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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Our Mutual Friend, Eugene’s identity as a dandy has frequently been misinterpreted or ignored. Through textual analysis and historical exploration of Dickens’s association with Bulwer Lytton in his social life and writing career, the paper discloses Dickens’s partial identification with aristocratic and dandyish culture, which probably accounts for the author’s positive treatment of Eugene as a dandyish gentleman. Eugene demonstrates a dandyish tendency in his witty remarks, calm manner, indolent way of living, and playful attitude toward life and middle class morality. With those dandyish characteristics, Eugene displays different ways of seeing and living, and his deviance from social norms is endowed with cultural significance in accordance with the overall attack on middle-class culture in the novel. Eugene is markedly different from the debauched dandies in Dickens’s prior works. To accept the character of Eugene as a dandy in a favorable light will help readers to discern the complexity of and consistency in the characterization. Dickens’s sympathetic attitude towards dandyism, though much ignored by critics, is displayed fully in this novel.

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.

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.

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.

Adhering to the national strategy of “Building World-Class Universities and Disciplines”, foreign language universities in China should have a distinct vision and develop in a scientific way. Based on literature review, this paper analyzes the orientation, characteristics and strategies of foreign language universities against the background of “Building World-Class Universities and Disciplines”.This study claims that foreign language universities should have the vision of building first-class universities of different types according to their own characteristics and advantages. It also points out that the major characteristics of first-class universities include concentration of talents, sharing of resources and effective governance, which are closely related and interactive. Finally, combined with the above mentioned orientation and characteristics concerning foreign language universities, the paper presents the following development strategies: (1) to design scientifically and make development plans of different levels and types; (2) to highlight the characteristics of internationalization and attract excellent talents; (3) to expand academic impact and promote the cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries; (4) to strengthen the information construction and advance the co-building and co-sharing of resources; (5) to improve the systems and mechanisms and build distinct university culture; (6) to enhance institutional researches on foreign language universities and develop the collegial communication and cooperation.

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.

“The Action Plan for Building World-Class Universities and Disciplines” is a significant plan in the development of China higher education, and it offers opportunities and challenges for the discipline of foreign language and literature. By means of literature review, this paper discusses the connotation of world-class university and discipline, and the connotation and development strategies of world-class foreign language and literature discipline, so as to give some enlightenment to the building of world-class universities and disciplines, and the development of foreign language and literature discipline. On the basis of reviewing relevant research both at home and abroad, this study first points out that world-class university involves world-class students, teachers and researchers, academic research, university management and social services, among which students, faculty, and research are the core components. Second, this study claims that world-class discipline is mainly embodied in the quality of talents, research, faculty and services, while first-echelon discipline management provides the support of system and resources concerned. Third, the building of foreign language and literature discipline is essentially the production, spread and application of knowledge, discipline management runs through the process of talents cultivation and the development of academic research, faculty and social services. Finally, this study probes into the development strategies of world-class foreign language and literature discipline from the above-mentioned aspects.

Ecological discourse analysis can reflect the relationship between language and other ecological phenomena, and can awaken and change people’s awareness of nature and environment. Nowadays, with the deepening dissemination of news media, news reports not only carry social functions such as transmitting information, but also constantly change people’s values and lifestyles. Appraisal Theory, which is the development of SFL account of the interpersonal, is useful to reveal the ideology hidden in the text. From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper analyzes ten news reports on America pulling out of the Paris Climate Change in terms of attitude system of Appraisal Theory, aiming to reveal Western mainstream media’s ideology of climate change and environment. Thus, the paper proves the operability and practicability of Appraisal Theory in ecological discourse analysis, especially in the revealing of ideology, calling for establishing an appropriate and beneficial ecosophy. Through the analysis, it can be found that the reporters of The Guardian have ecological awareness to some extent, and that they express concern about climate change, recognizing that climate change is mainly caused by improper human behavior, and advocating that the world should work together to cope with the ecological crisis. However, they overemphasize the value of human beings, and ignore other forms of life. Eco-linguists should pay attention to the ecological discourse, encouraging those discourses that are conducive to the harmonious development of ecology, and restrict those discourses that are not harmonious with ecology so as not to affect the public’s value judgments.

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.

In Chinese American literature, particularly in the works of female Chinese American writers, “food” has repeatedly appeared as important images, containing profound gender political connotations. With the help of gender politics theories, this article has explored relationships between gender politics and those heroines’ various eating preferences and food choices in female Chinese American literary works of different phases: for lack of gender and racial awareness, some heroines are satisfied with the traditionally stereotyped image to become model ethnic groups; in a split of cultural identification, some heroines are bold enough to present fierce protest and criticism against traditional gender relationships; surpassing the narrow sense of gender and ethnic awareness, some heroines are more concerned with pursuing sexual pleasure. To deconstruct gender and racial oppressions, female Chinese American writers have actually adopted literary creation as a political strategy to demonstrate their long-term struggle and resistance through food narration. Therefore the meaning of this article lies in the fact that it reveals how female Chinese American writers, based on their unique life experiences, integrate political appeals into large numbers of food images. By means of food narration, female Chinese American writers have expressed their voices by portraying a series of heroines who develop their dominant position from subordinate position, thus finally succeeded in constructing female consciousness of subjectivity.

