Border areas have provided significant new research questions as well as fruitful insights and hy... more Border areas have provided significant new research questions as well as fruitful insights and hypotheses. The cognitive and neuropsychologic study of translation process is a good example of this kind. This paper has surveyed various researches on translation process. Studies related to "the black box of translation" are divided into two categories, i.e., studies adopting think-aloud protocols, and studies from the physiology and neuroscientific perspectives. It has been noted that those studies on translation process have made some progress in the past years.
The present study offers a corpus-based analysis of two written corpora, i.e. a native speaker co... more The present study offers a corpus-based analysis of two written corpora, i.e. a native speaker corpus (part of the Louvain Corpus of English Essays) and a non-native speaker corpus, which is composed of several essays written by Hong Kong first year university students. It aims to find out the differences in the use of connectors. Altogether twentyfive connectors used in the two corpora have been examined, with the frequency of their usage being calculated. The reasons that have led to the variations in using these connectors are further discussed. This corpus-based study on connectors would have some pedagogic implications on writing teaching. As connectors have played a significant role in both sentence construction and coherence, based on our analysis, we hope that they should be taught explicitly, practiced extensively, and illustrated with learning materials given to students, so as to avoid the overuse and misuse in writing.
Within these years, there has been a significant increase in the number of Chinese Mainland sojou... more Within these years, there has been a significant increase in the number of Chinese Mainland sojourners studying in Hong Kong. Due to the huge differences in various aspects like language, culture, cultural value, it would be considerably difficult for the Chinese Mainland students to adapt to the Hong Kong environment. This article investigates the ways for a group of doctoral students from Chinese Mainland to acculturate in Hong Kong. With the help of questionnaires, the difficulties that the sojourners have encountered in social situations are measured. It is found out that age and gender may have influenced the participants' acculturation strategies, and interpersonal relationship is that which the subjects have the most difficulties with, while academic domain is the area with the least difficulties. Meanwhile, the results have shown that competence of local language is not a determinant factor of the sociocultural adaptation, and female subjects seem to adapt better than male subjects.
This paper reports on a study based on a corpus of written professional discourses. Both e-mails ... more This paper reports on a study based on a corpus of written professional discourses. Both e-mails and doumails (a specific sort of e-mail used at the website of douban) between a translator and several editors from a publishing house during a translation activity on book publication are collected as data for the analysis. The purpose of compiling the corpus is to describe professional literacy by means of identifying the different types of intertextuality found as well as the directionality of intertextuality in discourse flows. Intertextuality is signaled, and some frequent-occurred phraseologies are found within the corpus. The study also quantifies the types and the directionality of intertextuality by distinguishing prior, current, and predicting intertextual references. The prevalence of intertextuality could thus be identified. It is expected that this study could shed some light on researches in professional discourses and the training of novice professionals with communication skills. In addition, this study also reveals the power relationship between the translator and editors, and would be helpful to the description of translation activities.
Since the 1990s, discourse analysis has been applied to translation studies, and studies with thi... more Since the 1990s, discourse analysis has been applied to translation studies, and studies with this approach have become quite prominent. As one resource of discourse analysis, the SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics) model can be applied to analyze both the original text and the translated text. Following this approach, both texts are compared at the sociological, semiotic, generic, registerial, discoursal, and lexicogrammatical levels by adopting a top-down process. The applicability of Halliday's linguistic framework has then been widely recognized within the field of translation studies. Meanwhile, different strata of Systemic Functional Grammar have shed light on a number of studies. In this paper, I have restricted the topic to one aspect only, i.e. the textual metafunction. I have first traced the development of SFL and its integration with translation studies. Some basic terms in SFL and Theme/Rheme analysis are also explained. Then, some of the existing studies involving thematic analysis and translation are reviewed. As advocated by several scholars, what we need is a more objective apparatus for descriptive translation studies. It would be beneficial to link SFL and descriptive translation studies together, as SFL serves as a tool that relates linguistic choices to the sociocultural context systematically.
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