On the basis of historical contexts and representative books, the paper indicates why Ernst Robert Curtius and Erich Auerbach put forward different responses to the German crisis of humanism and philology which happened at the beginning of the 20th century. The former turned to medieval studies in order to construct a meaningful literary and cultural alternative to the Aryan philology, volkische mysticism and Nazi historiography that opposed traditional German Bildung, humanism, and enlightenment. The latter looked for a unity founded largely on Judaeo-Christian heritage, or the Scriptures, in which through figural interpretation, the Old Testament was woven throughout the fabric of European culture, literature and history. Both of them strove to re-establish the unity of European civilization, shattered by Nazi racial, ethnological divisiveness. Besides, the difference between Curtius and Auerbach was not related solely to their contrasting views about philology and historicism but more crucially to their existential condition: the difference between Aryans and Semites in an age of terror and tyranny when the former were permitted to live, the latter were condemned to die.

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.

Reading is a crucial skill required by individuals in the course of language acquisition. It is affected by various cognitive factors. In recent years, children with attention deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD) have received more and more attention. The symptoms of ADHD children include: inattention, hyperaction, and impulse. Among them, inattention is the main characteristic of children with ADHD. Because of their unique deficit, ADHD children will also develop problems in their language acquisition and reading development. Research outside of China has shown a high comorbidity rate between ADHD and Reading Disabilities (RD). RD refers to a condition in which a student displays difficulty in reading in spite of normal IQ. It is the most common disability in regular school settings. In western countries, research has demonstrated that deficits in phonological processing, attention, and working memory may cause reading problems in children with ADHD. However, there is limited research on reading development of ADHD children within China. The existing studies in Chinese RD have reported that morphological awareness is a core deficit for Chinese children with RD. Due to the high comorbidity rate between RD and ADHD, we hypothesize that morphological awareness may be a powerful predictor of reading difficulties in addition to inattention of children with ADHD in China. This paper first reviews studies about cognitive predictors of reading development of ADHD children published outside of China, and then reviews reading research on children with ADHD or RD in China, and finally suggests directions for future research, in the hope of laying some theoretical foundations for future studies.

L2 writing quality is greatly influenced by lexical richness. Due to the rarity of relevant studies, it is hard to learn about differences in productive lexical richness among compositions of different qualities. This research aimes at revealing lexical differences between compositions of higher scores and those with lower scores. Sophomores majoring in English in a foreign language university are asked to write an argumentative composition impromptu in class. 60 compositions are taken as the samples with higher score ones and lower score ones selected. Lexical richness is assessed and compared from four aspects, i.e., lexical variation, lexical sophistication, lexical density and lexical errors. The results shows that the higher score compositions are better than the lower score ones in lexical variation and lexical sophistication, and the difference in lexical sophistication are significant. High score ones have fewer lexical errors than lower score ones. The difference in lexical density is not significant. This study has some implications for L2 teaching in writing. Students should be encouraged to enlarge their vocabulary, which is the basis of lexical richness. Teachers can help students to turn the passive vocabulary into productive vocabulary through sentence making so as to retrieve and process words in an automatic way.

The translation of the rhymes of Shijing counts. As rhyming is used in both English and Chinese poems, rhymes are definitely translatable in the translating of Shijing into English. However, whether rhyming scheme is adopted or not in the translated version depends largely on the poetics of the target language and the value orientation of the translator. Judging from the history of Shijing translation, it is obvious that emphasis is placed on the translation of original rhymes in the translated versions. The specific strategy for translating the original rhymes falls into two types: following the original rhyming schemes or adapting them to the English rhyming schemes with the principle of not deviating from the original sense. But translating rhymes is no easy job. What the translator can do at best is to represent the original rhyming scheme rather than to achieve concordance in the minutest details. However, what we pursue is not concordance in rhyming between the original text and the translated text, but the rhythmical beauty as well as the integrity of rhyming and the artistic conception of the translated version.

“Heterogeneity” is an important concept in Erving Goffman’s micro-sociology. In accordance with this concept, the individual is compared to an actor, whose behavior is performative. The paper adopts the concept of “heterogeneity” to study the translator’s “self” role-play, his/her awareness of situation and identity, and the inter-relatedness between “self” and translation behavior and its criticism, and draws the following conclusions: firstly, translation, like drama, is a product of historicalization and contextualization, and also an important way for the translator to implement “impression management”. Secondly, a translator is like an actor who possesses both “I” self-cognition and “Me” self-cognition. The translator has to take into account the expectations of others and the society while exerting his own will and personality through his translation work. Finally, translation is not only a phenomenon in the sense of epistemology, but also a phenomenon in the sense of existentialism, which reflects the “human” rather than “corporeal” nature of translation, and the unity of translation facts and values, and that of the translator’s purpose, behavior, and result.