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.

 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.

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.

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.

In recent years, interpreting studies have maintained great momentum against the backdrop of global language services. In 2015, Routledge Publisher published two works influential to interpreting studies: The Routledge Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies and The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting. First, this paper briefly introduces the researches presented in The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting, followed by some key insights drawn from its research perspectives, new frontiers and innovations. Specifically, the history of interpreting and the important internal and external players are issues unique to interpreting studies that are given voices here. New interpreting technologies, interpreting professionalism and the return of interpreting ethics are also highlighted as current research frontiers; besides, transcription, translation and child language brokering, which have rarely drawn concern from academic circles, also receive scholarly attention in these works. Overall, this paper provides a panorama of the core issues in interpreting studies and offers a variety of perspectives in order to promote discussion on some controversial issues and to stimulate future researches..

Conversation analysts treat conversation as social action; this sociological orientation of CA has an implication that it does not exclude non-verbal actions from CA’s remit since its foundation. This article discusses the theoretical and methodological succession from ethnomethodology, through CA to CA-based multimodal interaction research and their interrelationships, focusing on strengths and issues in applying sequential analysis to multimodal interaction research. On the positive side, as a fundamental procedure and method in CA, sequential analysis provides a way of identifying the participants’ treatment and understanding of each other’s actions, a proof procedure intrinsic to the data. It thus enables in-depth, fine-grained investigations into the miscroscopic interactional processes between co-present participants on a moment-by-moment basis. Besides, this article reviews the ways CA-based multimodal interaction analysts deal with their data, using Christian Heath’s transcription scheme as a typical example. Following CA’s strict and clearly-articulated transciption tradition, CA-based multimodal transcription practice inherits every bit of these merits. One problem associated with sequential analysis in multimodal interaction research, especially during data transcription, is that it sometimes poses a challenge to analysts in terms of how to identify clear-cut actions within multimodal sequences, due to the complexities arising from simultaneity in multimodal interactions. Some solutions such as Charles Goodwin’s conceptualization on embodied participation framework or suggestions such as Sigrid Norris’ notions of modal density, etc., have been mentioned as a way out or possible solutions for further research.

Folk language, as the carrier of local literature, has drawn translators’ attention to its translation. The model of the translation by sinologists is usually considered to be one of the successful ways for the dissemination of the Chinese culture to go global, Goldblatt’s and Jullia Lovell’s translations of Chinese contemporary literature being the case. The research on their different strategies and motives will be helpful for the study of the translation model and the like. This article, choosing folk languages in Goldblatt’s The Republic of Wine and Jullia Lovell’s The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China as the subjects, analyzes Goldblatt’s and Jullia Lovell’s translation strategies and motives for their behaviors. In a word, being a scholarly translator, one can display the most profound in a culture.

The Remains of the Day, the third novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, demonstrates simplicity, subtlety and elegance in its narration. Told from the perspective of the butler Stevens, the novel portrays his reminiscence and the events that occurred to him during the journey. Using techniques drawn from narratology and the close textual reading advocated by New Criticism, this paper argues that the personal memory of the protagonist has a retrospective and reconstructive importance on shaping and understanding both the present and the past. Stevens’ fragmented and misplaced recollections, as well as his unreliable narration, highlight the ways in which history has been filtered through the lens of memory. Meanwhile, the narrative chasm between the protagonist and other characters reveals to the reader the dialectical relationship between history and memory. In addition, Stevens’ meditative reflection on the past intertwines with events experienced at present on the road, which propel him to reach an epiphany regarding the tragic moments of the past, render him a better understanding of the tie between personal life and historical moments, and offer him a positive stance on the future when making way back home.

The current study of Lin Yutang’s translation in the domestic academic circles is limited to a relatively large number of English translations, that is, to mainly focus on the study of his role of introducing Chinese culture to the foreigners, and it neglects his important contribution of introducing foreign cultures to the Chinese people. The lack of research on Lin Yutang’s Chinese translation is caused by a variety of factors, which include the following objective facts. First of all, Lin Yutang’s Chinese translation works are weaker than its English translation works in terms of the number and the influence. Secondly, it is rather difficult for the researchers to finish collecting Lin Yutang’s Chinese translation works completely. Thirdly, there are a lot of flawed words or contradictory statements in the existing Lin Yutang’s anthology of Chinese translations. And the subjective fact is that Lin Yutang personally holds a less serious attitude to his Chinese translation activities while he actively and continually involves in introducing Chinese culture to the West through his English translation and English writing. It is helpful to further demonstrate Lin Yutang’s contribution to the translation of western culture by a detailed study on the lack and the upcoming prospect of research on Lin Yutang’s Chinese translation, which will lead to comprehensively understanding of Lin Yutang’s equally important achievements in English and Chinese translations.

