From November 26 to 27, the College of Foreign Languages of Nankai University successfully held the “International Symposium on Multidisciplinary Development of Translation Studies of Nankai University”. Eighteen experts and scholars home and abroad were invited to give keynote speeches on the theme of “multidisciplinary development of translation studies”. The meeting was held on Zoom and offline at the same time. The number of participants in the two-day meeting is more than 150, up to 180. The offline meeting was held in the conference room 139 of the college, with some doctoral students majoring in translation, and the leaders of the College of Foreign Languages and the International Exchange Office of Nankai University attended the opening and closing ceremonies.
On November 26, Professor Miao Ju, Director of the Translation Research Center, presided over the opening ceremony. Professor Yan Guodong, Dean of the College of Foreign Languages of Nankai University, and Professor Li Min, Vice Dean, delivered opening speeches. They expressed their sincere welcome to the experts and scholars in the field of translation home and abroad, and warmly congratulated on the success of the conference. President Prof Yan Guodong introduced the concept of Nankai University, the history and development of College of Foreign Languages and its social contribution to talent cultivation and stressed that the theme of the conference was of great significance to the development of translation education, interdisciplinary scientific research and innovative design of cutting-edge topics. This grand meeting invited international famous experts and scholars who have cooperated with our university. They will join the grand ceremony with famous Chinese scholars in the cloud, share friendship and exchange academic frontiers. It is hoped that this international conference will enable the academic community of Nankai University to maintain a sustainable academic relationship with the international academic community and look forward to the opportunity to invite colleagues from the cloud to visit the beautiful Nankai campus after the epidemic. Vice Dean Prof Li Min praised the Chinese and foreign scholars attending the meeting as the most famous scholars in the field of translation, which made us see a top-level seminar on translation research, showed the high-level research results of Chinese scholars to the international community, and made the international academic community better understand Nankai University.
In the keynote speech, Professor Anthony Pym of the University of Melbourne delivered a speech entitled “Why should translators think about risk management?”. Professor Zhang Wei of Beijing Foreign Studies University delivered a speech entitled “Corpus-based interpreting studies: principles and methods”. Professor Zhao Qiurong of University of Science and Technology Beijing delivered a speech entitled “A multivariate analysis on linguistic features of self-revision: astudy based on Robinson Crusoe”. Professor Wang Hongtao of Beijing Foreign Studies University delivered a speech entitled “How could socio-Translation studies define translation practice? A social approach to the practice of literary translation”. Professor Wei Xiangqing of Nanjing University delivered a speech entitled “New departments in terminology translation as interdisciplinary research”. Professor Tao Youlan of Fudan University delivered a speech entitled “Towards developing Translation Technical Thinking Competence (TTTC): acurriculum approach”. Professor Nana Sato-Rossburg, School of Oriental and African Studies, University College London, delivered a speech entitled “What translation studies?”. Professor Theo Hermans of University College London delivered a speech entitled “Translation and history”. Professor Roberto A. Valdeón of the University of Oviedo delivered a speech entitled “Roles of translation in news production”. Professor Luise Von Flowow of the University of Ottawa delivered a speech entitled “Feminist translation and translation studies: in flux to ward the national”. Professor Elizabeth Marshman of the University of Ottawa delivered a speech entitled “Perceptions of machine translation in Canada: can language professionals and the general public find common ground?”. Professor Zhang Xianguang ofGrand Valley State University delivered a speech entitled “Of interlangularity and translation”. Professor Douglas Robinson of the Chinese University of Hong Kong delivered a speech entitled “Translating the nonhuman: towards a sustainable theory of translation, or a translational theory of sustainability”. Professor Hu Kaibao of Shanghai Foreign Studies University delivered a speech entitled “Nominalization in the Chinese-English press conference interpreting: acorpus-based study”. Professor Zhang Xiaochun of University of Bristol delivered a speech entitled “Pivot translation in game localization”. Professor Dragos Ciobanu of the University of Vienna delivered a speech entitled “Speed-enabled post-editing of neural machine translation output”. Professor Ma Huijuan of Beijing Foreign Studies University delivered a speech entitled “Reconstructing the poet’s image through institutional translation - acase study of Rewi Alley’s translation of Li Bai’s poems”. Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas of University College London delivered a speech entitled “Going multimodal: the case of audiovisual translation”.
During the seminar, the doctoral representatives of the College of Foreign Languages of Nankai University delivered four keynote speeches on the theme of the conference “Multidisciplinary development of translation studies”. The topics of their speeches were: the origin of multi-disciplinary in history, the involvement of multi-disciplinary in the past, the changes of practical activities in the digital era, and the multi-disciplinary development of translation studies today. Their high-level speeches showed the scientific research achievements and positive image of the doctoral students in translation studies of the college, demonstrating the potential of the future generation. In addition, all speeches of the experts attending the meeting was hosted by the doctoral student representatives of the college. They have received academic training and edification through the work.
At the end of the keynote speech, the closing ceremony was presided over by Professor Wang Kai, Vice Dean of the College of Foreign Languages of Nankai University. Professor Li Yuelin, Director of the International Exchange Office of Nankai University, delivered an impassioned speech, and Professor Miao Ju, Director of the Translation Research Center, made a summary.
In closing speech, Professor Li Yuelin expressed her highest respect and most sincere gratitude to all the leaders, experts, guests and members of the conference team for their joint efforts and thanked 18 experts from 8 countries and 15 universities for their in-depth discussions and exchanges, which made this international seminar a wonderful dialogue, a collision of wisdom and a feast of ideas. Professor Li hoped this forum can promote the multidisciplinary development of translation research and looked forward to all the participants coming to the beautiful Nankai campus after the end of the epidemic.
On behalf of Dean Prof Yan Guodong, Professor Miao Ju expressed her sincere thanks again to all experts and scholars who have made contributions to this seminar. The idea of this seminar is to make the academic relationship established by Nankai University and famous universities home and abroad sustainable, promote the exchange and cooperation of translation academia, and provide opportunities for Chinese and foreign scholars to establish friendly relations in the future. The content of this conference presented the frontier of multi-disciplinary development of translation research in the context of digital humanities, and inspired the development, transformation and innovation of translation research in the digital era. The speeches of international and domestic experts and scholars invited by the conference, which gathered the latest scientific research achievements, represented the theoretical development of translation discipline, catered to the needs of interdisciplinary talent training in the digital era, and was of great significance to deeply understand the internal relationship of the multidisciplinary development of translation research in the context of digital humanities, deepen the connotation of interdisciplinary scientific research, and inspire innovative theoretical research. This international symposium on the multidisciplinary development of translation studies at Nankai University represented the high-level frontier research of the domestic translation academic community, showed the scientific research achievements of the Chinese translation academic community to the international academic community, established a high-level image of Chinese translation scholars in the international community, and made the impact of this conference more far-reaching.
After the meeting, Professor Pym, the former president of the European Society for Translation Studies, praised the seminar of Nankai University as a grand exhibition of Chinese translation studies. Professor Valdeón, the editor in chief of the famous international journal of translation studies, praised it as a spectacular academic event. Many international experts invited their colleagues and students to attend the conference.
