Arthur Waley (1889-1966), an outstanding British sinologist, played an important role in the oversea-spread of Chinese culture during the 20th century. While the domestic and overseas scholars of Arthur Waley studies tend to concentrate on his achievements in Chinese literature translation area, Waley’s contribution to the field of art is mainly neglected. However, Waley’s Chinese painting studies as a significant part of the whole Sinology research has promoted the rise of Chinese culture in the western world and indicates the new transition of western Sinology. Arthur Waley went beyond the general studies of Chinese painting such as Herbert Allen Giles and Laurence Binyon, and inspired the specialized and in-depth studies of Chinese art of the later researchers, Osvald Siren and James Cahill. This transformation implanted Chinese literature, painting and poetics elements into the western culture, and became a phenomenon just as the western literature trend in China. From then on, Chinese culture no longer only served as an exotic embellishment but a counterpart of the western civilization which the western world can gain energy from. The introduction of Chinese culture in this period brought new vitality to the Britain and western world, thus accelerated the development of western modern art and literature.

Based on the phase theory (PT) of MP, the locality constraints and multiple spell-out (MSO) mechanism,and strong PDbP, this paper illustrates the interaction between sentential stress and focus stress along with the interconnectivity between phase prosodic spell-out and optimal constraints, focusing on the computational algorithm of sentential stresses and optimal operations. The phase-based focus labeling analyses show explicitly that FSR precedes SSR. With systematic research as foundation, it not just explicates that the guiding principle of phonological algorithm follows the phase locality and MSO (Transfer), but also proves the facts that with reference to prominence functional phase edge (PE) and cyclic spell-out domain (SOD) play decisive roles in prosodic stress computations and interface mappings, and that SOD can approximately correspond to stress domain (SD). This paper also aims to reconfirm and implement an optimal computational model, via the project of combining PT with optimality theory (OT).

Environmental protection, as a hot topic, has been drawing great attention for a long time. Especially, in recent years a number of haze reports have appeared and they hold different attitudes and opinions towards the haze phenomenon. At present, the virtual image of a country depicted by mainstream media is of great significance for the construction of national image. So, it’s necessary for us to make clear the ideological reflections within the haze report made by the western media, which is much beneficial for China to report in a more proper and suitable way. The perspective, critical discourse analysis provides us with some inspirations and insights into the analysis of ideology. To be specific, dialectical-relational approach (DRA) is employed during the process of critical discourse analysis. The analytical framework is constructed from the following four stages: stage one, to focus upon a social wrong, in its semiotic aspect; stage two, to identify obstacles to addressing the social wrong; stage three, to consider whether the social order “needs” the social wrong; stage four, to identify possible ways to overcome the obstacles. This paper, based on a self-established mini corpus, explores the differences about the haze reports in the Chinese and American media. The data analysis is carried out from the four aspects: word frequency, concordance line, collocates, and clusters. After the microstructure analysis of data and the macrostructure analysis with DRA, it is found that the reports on the haze reveal great differences in the media, which in fact is a good reflection of the ideological disparity. The American media, intending to set up a negative image of China, lays great emphasis on the cause and effect of haze, while the Chinese media on the management and future prospects.

As a renowned “foreign friend of China”, Rewi Alley lived in China for almost 60 years. Deeply interested in Chinese language and culture, he was also a passionate and prolific translator of Chinese poetry, translating many Chinese poems into English. His translation of Li Bai’s poems took place in an institutional setting, and has some unique features in terms of text selection and translation style. This study, adopting an institutional approach, examines Alley’s translation of Li Bai’s poems. Through historical context analysis, textual analysis, and para-textual analysis of his translation, it is found that Alley in his translation reconstructed Li Bai’s image from a romantic poet into a realistic one, but failed to convey the spirit of the original poems. The reasons for the distinctive features of his translation lie in the fact that Alley’s translation of Li Bai’s poems was influenced by both personal and institutional ideologies and poetics, and his translation was to serve the goal of the institution though it has revealed his own voices.

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.

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 Poet” is an essential essay on Emerson’s viewpoint of poet, in which Emerson creates an image of an ideal poet and explores its essence and function. This image derives from the Greek mythological figure, a model of poet and musician, Orpheus. For a further understanding of Emerson’s concept of poet, the relationship between the poet model Orpheus and Emerson’s view of poet is discussed in this paper by taking the social and cultural conditions of America in the 19th century into consideration. Based on close reading of the major essays and with support from the other works of Emerson, the paper points out that Emerson depicts a poet with triple identities modeled after the traditional image of Orpheus and born in the social context of America: a representative man—the transformation of Orpheus’ comprehensive power; a seer and prophet—the transformation of Orpheus’ wisdom and inspiration; a sayer and language creator—the transformation of Orpheus’ creativity of language and art. The poet figure designed by Emerson, which is an American version of Orpheus, reflects Emerson’s calling for an American national poet and the independence of American literature, as well as promotes the development of the 19th century American literature.

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.

With the announcement of National Criterion of Teaching Quality of University BA Program in Business English by Ministry of Education, China, it is essential to probe into how to construct a quality assurance system for this academic area. Based on literature review, this paper attempts to construct a diagram for business English quality assurance system by analyzing the characteristics of the successful quality assurance system of a world-class university, Stanford University. On the basis of analysis, this paper proposes that there are three equally important factors, namely social needs, university autonomy and student-centeredness. Only through joint efforts from all three players can the quality of Business English be improved. Meanwhile, the authors put forward three practical suggestions from the perspective of society, students and teachers listed as follows: 1) systematically build and improve organizations of third-party quality accreditation so as to put the evaluation results into practice; 2) lay emphasis on student-centeredness and build up the database to evaluate students’ achievements so as to ensure a regular and dynamic appraisal; 3) Adopt adaptive learning concept into teachers’ education program and help business English teachers to develop a multi-disciplinary structure of knowledge.

Guided by the general rules in biological evolution, different evolutionary levels such as CP>TP>vP>VP/SC, via the method of internal reconstruction, can be postulated in the syntactic evolution. In the history of evolution, syntactic evolution, except the non-syntactic word stage without feature of combination, roughly progresses in three stages, i.e., paratactic proto-stage, pro-coordination stage and functional category stage. Independent root small clause, intransitive small clause without vP projection and exocentric VN compounds are living fossils of evolutionary stages. The traces of biological design remaining in each stage show the evidence for continuity of language evolution and spirits of natural selection. Each stage gradually brings about some advantages of communication, and therefore communicative pressure is the fundamental driving force of language evolution. The book is based on wide theories of various disciplines. Through observing language facts of English and many other languages, and through employing methods of internal reconstruction and syntactic deconstruction, the book constructs a gradualist theory of language evolution, providing novel insights for probing into language evolution.