本系消息

A New Century • A New Curriculum

Professor Chan Sin-wai, Department Chairman

The twenty-first century is just around the corner, and all kinds of celebrations are being held to commemorate the beginning of a new era. Our way to welcome the new century is to present to students a totally new curriculum which provides them both academic training and practical skills. The design of the curriculum has taken into consideration the ideals of university education, the needs of the society, as well as the application of the professional knowledge by our graduates.

In fact, the curriculum revision has little to do with the advent of a new century. A number of factors have been considered when drawing up the new curriculum:

(1) To increase the variety of courses so that students could have wider choices in their undergraduate years. In this connection, year courses have been restructured into term courses, and the total number of courses has increased from 17 to 40.

(2) To offer new courses that cater for the need of the society and the demand of the era. In addition to courses on translation theory and literary translation, more courses on applied translation are offered, including courses on "Film and Advertising Translation" and "Ad- vanced Commercial Translation".

(3) To develop machine translation in order to familiarize students with the link between translation and information technology. Therefore, the courses "Computer and Translation'' and ''Machine Translation" are offered to allow students hands-on experience in the area of ma- chine translation. The Department has set up the "Machine Transla- tion Laboratory" in early 1999 to develop research and teaching in the same area. Moreover, the Department will establish its own "Com- puter Room" in August 1999 to provide support for investigations re- lated to the application of information technology in the field of translation. Softwares related to translation will be acquired to help students understand the process of machine translation.

(4) To break through the limits of Chinese-English and English-Chinese translation training and offer a greater variety of language pairs such as Japanese-Chinese, French-Chinese, German-Chinese, etc. with other language units within the University. Hong Kong is an international city in which the knowledge of English, as well as other European and Asian languages, are valuable assets. In the past, due to various reasons, both the government and the private sector focused their emphasis on translation between English and Chinese. And accordingly, all local tertiary institutions offering translation training teach courses on one language pair. The provision of additional courses by The Chinese University offers additional training for its students.

(5) To strengthen the ability of final-year students in Chinese-English translation, the required course “ Translation Project ” will be re- structured to form two separate required term courses —one on English-Chinese translation and the other on Chinese-English translation. This would prevent students from working solely on English-Chinese translation for their translation projects and increase their competence in translation in both languages. Af-ter the return of Hong Kong to China , the demand for English- Chinese translation is said to have reduced while that for Chi- nese-English translation is on the rise. Therefore, there is the need to increase training in Chinese-English translation.

新世紀•新課程

二十一世紀很快就要到來了，大家都為慶祝這個新世紀的來臨而舉辦各式各樣的活動，翻譯系迎接新世紀的方式，就是設計一個全新的課程，讓同學在三年的學習期間更加能夠掌握到翻譯的學術意義及應用技能，既維特大學的教育理想，又使到學生學以致用，切合社會的需要。

翻譯系課程的改革，其實與世紀的轉變並非有直接的關係，而是考慮到以下幾個因素。

（一）將以往學年關單位的科目改為以學期為單位的科目。這代課程改革將原來 17 個科目增加為 40 個科目。這種變動不但更能反映所學的內容，亦令到科目數目方面有很大的增加，學生有更多的選擇。

（二）為配合時代的要求和社會的需要，在重視翻譯理論與文學翻譯的同時亦酌量增加實用翻譯的科目。新增的科目包括「電影與廣告翻譯」、「高級商業翻譯」等。

（三）由於資訊科技與翻譯工作息息相關，而電腦翻譯的發展一日千里，所以開設「電腦與翻譯」及「機器翻譯」科目，令學生掌握新知，運用於翻譯實踐方面。系方為配合這方面的發展，年初已成立〈機器翻譯實驗室〉，開展電腦翻譯的教學與研究，八月間〈翻譯系電腦室〉將正式啟用，為資訊科技應用於翻譯工作上提供基本設備，而系方所購備的翻譯軟件有助學生了解電腦翻譯的運作。

（四）打破傳統以來祇訓練學生漢英英漢對譯能力的教學模式，與其他語文單位共同開設漢語與非英語的外語翻譯科目，例如日漢翻譯、法漢翻譯、德漢翻譯等課程。香港作為一個國際都會，英語固然非常重要，但其他歐亞語言亦不容忽視，過去由於不同的原因，無論政府及私人機構都是注重英漢對譯，現在由於發展的需要，亦由於所有七所提供翻譯課程的院校都是教授英漢互譯的科目，中大翻譯系決定開拓其他外語的翻譯，使到畢業生有多一種外語的訓練。

（五）加強畢業班學生漢英對譯的能力，將以往必修科「翻譯論文」學生多數選擇英譯漢的情況，改變為一個學期英譯漢，另一個學期漢譯英的兩個必修科目，著重提高學生雙向翻譯的水準。香港回歸後，據知英漢翻譯的需要有下降的趨勢，而漢譯英的工作相對增加，所以有必要增加這方面的訓練。