As a brand-new research field of sociolinguistics, the study of linguistic landscape interprets the relationship between language and space by means of analyzing the variety of linguistic signs in public space such as public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings, which in general can be divided into top-down signs and bottom-up signs and which are equipped with informative function and symbolic function. The article reviews the chronological development of linguistic landscape studies at home and abroad, expounds the research contents in detail which contain Linguistic Landscape in a narrow sense represented by Landry & Bourhis (1997), Gorter (2006a, 2006b) and Backhaus (2007) , Semiotic Landscape by Jaworski & Thurlow (2010a, 2010b) and Geosemiotics by Scollon & Scollon (2003), and has a thorough and in-depth discussion about theoretical and methodological argumentations of this study in the following five aspects of (1) the samples’ representativeness and scope, (2) the sample’s unit of analysis, (3) the samples’ categorizations, (4) the signs’ authorship, primary functions and intended readers, and (5) quantitative or qualitative analysis. This study reflects the diverse linguistic phenomena in terms of language conflict, language contact, language maintenance, language change and ethnolinguistic vitality, so on and so forth, which demonstrate overt or covert linguistic prestige, power relations and social status embodied in the language use and language choice. In the end, the article puts forward personal views about the prospective linguistic landscape studies in China.

Live speech acts in situated discourse are performed by live “whole persons” who interact with the environment in a multimodal way. In this sense, speech acts are suggested to be studied in the perspective of human behavior and in the framework of social situation. With the help of Corpus Linguistics and multimodal approach to language study, researchers are able to further investigate pragmatic issues to develop a better understanding on human interaction and refine traditional pragmatic theories or concepts. Adopting the method of Multimodal Corpus Linguistics and the basic thought of Simulative Modeling, the pilot study in this paper shows that the live illocutionary act is rooted in the whole multimodal interaction of speakers, thus the illocutionary force is multimodal in nature. Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices range in its scope from language structures, prosodic features to non-verbal gestures, etc. All these resources, which are impacted by speakers’ occurrent emotions and other factors, work in a collaborative way to help speakers to perform illocutionary acts. These findings are in compliance with Austin’s observation on the accompaniments of the utterance when a speaker performs an illocutionary act. The findings extend the inquiry of Speech Act Theory and develop the concept of Illocutionary Force Indicating Device by using the novel method and new linguistic data. This paper provides a reference for further study of pragmatic issues based on multimodal corpus, multimodal approach to pragmatic study, or even Multimodal (Corpus) Pragmatics, therefore, should receive due attention.

Many traditional critics tend to relate the supernatural images in Macbeth with the three Fates and thus ignored the dimension of psychological reality in the play. By applying Lacanian and Žižekian psychoanalysis in the interpretation of the supernatural images of the three witches in Macbeth, this paper concludes that the three witches are no more than the rhetoric of Macbeth’s inner desire, and their prophecy is the metonymy of Macbeth’s unconscious. Different witch imagery in different versions of Macbeth allow new interpretations of the play. Macbeth saw Lady Macbeth’s gaze on the three witches, and his desire was established through Lady Macbeth’s desire. Macbeth tried to respond to the emptiness of ‘the Other’ by filling up the emptiness of his inner desire but he lost himself in the pursuit of power. Lady Macbeth indulged herself in ‘surplus-enjoyment’ derived from Macbeth’s supreme royal power. However, when Lady Macbeth failed to satisfy her desire with surplus-enjoyment, she was doomed to lose her reason and perish. By describing the supernatural images and Macbeth’s uncanny dreams, William Shakespeare displays Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s profound inner worlds, which reveal his concern about humanism to a greater extent.

As the essence of the Chinese language, four-character idioms are the crystallization of traditional use by the Chinese people. The integrity of their meaning and the solidification of their structure seem to be conventionalized. However, with the dynamic evolution of the Chinese language, its four-character idioms should not be considered to be the unchangeable “antique” in language expressions, but as the unique “living fossil” of traditional Chinese culture, since these idioms have already developed with prominent elasticity and enormous potentiality for change. Grounded on the view put forward by Wang Wenbin that Chinese language possesses the trait of spatiality, this paper focuses on the special and complicated language unit of Chinese four-character idioms. What has been observed is that four-character idioms are characterized by chunkiness and discreteness. Their chunkiness can be revealed by their inner components being orderly spread, parallel combined and chunkily integrated when they are componentially analyzed, and being independently lumpy, relatively juxtaposed and flexibly disconnected while used as a whole in a sentence. Their discreteness can be demonstrated by the feature of elasticity: being separable, insertable, order-exchangeable and substitutable. The chunkiness and the discreteness actually accommodate each other and interact with each other as both cause and effect, thereby making the trait of the spatiality of Chinese quite conspicuous.