In view of the dispute of the existing studies over the issue of mass media in Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, this paper focuses on the two major characters in the novel’s subplot, DL and Takeshi. Drawing on Marie-Laure Ryan’s concept of virtual narration, the paper argues that the novel on the one hand adopts virtual narration in presenting the media’s world which the reader can easily discern its difference from the real world in the novel, yet on the other hand it also deliberately blurs this boundary in the presentation of the superheroes DL and Takeshi to portray America as a society of spectacle in the postmodern time. And only by considering the places where their stories take place as the space of fantasy, can we see the two characters’ virtuality in contrast to the actual world in the novel. In comparing the differences between the superhero DL’s fighting as the incarnation of the New Left movements of the 1960s and the strikes of the American working class in the 1930s and 1940s, the paper goes on to reveal how the existence of a superhero creates a mediated space of fantasy to avoid the direct contact with the cruel reality, which indicates the failure of the New Left’s movements of the 1960s. In due course this will also prove the ineffectualness of DL as the superhero and of Takeshi’s business of karmic adjustment as the supposed solution to social problems. Through this close examination of the meanings and functions of the two characters in terms of the media’s space of fantasy, the paper tries to illustrate that the novel’s imitation of the mass media does not weaken its critique. The two characters help to reveal the disappearance of critical distance in a postmodern America immersed in the culture of mass media.

The literary critics have been concerned with the content and narrative structures of In America. Some speak highly of its original narrative strategies, while others condemn its shallow content and too many repetitions of the historical materials. However, few of them interpret the novel by combining its content with its structure. The author of this paper notices that the novel’s narrative strategies have some tacit correspondences with the characters’ power of discourse: the third-person viewpoint reveals the realities objectively that the heroine, Maryna, is oppressed by both the man-centered discourse and the American mainstream discourse; while the letters and the diaries indicate Maryna’s requests and longing for voicing; and the direct speeches and the lines show Maryna’s freedom of speaking. So to speak, the narrative text is a carnival platform for the discourse: the oppression and the subversion of the discursive power continuously fight against each other. Sontag retells the story by rearranging its content and narrative structure to deconstruct the authority of the mainstream discourse, showing her personal thinking and concerning for the minority female’s power of discourse. This paper attempts to analyze the oppression, subversion and reconstruction of the heroine’s power of discourse by interpreting the discursive intentions embodied in so many narrative strategies through the perspective of narrative ethics , hoping to reveal Sontag’s implied ethical consciousness and appealing through the varied narrative strategies, and thus presenting her concerning on the social reality, profound humanistic feelings towards human beings and her thinking of the social orders.

Sandra Cisneros is one of the most successful contemporary American writers, though she is criticized and questioned by the academia. Some scholars believe her works are not critical. This is not true. Cisneros’ criticisms of patriarchy, racial and class discriminations are not weaker than other Chicana feminists. She even openly declares that she is a Chicana feminist. This paper argues Cisneros’ subversive reinterpretation of the “tres madres” archetypes proves her criticalness by taking The House on Mango Street, “Never Marry a Mexican” and “Woman Hollering Creek” as the examples. In The House on Mango Street, she depicts the living condition of the women on Mango Street who live under the shadow of Guadalupe and proposes the strategy of writing for these voiceless women. In “Never Marry a Mexican”, Cisneros not only subverts the obedient and tolerant image of Guadalupe and reinterprets her as the “sex goddess,” but also subverts the “chingada” image of Malinche. Under her reinterpretation, woman is not the “chingada” any more, but the “chingón”. In “Woman Hollering Creek”, Cisneros reinterprets the traditional La Lloronaarchetype. Woman does not weep like “La Llorona” any more, but begins giggling. Through the reinterpretations of these archetypes, Cisneros not only criticizes the sexual, racial and class discriminations of Chicano and Anglo mainstream cultures against Mexican-American women, but also explores the ways of resistance against these discriminations.

Gestures are gaining attention in second language acquisition for their close connection with speech, despite the fact that empirical research on gestures’ validity is in deficiency. Researchers have been especially interested in the input effect of gestures, i.e. whether gestures play a positive role in L2 learners’ comprehension. To study gestures’ validity in listening comprehension, this research selected subjects from 183 L2 learners and divided them into high and low score groups, testing their listening skills under three conditions, audio, audio & face, and audio, face & hand/arm gestures. Subjects achieved highest score after watching videos containing hand/arm gestures, and subjects in low score group behaved significantly better. And gestures helped subjects in low score group understand both concrete things and abstract metaphors. From the perspective of the Sociocultural Theory, this research verifies that gestures enhance language learners’ competence in constructing meaning during communication, and gestures are valid mediation in students’ listening comprehension. Gestures help listeners to accurately segment speech flows and draw visual attention to important information. Gestures also represent, explain and complement the meaning of speech, making the intended meaning more concrete and imaginable, and subjects can understand the meaning of unfamiliar words by watching gestures. Besides, the appearance of gestures enables subjects to code information in both phonological and visual channels, and avoid cognitive overload in working memory. Our research results also indicate that gestures have significant mediation effect. Gestures are useful communicative tools, and L2 learners often rely too much on speech information while ignore the effect of gestures. Gestures also positively mediate in comprehension of metaphoric expressions, providing listeners with dynamic and motoric comprehension process. L2 teachers and learners should pay more attention to the use of gestures, so that L2 learners can more efficiently participate in social activities.The research results offer a method of enriching teaching mediation tools and constructing multimodal L2 classrooms.