Title: A New Paradigm for Translation Studies in the Context of Generative AI: From Theoretical Exploration to Practical Application
Abstract:
This lecture focuses on the paradigm shift brought about by generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of translation, systematically reviewing its latest advancements in areas such as linguistic dimensions, computational dimensions, and quality evaluation. The lecture highlights the transformative changes in workflows for human-machine collaborative translation and explores the innovative applications of generative AI in translation education and project management. Additionally, it delves into the potential societal, cultural, political, and academic impacts of this technology. By examining critical issues such as algorithmic bias, the lecture envisions the future prospects of human-machine collaboration, offering new perspectives and directions for both translation research and practice.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Dechao Li is a Professor in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal of Translation Quarterly published by the Hong Kong Translation Society. His research interests include translation theory, corpus-based translation studies, and empirical research on interpreting. He has published extensively in journals such as Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, The Translator and Interpreter Trainer, Target: International Journal of Translation Studies, Chinese Translators Journal, Modern Foreign Languages, Foreign Language Teaching and Research, and Foreign Languages. His most recent publication is Transcultural Poetics: Chinese Literature in English Translation (Routledge, 2023, edited by Yifeng Sun and Dechao Li).
Speaker Bio:
Hamlet Isakhanli is a founder of Khazar University, chairman of the board of directors and trustees, co-founder of Dunya School, publisher, translator and editor. He is a scientist and public figure, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, professor, poet, writer and publicist, author of articles, books, textbooks and monographs on mathematics, humanities and social sciences.
Speaker Bio:
Bahman Amani a distinguished scholar with a PhD in English Language and Literature, is the Senior Executive Advisor of the Center for International Affairs at the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology. A retired rector, Dr. Amani has made significant contributions to academia, particularly in literature and criticism, through numerous published papers. His career reflects a steadfast commitment to education, research, and fostering international academic collaboration.
Title: Using multimodality in critical research.
Much scholarly work and policy commentary has been critical of the nature of sustainability as a concept. Some even argue that it distracts from, and gets in the way of, actual concrete actions in regards to saving the planet or modifying how we behave in our societies. In this paper I am interested, in particular, in the UN sustainability goals established in 2015. These comprise a set of 17 goals which have the aim of allowing member states to work together to plan a better future in relation to things like poverty, equality, health and prosperity in ways that allow us, at the same time, to protect the planet. The goals are to be met by 2030. It has been observed that the goals are vague, overly loaded with weakly defined concepts and overburdened with aims. Here I explore how multimodal critical discourse approach can bring further insights into why the UN sustainability plan may be somewhat less than systematic or clear: Specifically, I look at how the multimodal documents used to present the goals, while appearing highly technical and systematic, are weak on context, causalities and agents.
Speaker Bio:
David Machin is Professor of Linguistics in the Institute of Corpus Studies and Applications at Shanghai International Studies University. He formerly worked at Orebro University, Sweden. He works with critical discourse analysis and multimodality to focus on the topics of diet, sustainability and racism. His books include How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis (2023), Introduction to Multimodal Analysis (2020) and Doing Visual Analysis (2018). He is co edit of the international peer reviewed journal Social Semiotics and sits of the advisory boards of the leading international discourse analysis journals.
Title: Investigating Discourse-Level Dependency Distance in L2 Learners’ Writing
Dependency distance minimization (DDM) is one of the linguistic regularities in natural language, reflecting the fundamental cognitive load required for text comprehension. Previous studies have proven the universality of sentence-level DDM across various languages (Liu et al., 2016; Wang & Liu, 2017). Length-based measure, dependency distance (DD), also proves to an effective indicator of writers’ proficiency level. (Ouyang et al., 2022). Here I expand the previous experimental setting in Feng et al. (2025) to that of L2 English writing with an aim to uncover the probability distribution of dependency distance in discourse structure and its relation to learners’ language proficiency. Utilizing the writing materials from learners in various L1 backgrounds, this talk highlights another measure to carve out the nuanced variation of linguistic proficiency—the linear distance between related clauses. This talk offers practical implications of L2 writing from a larger scale than the established syntactic complexity framework.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Muhammad Afzaal joined the Institute of Corpus Studies and Applications at Shanghai International Studies University, China, as an Associate Professor after earning his PhD from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. He also brings extensive research experience as a fellow at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, and nine years of teaching experience at Foundation University Islamabad, Pakistan. Dr. Afzaal is the author of two notable books: Corpora and Discourses of the Belt and Road Initiative (2023, Springer Nature) and Language, Corpora, and Technology in Applied Linguistics. He has also significantly contributed to the field of corpus linguistics through the development of LexiConc, a corpus tool designed for generating concordances and lexical bundles, which has become a valuable resource for researchers. Dr. Afzaal has published extensively in SSCI, Scopus, and ESCI-indexed international journals, including Critical Discourse Studies, Corpora, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Discourse Studies, Automatika, Asia Pacific Business Review, Chinese Journal of Communication, Asian Journal of Communications, Frontiers in Psychology, Humanities and Social Science Communications (HSSC), Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, and Asian Journal of Comparative Politics. He can be reached at: afzaal@shisu.edu.cn
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Samantha Curle (DPhil, FHEA, FRSA) is a Reader in Education (Applied Linguistics), Director of the MRes programme in Advanced Quantitative Research Methods (University of Bath), and Associate Member of the English Medium Instruction Oxford Research Group (University of Oxford). Her main research interest lies in factors affecting academic achievement in English Medium Instruction (EMI) in higher education. She has published four edited books on EMI. Her EMI-related research has been published in journals such as Language Teaching, Applied Linguistics Review, Studies in Higher Education, Journal of Engineering Education, Journal for the Psychology of Language Learning, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, Language Teaching Research, and International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.
15 February, 2025
25 February, 2025
15 April, 2025