This paper explores some features related to the history of the development of English grammar. With regard to the simultaneity of grammar and language and their history, the paper holds the view that this is related to the process underlying the formation of the English language, the appearance of England as a country, and our position in discussing the topic. As for the beginning of systematic research of English grammar, it is commonly understood that the first grammar of modern English was published in the 16th century and therefore its history could be divided into three stages, that is, 16~17th century, 18th century, 19~20th century.This paper also touches upon the close relation between grammar and other disciplines,namely, logic, rhetoric, and philosophy.

The year of 2020 saw the global occurrence of COVID-19 pandemic. In China’s fighting against the coronavirus, the national emergency system of language services has become a hot topic of scrutiny and debate. This paper is intended to define the concept of emergency language services and review the international and domestic research developments in language and emergency control. It puts forth five proposals concerning how to rapidly build and develop China’s system for emergency language services, including language service infrastructure, language policy and planning, language service capacity building, development of the national standard for emergency language services, and the training of professionals for emergency language services. The article concludes by emphasising the importance of our national language service capability, and recommends that the emergency system of language services should be improved as soon as COVID-19 pandemic is over in order to contribute to crisis management. This paper has been written in tribute to all of the Chinese people fiercely and tirelessly engaged in battle against COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper has an exploratory discussion on the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and foreign language teaching (FLT) and argues that AI, as the trend of education informatization, has produced many of its own concepts over its development. Based on that argument, the paper explores and demonstrates the application of some of the AI key concepts in FLT. To apply AI technology effectively to FLT, schools are supposed to establish SMART classrooms in a well-planned way and try to build up FLT teachers’ IT competence in FLT practice, learning to make smart use of teaching materials and AI technology software in their teaching activities.

This paper selects three representative ones after reviewing available English translations of Lu Xun’s stories. These three versions were translated by Wang Chichen, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, as well as William Lyell respectively. Through an investigation into their reprints/reeditions, readers’ feedback and presence in the English publications, the paper describes their reception in the US and discusses influencing factors behind their reception against the historical background. It finds that Wang Chichen’s translations won wide publicity in the US. But their readership was rather limited due to the sudden change of the political environment, as well as the different reading habit of US readers when compared with that of their Chinese counterparts. Despite the Cold War, the Yangs’ translations were the most accessible translations of Lu Xun’s stories in American universities and academia between the 1950s and the 1980s. Lyell’s translations received many compliments from US scholars, but they were published by an academic press and did not enter the mainstream distribution channel. Furthermore, English translations of Lu Xun’s fiction were no longer seen as important tools to know the history of Chinese society at the end of the 20th century. These are part of the reasons why Lyell’s translations were not widely read by ordinary US readers.

The outset of translation technology research can be traced back to the 1940s. In the past several decades, as a result of the rapid development in computer science, information technology, computational linguistics, terminology studies, and other related disciplines, translation technology has become an essential norm in translation practice, an important part of translation studies, a new paradigm of translation pedagogy, and a major trend in the industry. In a bid to get an overview of translation technology studies in China, this paper, by employing CiteSpace V, a scientometric tool, analyzes the metadata of all the related research papers, which fall into the category of translation technology studies, published in CNKI. With an aim to uncover the diachronic evolvement and current situation of this research field, the author probes into the number of articles published annually, the major magazines that carry the papers, the major research areas, high-frequency keywords and major research institutions that produce a large number of papers. Finally, with the assistance knowledge graphs, the author comes up with the following findings: the research has peaked in the past decade, with a focus on the fundamental research and application development of machine translation. In the end, suggestions for further research are put forward. This paper will hopefully provide researchers with food for thought and therefore facilitate translation technology studies in China.

Using Chinese research papers from the CSSCI journal database from 2001 to 2018 as samples, this paper aims to inquire into the research focus and trends of business English in China. It conducts a quantitative analysis of the relationship between research status and focus in the framework of co-word analysis and data visualization. The results indicate that: (1) the amount of research in the field of business English reached its peak in 2011 and then declined steadily; and (2) the domestic research covers four areas, i.e., construction and initiation of business English majors in accordance with national standards for business English majors, business English studies based on corpora methods, talents training models of high vocational school students based on need analysis theory, and business English teaching and reform in interdisciplinary perspectives.

