Staff & Student Area

Social science texts cover a wide range of topics on socio-cultural issues. This course concerns the translation skills of texts in the social sciences from Chinese to English and vice versa. Social science texts are known to be quite distinct from natural science/technical texts and literary works, while sharing with them some linguistic and stylistic features. This course will introduce students to some of the basic concepts in social science studies, the stylistic features of different kinds of social science texts, and the translation strategies taking into account such features and the need of the target readership. Various examples of social science writing from the media and academia will be discussed in-class. The specific topics covered include human rights, discrimination, poverty, globalisation, gender issues, and popular culture. While the discussion of translation skills at the tertiary level is bound to be theory-based one way or another, and subject-matter knowledge is considered essential for offering the right perspective in translation, this course also puts its focus on the discussion of practical translation skills based on the linguistic differences between Chinese and English and the rules of rhetoric.

Assessment: 100% coursework