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

The bilingual experience may enhance cognitive reserves by allowing individuals to resist the cognitive decline associated with the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Preliminary evidence from prospective and retrospective studies has shown that the bilingual experience may delay the age of onset and the age of diagnosis, but may not decrease the incidence rate, which can be explained by neuropsychological research. A scrutiny of research designs in previous studies suggests that the inconsistency in the results is likely due to the complicated language background of bilinguals and the diverse ways of quantifying bilingualism. Future studies require a more detailed analysis of older adults’ language backgrounds. In addition, the bi-dialectal experience is a widespread linguistic phenomenon in China, and may also protect against Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegeneration diseases; thus, it merits more systematic research on the part of Chinese researchers.

As a very recent stage in the evolution of the internet, metaverse technology is characterized by immersive experiences, decentralization, virtualization, and open creation, and is likely to construct a digital society via the in-depth integration of the physical, human, and information worlds. The coming of the metaverse era will transform both the translation environment and the mode(s) of translation practice, and will offer unprecedented development opportunities while also posing various challenges to the translation industry. Based on an analysis of the key technologies and the basic features of the metaverse, this paper presents an overview of the possible impacts of network connection technology, data processing technology, authentication technology, virtual-real interaction technology, and content production technology on translation practice in the future digital society, as well as a possible picture of the translation landscape. It also provides a discussion of how the relevant parties in the industrial chain of translation services, such as translation service providers, translation technology developers, translator training providers, and translation service clients, could respond to the challenges that the metaverse poses to translation practice with a view to providing some suggestions for the career planning of translation learners and translation practitioners.

As the aim of Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) education is to train professional translators and interpreters, MTI needs to increase its connections to the translation market and the language service industry. As the translation accreditation test plays a crucial role in the translation market, it is essential to establish a link between MTI education and the translation accreditation test. The present study presents an investigation of the status quo regarding the connection between translator and interpreter training and the translation accreditation test, both within and outside of China, and suggests a connection mechanism in China between the two. Consisting of three parts, namely the guarantee mechanism, the execution mechanism, and the evaluation mechanism, the connection mechanism is intended to bring the MTI education committee, the organizing body of China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters (CATTI), the MTI training units, and teachers together to strengthen the connections among them. It is hoped that linking MTI education and the translation accreditation test can help to ensure that the training objectives of MTI education are met, to promote the development of the translation accreditation test, and to enhance the professionalism of the translation market and the language service industry.

As the latest development in visual immersion technology, the metaverse is becoming a practical field for the innovation of digital intelligence technology in interpreting services: It breaks down the barrier of space-time separation and reshapes the form of remote interpreting. This study mainly introduces the basic concept of metaverse technology, its applications, technical advantages, and the challenges of remote interpreting technology in the “Meta Era”. As a novel technology, this technology may encounter challenges such as the constraints of new translation ethics, the disclosure of personal privacy, and the change in translators’ roles. However, compared to the earlier forms of remote interpreting, metaverse remote interpreting will create a new form of interpreting with resource utilization, immersive in-depth experiences, and cooperation across time and space, thus reshaping the field of interpreting services via virtual reality and augmented reality. These advantages are reflected in the working space, the language, the cost, and the payment risks, and provide a new direction for innovations in remote interpreting, which may promote developments in the interpreting industry, create more investment opportunities for language service providers, and enhance the interdisciplinary development of interpreting and artificial intelligence (AI) science. However, the service process in remote interpreting will become more complex due to the combination of interpreting and AI science, and will require more talented interpreters who have the correct translation ethics, an excellent understanding of technology, and who are able to provide high-quality translations. All these opportunities and challenges are worthy of being studied in the future.

This study, which included 140 first-year non-English majors as participants, attempts to explore the effects of textual factors on the inference performance in English reading comprehension. The results are as follows. First, the causal sequence context is more conducive to the participants’ inference performance than is the causal flashback context, as it allows them to expend fewer cognitive resources to process the causal relationship when reading. Second, the prominent effect of the first-person perspective needs to be highlighted in medium-length stories with relatively simple plots, as this assists the participants to participate more actively in the inference of contextual patterns. Third, text coherence and narrative perspective have an interactive effect on the participants’ inference performances. In causal sequence order, the dominant effect of the first-person perspective is superior to that of the third-person perspective. The results increase the understanding of the roles that are played by textual elements in reading inference, thus clarifying the impact mechanism of text coherence and narrative perspective on reading inference.