Pragmatics is an extremely down-to-earth linguistic discipline despite having complex theories. It has made tremendous progress in theory and application in the last decade, as evidenced by the clear trends toward paying more attention to the use of language in various social contexts and using relevant theories from other disciplines more frequently to conduct interdisciplinary research. In addition, greater importance is being attached to social constructivism in the study of transdisciplinary issues such as linguistic politeness, face, identity, stance, image, and trust, as well as more emphasis being placed on integrating the perspectives of multiple subjects, such as speakers, listeners, bystanders, and commentators, in the analysis of interactions. Furthermore, more stress is being placed on the integration of multi-contextual factors, such as the communicative context, the sequential context/co-text, and the sociocultural context, as well as on a preference for qualitative research or a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, and the use of multimodal discourse analyses.

Language proficiency scales have played a significant role in national language strategy and language education. Recently, China’s Standards of English Language Ability (CSE) has drawn much attention from academia and the whole society. This paper reviews the current studies on validity and validation of language proficiency scales. It is revealed that most research has focused on one function of the scales—assessment tools. In terms of validity theory of language scales, two frameworks proposed by Zhu (2016) and Fang & Yang (2017) are discussed. Both frameworks hold that validity can be classified into several kinds, but they understand validity in different ways and apply different concepts to refer to the same validity. Comparison of these frameworks shows that Zhu (2016) and Fang & Yang (2017) each have their advantages and disadvantages. As for the experimental studies, interpretations of developing the scales and aligning them to other scales and tests have attracted the most effort. Discussion on the theoretical and experimental research of language scales leads us to propose potential future directions. On the one hand, it seems necessary to integrate the two current frameworks into a new model of validation of language proficiency scales that considers scale characteristics under the guidance of validity theory acknowledged in the educational and psychological measurements and language testing. On the other hand, it is arguable that descriptors of learners’ real language behaviors should come from collecting and selecting real data from a large group of language users rather than the subjective judgment of experts, teachers, and students, mainly because the subjective evaluation might not be fully reliable. Furthermore, CSE and other well-known language scales all boast that they should be used as standards on which language tests can be developed. Therefore it is an open question to what extent validity theories of language testing can be applied to validating language scales.

Interactional linguistics (IL), a research methodology in linguistics, has attracted a significant amount of attention in China in recent years. As a conversation analysis (CA)-informed research methodology, IL is closely aligned with and is directly related to CA. This paper first introduces the theoretical foundations, the research objectives, and the research procedures in IL, and then takes On the Functions of Compromising Response via Haoba — Towards an Interactional Linguistic Approach by Zheng Juanman (2018) as an example to reveal some of the problems in Zheng’s research so as to highlight the necessity of adopting correct ways to conduct empirical research based on the IL framework. We hope that our fellow researchers will strictly adhere to the principles of IL, master the correct research methods of IL, and conduct objective, scientific and convincing IL empirical research.

Chinese martial art films often feature elements of both traditional Chinese culture and martial arts, which constitute the primary selling points when they are screened abroad. As such, the caption translator must ensure that these elements are properly treated so as to enable a positive overseas reception. This, however, is an under-researched topic both in and outside of China. Javier Franco Aixelá’s taxonomy of translation strategies for treating culture-specific items requires modification before it can be aptly applied to Chinese-English subtitling. Using this amended version as an analytical tool, this article seeks to examine the subtitling strategies employed by Linda Jaivin when rendering the Chinese martial art terms in Wong Kar-wai’s film The Grandmaster into English. The quantitative analysis of 54 Chinese martial art terms along with their corresponding English forms indicates that Linda Jaivin employs cultural conservation strategies more often than cultural substitution strategies. The qualitative analysis further demonstrates that she translates Chinese martial art terms in a flexible and resourceful manner, thereby ensuring that the English subtitles are both easily accessible to Western audiences and instrumental in popularizing Chinese martial art culture in the West. The case study has important implications for promoting traditional Chinese culture abroad via the medium of cinema.

The types of teachers’ written feedback and their effects have been the focuses of researches on feedback in EFL writing. This paper aims at providing some references and suggestions on the effective feedback types in EFL writing in China through reviewing the recent ten-year researches on teachers’ written feedback in EFL writing in China from the perspectives of feedback source, content, types and comments, and exploring the future development of the researches from research design, feedback types, and research perspectives and so on.Literature research shows that the answers remain controversial on which kind of feedback source, feedback content, feedback type, and feedback comments are the best to students in EFL writing. However, the supplementary roles of peer feedback and electronic feedback are well recognized; form-focused feedback combined with content-focused feedback is popular with the students; the demand for the degree of feedback directness and feedback comments varies with the level of students. Compared to the past, recent domestic researches on teachers’ feedback are more various in research methods, more diversified in research perspectives and extended more in research content. Future domestic research on teachers’ feedback needs to make efforts on designing the experiment, expanding the feedback content, combining different feedback types and broadening research perspectives in order to further verify the effectiveness of teachers’ written feedback.