In the linguistic study of ecological issues and discourses, there is a common approach which is concerned with the classification of discourse types according to the analyst’s ecosophy and understanding of the nature of ecology. However, scholars from different cultural backgrounds with different viewpoints of ecosophy may use different criteria in their classification of discourse (text) types. Arran Stibbe in his book entitled Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By proposes that in the study of ecolinguistics three types of ecological discourse (i.e. destructive discourse, ambivalent discourse, beneficial discourse) be identified, according to the analyst’s ecosophy. This proposal is important but may not be as useful as it sounds. Based on the analysis of examples of ecological discourse, this paper illustrates that the boundary between different discourse (text) types is often indeterminate and fuzzy, which leads to the authors’ argument that the concept of cline should be used to distinguish between the discourse types, as there is no clear-cut line between one type of discourse and another type. Taking into consideration the Chinese context, the paper also argues that ecolinguistic studies in China have their own characteristics, that ecolinguistic studies are value-laden and culture-specific, and that ecolinguistic studies in China should be conducted by considering both the political, historical, cultural, social and economic backgrounds and the social practices in the Chinese context, apart from other factors.

This paper is a response to some points raised in the article “A Restricted View on the Social Nature of Translation: Foundation, Purpose and Affecting Factors” published on Issue 1, 2017, East Journal of Translation. The present article points out that translation cannot exist without the source language while translation studies do not live on language differences. The social properties of translation can be the key to broadening and deepening the translation studies. To study translation, however, we need to start with its essential property—the language. The generalization of the concept “translation action” does not do any good to objectively know the rules of translation. It should be done firstly through probing into its linguistic-property and then its social-property, and through investigating into “translation behavior” (intra-translation behavior) and the extra-translation behavior from the perspective of translator behavior. “Translator Behavior Criticism” combines translation’s linguistic-property and social-property together to form a dynamic paradigm, which breaks the traditional criticism model of dichotomy. “Translation Behavior Criticism” advocates that translation should be studied from its basic level of “linguistic-property” to the higher level of “social-property”, which does not mean to ethically depreciate a translation to “a lower rank” or to raise a translation to “a higher rank”. Rather, the “rank shift” means change from the simple to the complex, and from the basic level to the higher level.

National emergency management capability is the key sign of the modernization of national governance capacity. Emergency language service is an essential part of the national emergency management system. It is the cornerstone to ensure efficient communication, life assistance, and public opinion guidance. China has always attached importance to emergency language services and incorporated them into the outline of the national language development plan for the new era to advance the nation’s emergency language construction. The sudden occurrence of the coronavirus, COVID-19, in late 2019 provided us with an opportunity to review emergency language services and improve emergency language management planning and construction, which has attracted scholars’ research interest. However, few studies have discussed the subject attributes, research topics, and research paradigm of emergency language services from a subject matter perspective. Therefore, the article takes the realistic language needs for the prevention and control of the coronavirus epidemic, from the perspective of emergency language services, discusses the subject attributes, research topics, and research directions of emergency language services, and proposes ten major research topics for emergency language services, together with three research paradigms. This article maintains that emergency language service research is promising, and it aims to provide multidimensional perspectives to meet the language needs of public emergencies and enhance the level of national emergency language capability.

Collocation is an important category of language patterning. The concept “collocation” was proposed by British linguist J.R. Firth, referring to the company words keep. However, collocations are not at random, which means the component words in collocations usually are supposed to meet certain semantic or logical conditions. Nonetheless, in reality, in particular in literary works, certain collocations do contravene the expected semantic or logical restrictions. In fact, these kinds of creative collocations are an important aspect of the creativeness of literary works. Therefore, creative collocations are an important issue in literary translation. On the one hand, collocations, in particular in terms of creative collocations, are practically difficult to translate across languages due to systemic as well as habitual differences. On the other hand, studies of translation of creative collocation in literary works will contribute to the exploration of the creativeness issue in translation studies. Due to the above two considerations, this article explores Howard Goldblatt’s English translation strategies of creative collocations in Mo Yan’s famous novel Red Sorghum. The findings show that: (1) over half of the creative collocations in the original Chinese Red Sorghum are preserved in Goldblatt’s English version, which implies that creative collocations in Chinese literary works can be rendered into English; (2) in the meanwhile, almost half of the creative collocations are normalized in Goldblatt’s English version, which means, on the one hand, they are hard to translate across cultures, and on the other hand, the creativeness of Chinese literary works somewhat suffer losses in English translation

This paper adopts the perspective of lexico-constructional pragmatics to consider pun of traditional rhetoric as a pun trigger, and regards pun in the true sense of the term as a pun construction. In terms of sound, form, meaning, and effect which are four essential pragma-rhetorical parameters, pun constructions fall into three categories: the {X + same sound, same form, varied meaning and effect + X} pun construction, the {X + same/similar sound, similar form, varied meaning and effect + X} pun construction, and the {X + same/similar sound, varied form meaning and effect + X} pun construction. With regard to pragmatic effects, it is found that in addition to what has been addressed in earlier studies, such as humor, novelty, and association, pun construction can be employed to present the rhetor’s emotional attitudes, to circumvent excessive frankness, to deliberately misinterpret an utterance, or to downplay embarrassment. The paper also addresses semantico-pragmatic ambiguity, inheritance, networks, and the pragma-rhetorical effects of pun constructions.