As material carriers of knowledge, textbooks play an important role in the construction of disciplines and in teaching activities. How to compile teaching materials that are suitable for Chinese foreign-language majors and how to balance the subject knowledge content and the ideological and political curriculum content in textbooks are important issues that textbook compilers need to explore. This paper summarizes the Chinese characteristics of a foreign-language speech course textbook in China from the macro and micro levels via a comparison of Chinese and foreign speech course materials. The research revealed that Chinese foreign-language speech materials should achieve the goal of conveying the core values of socialism with Chinese characteristics in addition to systematically imparting the subject knowledge. Accordingly, the speech topics, the main texts, the discourse system, and the multimodal elements in the teaching materials should reflect Chinese characteristics with the aim of ensuring the development of the students’ capacity to tell stories about China well in foreign languages on the international stage.

Studies of foreign language teaching materials, as a quintessential component of foreign language education, play a pivotal role in the discipline’s long-term development and in the cultivation of international Chinese talents with the high degree of quality that is required by the country and by society. Construction of Foreign Language Teaching Materials in China: Theory and Practice, which was published in 2021, collates representative studies in the field of foreign language teaching materials spanning the past 30 years, and focuses on textbook compilation, textbook analysis and use, textbook evaluation, and the history of and prospects for textbook construction. The book not only reviews the historical process of China’s foreign language textbook construction, but also provides many suggestions for future research.

The novel Der Tod in Venedig by Thomas Mann depicts the crisis experienced by the writer Aschenbach at the beginning of the twentieth century and his failed attempt to find a new way. The protagonist’s experiences exemplify the searching and dilemmas of artists at the end of the century. By also considering other works by Thomas Mann, this paper analyzes the causes of the artist’s crisis in this novel and the reason that it cannot eventually be overcome according to two aspects, namely the influence of the success morality in civil society on artists and the liberating effect of decadence on the nature of artists. An artist has two opposing instincts, namely creative self-control and destructive indulgence. Influenced by success morality, the two opposing instincts can be seen as “the heroism born of weakness” in Aschenbach, or decadence. Exerting his self-control, Aschenbach devotes himself to art and pursues morality and form rather than knowledge, which leads to rigidity in his work. Drawing on mythology, Aschenbach turns to Eros to escape the crisis in his life and work; the artist’s indulgence is expressed completely via the influence of decadence, and ultimately causes his death. The opposition of the two instincts in artists causes decadent artists to be unable to overcome decadence and to become heroes to save the time.

The enclosure movement, which reached its peak during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain, had a dramatic effect on the ecological system and the lives of people in rural areas. Two of George Crabbe’s poems, The Village and The Borough, are representative of rural writing in Britain at the turn of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, Crabbe adopts an anti-pastoral mode to reveal the reality of rural poverty resulting from the ever-expanding enclosure movement. His work is different from that of the Neoclassicist pastoral poets’ merry representations of pastoral scenes, as well as from that of sentimentalist poets’ images of the “good old days”. By adopting the perspective of the relationship between the enclosure movement and the two selected poems, this paper will investigate the reasons for the ecological deterioration in rural areas, the uneven distribution of wealth, the moral degradation in the countryside, and the expanding impact of the enclosure movement, which led to the polarization of social classes and corruption in politics. Unfortunately, Crabbe’s name remains unknown to most readers today, largely due to the difficulty in identifying his achievements as a result of him not being associated with any particular literary school. In fact, certain types of critical realism pervade Crabbe’s poems, particularly his criticisms of the enclosure movement, although his attacks on this movement are indirect. The present paper also mentions the phenomena of peasants being pirates and village prostitutes, as well as fake elections and the description of early workhouses in Britain, which have significance for the study of history to some extent. Furthermore, since George Crabbe is not well known in China, it is hoped that this paper will increase Chinese scholars’ interest in Crabbe and inspire a new approach to the study of Crabbe’s work.

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.

As a special language function of planning, translation planning is a systematic project for the formulation, adjustment, and implementation of national translation policies, which are directly related to the improvement of national language competence, particularly national discourse competence. The state translation program is an important part of the construction of a foreign discourse system. The effective implementation of the state translation program depends on effective, scientific state translation planning. This paper presents an interview with Professor Ren Dongsheng regarding the issues in the planning of the state translation program and the improvements to the capacity of the state translation program to increase the readers’ understanding and to point out directions for the study of the state translation program and translation theory.