A term is a concept inside a domain, and a new concept is often expressed via a new term. The paper presents some of the new terms in A Dictionary of Translation Studies in China (Revised and Enlarged Edition), which is to be published in 2023, as examples to investigate the trends in translation studies. According to the statistics, the new terms mainly arose in the following four fields: traditional Chinese translation theory, modern Chinese translation theory, western translation theory, and translation technology. The terms represent recent academic achievements in a variety of disciplines, such as linguistics, information technology, sociology, ecology, philosophy, and psychology. The interdisciplinary approach is applied extensively in translation studies at present.

Henan Province, which is located in the hinterland of Zhong Yuan or the Central Plains, has undergone a magnificent transformation during the twentieth century, and has produced 160 translators who have contributed to the development of the region. This study combined internal and external methods of translation history, and collected and clarified the biographical information about Henan translators and the materials for their translations with the aim of investigating the collective characteristics of this group and their relationship with their native land. By objectively evaluating the historical contribution and social status of this group, this paper intends to call on present and future translators to continue their undertakings with a view to shedding light on the training of regional translators and foreign language researchers, and on telling “the Yellow River stories” and the “Henan stories”.

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.

Discourse is both a social practice and a cognitive psychological process. The basic framework of any social political activity is an intrinsic cognitive mechanism, particularly with regard to political activities of which linguistic activities are the main part. Therefore, it is necessary to include cognitive linguistic theory in the discourse analysis of social politics, and to combine the cognitive aspects of language with social politics. The hidden ideology behind language can be revealed by analyzing the cognitive mechanisms in the human brain. Based on Chilton’s neuro-cognitive model, this paper presents an analysis of the remarks made by former U.S. Vice-president Pence regarding the administration’s policy toward China in 2018 under the guidance of discourse space theory and image schema theory. The research findings suggested that China was positioned as a negative entity in the peripheral area of the discourse space. By further investigating the CONTAINER-PATH image schema used in the speech, we found that China was constructed as an intruder that encroached on American interests, and as a barrier to free internal development. This paper presents a cognitive discourse analysis of political discourse based on the combination of image schema and discourse space theory. Audiences can understand the power and ideology behind discourse practice and how this controls discourse more clearly, which will enable them to form the habit of critical thinking and to explore the truth objectively.

This study mainly selected the 2020 annual corporate reports and social responsibility reports of 10 corporations listed in the Fortune rankings to create two small-sized corpora. Drawing on insights from Mayer et al. (1995) corporate trustworthiness framework and Langacker’s (1987/1991/2008/2017) grounding perspective, we noted the construction strategies of competence, benevolence, and integrity within the immediate reality space, the non-immediate reality space, the immediate irreality space, the non-immediate irreality space, and the evidential reality space according to the contexts and tense modality of the discourses to provide a contrastive study based on statistical frequency. We found that corporates tended to release annual and social responsibility reports as vehicles for communication with their stakeholders, and that the trust-building strategies of competence, benevolence, and integrity assigned with different epistemic reality statuses would be adjusted according to the characteristics of the target audience to enhance a corporate’s trustworthiness and to attract financial investments or social support to ensure its operating success.

As a rising power in the world, China is eager to develop a discourse system with Chinese characteristics for international audiences, which is an extremely challenging task. This study presents a model to make the discourse system more accurate and internationally influential, and emphasizes the role of translators in its construction. Translators are advised to be politically knowledgeable and better prepared for international communication. They should also improve their language skills, adopt a target-oriented approach to translation, strive to overcome cultural barriers, and devise better discourse strategies. Moreover, this study proposes suggestions for equipping aspiring translators with political knowledge and awareness in higher education institutions in terms of the curriculum design, the content selection, and training plans, which will assist in the efficient achievement of three interrelated goals, namely ideological and political education, translation skills, and capacity building.

Pragmatics and translation studies experienced enduring development from 1988 to 2020. These two disciplines interact and intertwine with each other, and have become stronger by supporting and supplementing each other over time. Based on the core periodicals of CNKI, this study used Microsoft Excel and CiteSpace visualization software to present a review of translation studies over the past thirty years (1988 to 2020) from the perspective of pragmatics. The review involved aspects such as the annual publication volume, the research methods, the periodical publication volume, the publishing author, the research focus, and the research features. The results revealed that, after a long period of development, pragmatics-based translation studies have entered a period of stable development with a decreasing number of works being published. In addition, the published research focused on the theoretical constructions and theoretical applications of relevance theory. Moreover, the features of translation studies based on pragmatics are tremendous progress in interpreting studies, in-depth developments in translation strategy studies, and the broad research scope of translation studies. However, while pragmatics-based translation studies mainly involve humanistic research, empirical research only accounts for a small portion. This paper aims to provide references for future pragmatics-based translation studies by providing a review of the previous research.

As I Lay Dying is a representative work published by the famous American writer William Faulkner in the year 1930. The book centers on the description of a family’s journey to the town of Jefferson for the burial of the matriarch, Addie. Since its publication, the novel has attracted the attention of researchers who have been interested in the novel’s characters, the religious tropes and the artistic means. Comparatively speaking, the social elements of the novel are seldom discussed. The present authors believe that this novel is not only a representation of the life of poor white farmers, but also suggests the battle between the town and the countryside, as well as the identity construction in the south of the United States. The pressures and restraints exerted on the Bundrens when they struggle to be a part of the urban community indicate the structural domination of the town over the countryside. The shift of perspectives disrupts the narrative coherence, and presents the Bundren family as a fragmented, conflicted, and vulnerable group, thus suggesting the plight of rural whites during the process of urbanization. This article explores the hierarchical distinction between the town and the countryside, the journey of the Bundrens, and the resistant “representational space” of Addie and others from the perspective of Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad theory. Faulkner shows his strong humanistic concern by describing these white farmers’ struggles to survive in a narrow space.

Under My Skin (1994) is the first volume of Doris Lessing’s autobiography. From a postcolonial perspective, Under My Skin is an autobiography that explores and reconsiders the “self”. In a painful yet assertive manner, Lessing recalls the first third of her life, deeply analyzing her inner mind and providing a unique interpretation of the social phenomena around her. Through the construction of various real “others” in Under My Skin, Lessing depicts the irreparable effect of colonization and empire that deeply affected her family, herself, and the African population in Southern Rhodesia with the intention of implying the end of imperialism. By drawing on Edward Said’s postcolonial concept of “contrapuntal reading”, this paper analyzes Lessing’s fearless attempts to gain independence despite her feelings of solitude and guilt, and reveals the cruel reality experienced by an intellectual woman in the pursuit of freedom during the imperial colonial period.

This study explored the features of grammatical metaphor (GM) deployment via a comparative analysis of English and Chinese political discourses in different modes. The paper first described the mode differentiation among the three text types—political reports, speeches, and interviews—by calculating their lexical density and grammatical intricacy. After quantifying the instances of GMs, the study identified a GM distribution continuum across the three English and Chinese text types respectively, followed by an examination of the similarities and differences in the distribution of GMs in English and Chinese text types. It was found that the degree of GM deployment in English reports was higher than it was in Chinese reports, but that the use of GMs in English speeches and interviews was less than it was in Chinese texts in the same mode. The analysis of conceptual GMs revealed that the distributions of Types 1, 2, 6, and 13 were quite different in the English and the Chinese reports, while the distributions of Types 5 and 6 differed in the English and the Chinese speeches and interviews. The discussion of interpersonal GMs suggested that English and Chinese speeches and interviews mainly used GMs of modality, particularly the subcategory “probability”. Exploring the features of GM deployment in political text types with different modes is expected to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between language and context.