific and technological materials. After discussing the general principles and methods of specialised translation, students will have the opportunity to translate texts chosen from such areas as computer science, health science, environmental science, medical science, social science, electronic engineering, and genetic engineering.

This course provides an introduction to understanding the global circulation of translated literature and the dynamics of the publishing industry from a historical, theoretical and practical point of view. We will discuss current theoretical issues regarding the study of the circulation of translations from an interdisciplinary perspective (i.e. Translation Studies, Comparative Literature and Sociology), as well as examining the publishing process of a translation. Special attention will be paid to the development of new publishing initiatives and the possibilities offered by digital publishing. Students will be required to work collaboratively in small groups to produce a literary translation that they will publish in a blog.

This course aims to engage students in thinking critically and creatively about intersemiotic translation (i.e. the interpretation of the signs of a sign system with the signs of another system) and other practices of interpretation such as adaptation, rewriting, imitation and borrowing with reference to the ideas of intertextuality, memes, difference and repetition, with an emphasis on the exploration of the ideological implications concerning the transformation of cultural artefacts across genres and media.

This course is designed to improve students' practical translation capability. It will cover a wide range of texts, the selection of which will depend substantially on the translation needs of external clients, and will focus on the delivery of professional-quality output within a teacher-facilitated classroom setting. The content of coursework will include the following: (1) running and working for a translation agency; (2) text analysis; (3) translating; (4) correcting and editing translation products; (5) polishing and fair copy production; (6) commentary and analysis of translation; and (7) communicating with external clients.

This course aims to help students develop an understanding of Chinese/Hispanic cultures and to stimulate critical and reflective skills through comparative and intercultural analysis. The course will be organised around case studies on cinema, literature, visual art, food and popular culture across Spanish, Latin-American, Chinese and Sinophone cultures. Contextualisation and comparison are integral to all such case studies. Students will engage in discussions based on these case studies around a variety of concepts such as translation, hybridity, diaspora, migration, reception, influence and contact.

This course aims to provide training in community interpreting with special reference to medical and legal settings. It will cover a spectrum of interpreting modes ranging from (short and long) consecutive interpreting to the increasingly prevalent mode of simultaneous interpreting (with or without text) for those settings. Students will develop skills and techniques for community interpreting with authentic materials and in simulated settings.

This course, built upon the knowledge and skills learned in previous interpreting course(s), aims to lay the foundation for acquiring skills of simultaneous interpreting.  Simultaneous interpreting is often (though not exclusively) the chosen mode for multilingual conferences and thus will be the focus of the training offered in this course.  Students will develop skills and techniques for simultaneous interpreting with authentic materials and in simulated settings.