As a new research field, multimodal discourse analysis is facing a lot of challenges. On the one hand, the status of multimodality in traditional linguistics is questioned. Many linguists argue that nonlinguistic signs such as gestures and visual images are out of the scope of linguistics. On the other hand, the theories and methods of multimodal discourse analysis are still at an early stage of development and have many limitations. Moreover, many researchers have misunderstandings of the field. In view of these, this article provides a brief explanation of the basic questions of multimodal discourse analysis, including why we analyze multimodal discourse, whether linguistic theories are applicable to nonlinguistic signs such as visual images and gesture, what is the scope of multimodal research, what are the main theories and methods, and what are the limitations and misunderstandings. It further points out that researchers need to have the awareness of making their research interdisciplinary, empirical, and application-oriented. It argues that multimodal research should be based on theoretical and methodological innovation, and should aim at solving real communication problems in the multimedia age. The accurate understanding of these questions is crucial for developing multimodal discourse analysis into a new discipline with strong theoretical and methodological support.

Starting from the divergence and convergence of the current linguistic, socio-cultural, and cognitive paradigms of Translation Studies and drawing on the research of Social Cognition, this article introduces the concept, question and methodology of Socio-cognitive Translation Studies. It is proposed that translation be viewed as social cognition, that is, an interlingual operation shaped by the translator’s perception, interpretation, and conceptualization of the social world. Facilitated by the conceptual tools, theoretical and methodological models of Social Cognition, this combinatory approach may help to reach a more inclusive and coherent account for the ontology and methodology of Translation Studies, to raise some new questions meaningful both theoretically and practically, and to shed some new light on the research of the translator’s behavior.

The study of language for specific purpose (LSP) came into being with the development of technology and commerce. Translators of technical and commercial texts have to pay attention to the features of LSP in both source and target texts. Based on an overview of the LSP corpus-based translation studies at home and abroad in recent years, the present paper has provided a summary of the characteristics in this area including the development of new research topics, diversity in mode of comparison, high maneuverability in investigations, and more applicability to practical research. The investigations introduced in the present paper include corpus-based studies of translations in various contexts, such as law, medicine, tourism, commerce and advertisement, religion and science, etc. The author maintains that genre, as a significant variable in translation studies, has always been the focus of attention of translation researchers. It is the genre that decides the strategies employed by translators which may lead to different translations. In the field of LSP corpus-based translation studies, investigations into the features of translational language, hypotheses of translation universals testing, explorations into translator’s style and changes in the TL brought about by translation in different genres, development of computer-assisted translation tools, translation of terms, translation quality assessment, and specially designed research methodology may provide new perspectives for researchers. LSP corpus, which is more utility-oriented, can be applied to both theoretical research and practical use. Translation studies based on LSP corpus may further broaden the scope of and provide new topics for the Corpus-based Translation Studies and shows great promise for the future.

International discourse system with Chinese characteristics has become a hot topic in academic circles. On the basis of a detailed review of the current research situation, this paper discusses future research dimensions in this field, hoping to inspire subsequent theoretical research and practical exploration on the translation, introduction, and communication of the international discourse system with Chinese characteristics. The article holds that future research still needs to be deepened and broadened in the fields of theory and practice, idea and method, system and mechanism, translation and dissemination, platform and channel, as well as talents training. In particular, the research of core issues such as theoretical innovation, applied countermeasures, talent cultivation and mechanism effectiveness should be strengthened.

This article applies sampling survey research method of inferential statistic, conducted on 77 Chinese students who have studied in German over six months. It analyses the participants’ cross-cultural adaptation by reviewing the Cultural Dimension Theory. Based on the culture theory of Hofstede, this research investigates and analyese the main reasons of the culture shock from three aspects: their daily life, studies and interpersonal communication. This research aims to help those who plan to study abroad and the Chinese students in German realize and understand the culture shock they will face. Accordingly, it is useful for them to adapt the different culture as well as avoid the discomfort and conflict during their communication.

The translation of Chinese local literature has always been a hot topic in translation field. Folk language, as the carrier of local literature, has drawn translators’ attention to its translation and is of great importance to the spread of Chinese culture. Translator model and the related factors for constructing that model are two significant factors in whether or not Chinese literature can walk toward the world successfully or not. The topic of translator model has been controversial in translation studies, and now the generally recognized translator model is “a Sinologist + a Chinese translator”. This article, selecting some high-frequency folk language expressions from Glodblatt’s translations of Mo Yan’s ten novels, compares Goldblatt’s translations with Chinese tranalators’ and analyzes the similarities and differences between them from three perspectives of meaning, folk flavor and fluency, so as to conclude the translation model of folk language, which is expected to provide some valuable reference for the Chinese culture to go global.

