On the afternoon of November 30, Jorge Díaz-Cintas, a professor of the Translation Research Center of University College London and an international leading scholar in teaching and research of audio-visual translation, brought a wonderful online academic lecture to the teachers and students of the College of Foreign Languages of Nankai University. The lecture was supported by the “Nankai Global Cloud Lecture Hall” project of Nankai University and presided over by Professor Miao Ju, director of the Translation Research Center of the College of Foreign Languages. The lecture was conducted online through Zoom. Nearly 90 teachers and students attended the lecture, and some postgraduates attended the lecture in conference room 204 of the college.
The theme of the lecture is “the Cloud Turn in Audiovisual Translation”. In the context of globalization in the 21st century, streaming media technology is rising rapidly. The production and multi-modal communication of audio-visual products are the main ways of information communication. Audio-visual translation has become an inevitable requirement for cross-language and cross-cultural communication, promoting the sustainable growth of language service industry. Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas described in detail the industrial scale, development prospects, existing challenges and technical support of audio-visual translation. Combined with the current situation and development trend of audio-visual translation industry, Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas showed the technological progress made in the field of audio-visual translation in recent years, introduced the mainstream translation software and translation cloud platform of audio-visual translation, and pointed out the shortage of audio-visual translation talents and the shortcomings of current audio-visual translation auxiliary technology. Finally, Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas showed the specific functions of the international advanced cloud platform OOONA, and demonstrated the conventions of usage of the cloud platform OOONA with examples. Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas’s lecture introduced the current industry status quo and frontier of international development in the field of audio-visual translation, which extended the teachers and students of the College of Foreign Languages of their existing knowledge with inspiration.
Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas’ lecture is logical and well-structured, which fully demonstrates his rigorous and meticulous scholarly thinking. After the lecture, Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas interacted with teachers and students and patiently answered the questions raised by the students.
Professor Miao Ju thanked Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas for his lecture and looked forward to more academic exchanges between Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas and teachers and students of the College of Foreign Languages in the future. Since Professor Miao’s visit to University College London in 2017, scholars of the two universities have carried out extensive scientific research cooperation and academic exchanges. This academic exchange further demonstrates the in-depth development of the cooperative relationship between the two universities, and is of guiding significance to the teaching and scientific research in Translation Studies of the College of Foreign Languages of Nankai University.