The Graeco-Arabic translation movement, which spanned the 8^th to the 10^th centuries, was one of the main events in the flourishing of Arabic culture in medieval times, and together with major translation activities in other cultures, such as Bible translations in the West and Buddhism translations in China, contributed to translation activities across the world. The Graeco-Arabic translation movement was characterized by intensive translation practices, a vast scale, lasting continuity, and a profound influence that was unprecedented in any other ethnic nation or culture. In terms of translatology, it is worth noting that the translation movement also resulted in a wealth of discourse about translation which, apart from providing contextual resources for understanding this epoch-making event, exhibits some characteristics of contemporary translation theories. However, this treasure has generally been neglected in academic circles, and its historical and theoretical significance has largely been hidden from sight. In view of the philosophy of generating discourse about translation, two representatives of a group of translators during this period, Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and Al-Jāḥiẓ, were selected and an interpretation of their remarks about translation is offered with reference to contemporary translation theories, with the aim of presenting Arabic scholars’ generalizations and deliberations about translation activities, thus providing the opportunity for interactions concerning discourse on translation among various cultures worldwide.

In this paper, the author, as the initiator of the theory of Translator Behavior Criticism, answers researchers’ questions concerning the possible origins, causes, and the applications of the theory. For its applications, the author specifically takes the analytic hierarchy process to be the method in order to get the theory improved and the studies strengthened through theory carding, doubts clearing and collaborative learning.

Ecolingusitics is an umbrella term which is concerned with the interaction between language and ecology, covering topics from language diversity, language endangerment and language revitalization to ecological discourse analysis. There are two main complementary strands within this field: Haugenian approach and Hallidayan approach. Haugenian approach, also known as language/linguistic ecology, favors the study of the co-existence of languages whether in human minds or human societies and the protection and enhancement of the status of minority or endangered languages, which aims to preserve linguistic diversity, while Hallidayan approach, known as ecological linguistics, addresses the question of how language construes our view of nature and environment, and explores the role of language and discourse in describing, concealing and helping to solve ecological and environmental problems. As the first comprehensive exploration into this interdisciplinary and relatively new field, The Routledge Handbook of Ecolinguistics (2017) not only provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art, past and present of ecolinguistics through in-depth discussion of diverse topics by leading international scholars, but also concludes with a discussion on what new orientations ecolinguistics will have and which trends will be investigated more profoundly in the future, which shed light on the leading ideas, topics, approaches and research methodologies in ecolinguistics. This book is a tremendous asset, provides much tasty food for thought and offers an excellent work of reference to researchers and postgraduate students interested in ecolinguistics, language ecology and ecological discourse analysis. The present article attempts to make a brief review and evaluation of this monograph in the hope of offering invaluable insights into domestic ecolinguistic studies.

The poet Dante (1265—1361) conceived of a set of subtle and unique spatial structures for the Inferno, Purgatory and Paradiso in the Divine Comedy. This paper adopts the spatial narratology approach to analyze the integration of traditional Christian theology and Renaissance humanism in the Divine Comedy. The study finds that Dante not only employed spatial construction to concretize the vague and chaotic cosmology of the medieval period as a geometrical system, but also materialized the humanistic moral values through the description of relative positions and body postures, thus allowing the space to become a vehicle for theological metaphors. Therefore, the spatial approach is essential in order to comprehensively evaluate the artistic and theological value of the Divine Comedy.

Mo Yan is one of the best writers of contemporary China and his works have been translated and circulated in the Anglosphere for three decades. By dividing the translation history of Mo Yan’s works in the Anglosphere into four phases, this article attempts to delineate the history by characterizing each phase and then to evaluate their reception based on book reviews in public media and academic journals. It is found out that the first phase (1988-1992) saw the translation of Mo Yan’s short stories and novellas but the readership was restricted to the academic circle; in the second phase (1993-1999), with the translation of Red Sorghum and The Garlic Ballads by Howard Goldblatt, Mo Yan began to be known to the general Anglophone public; in the third phase (2000-2012), the publication of three more novels in English and the positive reception among readers paved the way for the “consecration” of Mo Yan as a Nobel Laureate, signaling the change of status from a local to an international writer; and in the fourth phase (from 2012 to the present), the controversy about Mo Yan’s political stance led to the critical acceptance of his new publications, but the publication of Frog in English two years later subdued the severe criticism, and judgements about Mo Yan were made more on the intrinsic literary value of the work. Mo Yan’s case is significant in providing new insights for the globalization of Chinese literature.

Wang Rongpei is a renowned contemporary translator of Chinese classics. He has translated more than 60 Chinese classical works in his lifetime, among which eight works, including Shijing, have been selected for inclusion in the Library of Chinese Classics due to their outstanding contributions to the English translation of Chinese classics. Based on the English-Chinese parallel corpus of Shijing, WordSmith was used to investigate Wang Rongpei’s translation style on both the lexical and the syntactic levels by comparing his English translation of Shijing to the English versions by Legge, Pound, and Xu Yuanchong. This study discusses both T-type and S-type translator styles, based on which the interpretation of the motivations is proposed. While reflecting the translator’s style directly by using the statistical data of corpus, exploring the translator’s style by considering the source text is helpful for revealing the essence of translation objectively and comprehensively.

With the development of English translation of Du Fu’s poetry, studies on English translation of Du Fu’s poems have also continued to develop. However, these studies are mostly confined to the English translation of one or several specific poems. There are only a few papers or theses that comprehensively analyze and contrast aspects like translation thoughts, principles, strategies, etc., of translators in the process of their translation. Translator’s preface fall into the category of “paratext”; they usually contain a translator’s introduction to the original work, the author as well as his or her intent of translating, etc. Translator’s preface are carriers of the translator’s translation thoughts and contain numerous theoretical resources of translation principles, strategies, techniques, etc., which, therefore, are of great research value. This thesis selects 36 translated works of Du Fu’s poems and studies their prefaces, with particular reference to translation. On the one hand, the study analyses how a preface reflects a translator’s translation thoughts, strategies, techniques; and on the other hand, through a case study, it explores in what way these elements guide a translator’s translation practice. Thereby, it is expected to generalize some translation rules in order to provide guidance for research on the translation of Du Fu’s poems.

The study of syntactic complexity in L2 writing has been one of the hot topics in applied linguistics and second language acquisition in recent years. Both Chinese and overseas scholars have conducted a series of empirical studies employing different measures from different perspectives and great achievements have been obtained. This paper attempts to review the current research situation of syntactic complexity in L2 writing in terms of research content, research methods, research perspectives and existing problems of the study of syntactic complexity in L2 writing. In addition, current trends of research on syntactic complexity and the characteristics of the teaching of syntactic complexity in L2 writing are briefly stated. It is not difficult to see the nature of L2 syntactic complexity is multi-faceted, multi-level and multi-dimensional, and it requires serious attention to research design and the use of appropriate statistical analyses in the future. The multi-faceted, multi-level and multi-dimensional nature of L2 syntactic complexity provides a new perspective and implication for L2 writing pedagogy. The meaning dimension of linguistic complexity might help researchers further establish and develop multi-dimensional measures combining linguistic form, function and meaning, taking the learners’ language development and variation into account, and, at the same time, pay attention to assessing learners’ language proficiency level and writing quality.

 In his latest collection of papers, Translation Changes Everything (2013), Lawrence Venuti put forward the hermeneutic model and revised his concepts of translation ethics and translation evaluation strategies, via which what he has meant by “foreignizing” in his early theory was expounded; this is a result of what he has continuously focused on in the contemplation of translation theory, therefore, advancing his systematic beliefs on translation. To comprehend Venuti’s latest thought about translation ethics and ideals, it is essential to explore the theoretical basis of the hermeneutic model and its differences from the traditional hermeneutic approach of translation studies. Then investigation into “inscription” and “interpretant”, the two prime concepts in the hermeneutic model respectively borrowed from Derrida and Charles Pierce, will offer us an insight into Venuti’s comprehension of translation as interpretation. And finally, comparison of “inscription” and “interpretant” with “remainder”, the core concept from Lecercle in Venuti’s former theories, will be conducive to perceiving the line of mutations in Venuti’s thinking, revealing the new model’s vantage point in explaining the universal nature of translation. Analysis of the hermeneutic model’s advantage over foreignizing theory and ethics of difference—Venuti’s former theories, will facilitate the probe into the correlation between his former thoughts and current thinking as well as his latest transition from foreignization to innovation, thus helping illuminate the translation universals—translation, as interpretation in essence, is bound to change the original material. In addition, Venuti’s line of exploration, his motivation and process of reasoning and investigation, have shed us more light on approaching what translation and its theory would finally come to be.

This paper revisits the four historical stages of Business English since China’s Reform and Opening-up forty years ago. It summarizes and presents the gradual development of curriculum, discipline theory and research since the launch of the undergraduate business English program. In terms of program development, the “Business English Teaching Guidance of the Teaching Quality Standards of University Foreign Languages and Literature Programs” has been drafted to define the required five types of knowledge, qualities and abilities of business English students. In terms of disciplinary structuring, three intra-and inter-disciplinary modes of MA and PhD programs have been put into trial. In terms of theory building, the cross-disciplines of foreign linguistics and applied linguistics, international trade and business administration have been integrated. In terms of research streams, eight clearly defined areas of studies have taken shapes with the growing publication of key journal articles, high level projects and books. In the end, the paper reflects upon the training objective, curriculum optimization, teaching evaluation approach, textbook writing and teacher development of the current Business English program in remenbrance of the great achievements and innovation of Chinese higher foreign language education over the forty years of reform and opening-up.

ChatGPT, which reflects the level of language intelligence, integrates information searching, machine translation, and dialogue production with its powerful generation ability, potentially representing a technological revolution. Foreign language teaching is related to the cultivation of language ability and knowledge transfer and is bound to be directly affected by the rapid development of language intelligence. On the basis of introducing the functions and characteristics of ChatGPT, this paper analyzes the applications and challenges of ChatGPT in foreign language teaching. As a response to these potential problems, this paper proposes several general strategies. As the integration of humans and artificial intelligence intensifies, foreign language teaching should adhere to its fundamental goal of educating students, reform its teaching paradigm, seek to innovate, strive to improve language intelligence literacy, enhance language intelligence ethics awareness, and cultivate more high-quality foreign language talents.

As a new NLP machine learning model with an extensive ability to produce content, ChatGPT has the potential to transform traditional translation teaching models. However, ChatGPT may also decrease students’ ability to learn autonomously, may undermine teacher-student relationships, damage academic integrity and knowledge security, and lead to ethical and ideological risks. In order to address the challenges and to make full use of ChatGPT in the teaching of translation, it is necessary to change the traditional way of teaching, to reform the teaching process, to improve students’ ability to learn autonomously, to increase education in translation ethics, to control ideological risks, and to enhance teachers and students’ digital literacy.

The College English Teaching Guide was published in 2013 and since then China has made the Belt and Road Initiative and state strategies as the building-up of world class universities and academic disciplines as well as technological innovation. Against the backdrop of new state strategies, it is necessary to revise and update the national College English Teaching Guideline if it is still expected to provide adequate guidance. To adapt to the new era, we propose a paradigm shift from the traditional emphasis of CET on the solid language foundation, the humanistic quality and cross-cultural communication to the development of students’ professional, academic and pragmatic abilities. To this end, we put forward the revised content and the theoretical basis for its revision in terms of teaching objectives, teaching requirement and curriculums. It is suggested that the objective should aim to satisfy the needs of socioeconomic development directly instead of addressing various individual needs of the students. Hence the linguistic requirement and CET courses should be tailored to match the objective. For example, the size of vocabulary should be doubled and the discipline-specific vocabulary should also be included. Courses of teaching general English should be marginalized and substantially replaced by courses of teaching English for academic purposes and for specific purposes.

Nationwide, Chinese graduate students with diverse majors are required to study English to support their education and job prospects. However, to date little research has investigated the needs of these learners. This paper reports a needs analysis survey conducted with 271 non-English major graduate students with 263 valid questionnaires returned, aimed to inform the design of an effective English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course. Investigating these graduate students’ needs, difficulties, and English language study habits, 50 questions, mostly utilizing a 5-point Likert scale, comprised four dimensions: individual competence, learner motivation, learning process needs and learning environment needs. Results of this descriptive analysis revealed that most participants’ motivation for learning is primarily instructional. Most participants were dissatisfied with their general English competency and Listening and Speaking were reported to be their weakest language skills. They reported concern for their academic writing skills as well their academic listening and speaking abilities. In their demands for language courses, participants welcome both general English and EAP courses, whereas most prefer more interactive arrangements such as pair or group discussions, seminars and projects, in place of only teacher-centered lectures. Participants also expressed their desire for more authentic communication and learning materials. Recommendations are made for the design and delivery of an effective English-language course for general academic purposes, including suggestions for student-oriented, task or project based, interactive learning activities.

This paper, which traces the origin and research status of corpus-based translation studies, highlights the disadvantages of current corpus-based translation studies, and proposes that translation studies based on multilingual corpora should be conducted to expand and deepen corpus-based translation studies. It is argued that the main topics in translation studies that are based on multilingual corpora include translation universals, translation norms, translation units, and translation strategies and methods. Translation studies that are based on multilingual corpora will not only overcome the limitations of the current corpus-based translation studies that rely excessively on monolingual or bilingual corpora and expand corpus-based translation studies, but will also provide an important basis for the study of translation theory that will have universal significance and will promote the development of general translation studies.

Research on translation history is an important branch of translation studies. However, there are still many problems and shortcomings in current translation history research, such as the unimformed nature of texts due to an emphasis on the ‘people’, some case studies’ tendency to merely pile up historical facts, and the neglect of the history of interpreting. In this interview, the interviewer discusses the issues listed above with Prof. Anthony Pym from the University of Melbourne, who is an internationally-renowned figure in translation history research with his monograph Method in Translation History recognized as a classical work. Prof. Pym responds to the above shortcomings in current translation history research from his own perspective. Based on the above discussions, the author provides some insights on future translation history research, including the implementation of interdisciplinary research between translation studies and history studies with the discovery of first-hand materials; the emphasis on non-literary translation history such as sci-technology translation and law translation, as well as the history of interpreting. It is hoped that this interview can help clarify some problems about current translation history research and promote translation history research in China, so that Chinese researchers of translation history can better carry out exchanges with international counterparts.

Working memory is an important factor in second language acquisition. Based on statistical analysis of the published papers in 13 core journals in the foreign language field in recent twenty years from 1996 to 2015 in China, the present paper reviews the studies of the relationship between working memory and second language acquisition. In terms of research methodology, these studies can be divided into two periods. From 1996 to 2007, researchers in the foreign language field in China mainly introduced the Western theories related to working memory and second language acquisition into China or published papers of relevant literature reviews; and from 2008 to 2015, quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to investigate the relationship between working memory and language acquisition by combining the Western theories with the actual situation of Chinese EFL learners. In terms of research topics, seven topics such as the relationship between working memory and lexical acquisition, between working memory and grammatical or syntactic acquisition, between working memory and reading comprehension, and between working memory and listening comprehension, etc. are investigated from perspectives of second language comprehension, second language production and the combination of both modes. Based on the previous studies, several shortcomings in the present status are discussed, and the research trends are also provided to shed light on future studies in the field.

To be adapted to Ecological Discourse Analysis, this paper examines and extends the cohesion and coherence theory within Systemic Functional Linguistics from an ecolinguistic perspective. The research shows that the ecological cohesion and coherence system involves three conjunctive sub-systems. The first is the ecosophy of ‘Diversity and Harmony, Interaction and Coexistence’, which is the basis for the judgment of eco-orientations of discourse. The second is the outside cohesive resources to be judged for eco-orientations of discourse, i.e., the three parameters of register - field, tenor and mode. The third is the inside cohesive resources to be judged for eco-orientations of discourse, including transitivity, mood, tense and voice, reference, substitution and ellipsis, conjunction, repetition and collocation, rhetorical devices, and pronunciations and intonations, which play a significant role in the organisation and progression of discourse, and the use of which either conveys certain eco-orientations or heightens or weakens degrees of eco-orientations. To illustrate the applicability of the extended cohesion and coherence theory in Ecological Discourse Analysis, this paper provides a few examples and explains how cohesive devices are employed to organise texts and to convey eco-orientations. But it should be noted that experiential and interpersonal meanings are the prerequisite for the existence of textual meaning. Therefore, analysts of discourse are expected to be familiar with extended transitivity, mood, modality and appraisal systems from the perspective of Ecolinguistics before analysing discourse based on this extended cohesion and coherence theory.

Intersubjectivity refers to sharing the experiences of emotion, perception, and language among more than two participants. Language is not only rooted in our bodies, but also in society and intersubjectivity. The paper shows that, when we explain the cognitive foundation of semantics, cognitive linguistics pursues the principle of individualization, thus failing to resolve the contradiction between embodiment and intersubjectivity. In order to address this research gap, we need to borrow ideas from phenomenology. Zlatev proposed the concept of embodied intersubjectivity, which combines embodiment and intersubjectivity as two complementary aspects of the same phenomenon. According to this point of view, speakers and hearers produce “cognitive coordination” together; in linguistic communication, speakers invite hearers to participate in the inferences evoked by linguistic expression, thus altering the cognitive system of hearers and modulating their common ground accordingly. Normal linguistic usages not only have informative functions, but also have “argumentative” functions. Therefore, speakers can influence others’ minds, attitudes, stances, and spontaneous actions through language. Critical cognitive linguistics reflects intersubjectivity because the former is concerned with linguistic usages and their associated conceptual structures, as well as the ideological and legitimating functions these conceptual structures have in speech situations; in other words, people’s ideologies, stances, ideas, points of view, and the acceptability thereof are affected by language. Critical cognitive linguistics can remedy the omission of sociality and intersubjectivity, and can embody “the social turn” in cognitive linguistics.