Programme: Course on Translation
Partner Institution: Shanghai International Studies University
Period: June 2 – 15, 2019
14 days of this journey have not only brought me unforgettable memories but have also provided me with a precious opportunity to meet and mix with peers from different regions.
This specialized summer program held in Shanghai has organized a series of talks on translation study including literature translation, subtitles translation and song-lyrics translation. All of these great talks were delivered by well-known expertise in the field of translation, who have definitely motivated our further exploration on this study.
Aside from provocative talks, this program has organized 3 days of excursions into the city itself as well. Undoubtedly, Shanghai, where Western and Chinese cultures coexist so peacefully, is as fascinating as Hong Kong. We were taken to an art exhibition about Mucha and several museums introducing the history and the city planning of Shanghai.
During the excursions, I have discovered so many similarities between Shanghai and Hong Kong, so it did not cost me a lot of time to get acclimatized. Still, their differences stand out the most to me. Unlike Hong Kong, the sense of developing the humanities is obviously much stronger in Shanghai, though both places have been devoted for economic facilitation. For instance, there are institutions dedicating in teaching languages and cultures in Shanghai, and even all over mainland China. In the age of big data, it is of crucial importance to focus on technological enhancement, yet it is equally essential for us to make sure the development on humanities keeps going on.
Before the trip, I was expecting huge differences would have existed between the Mainland students and us. However, under globalization, our way of thinking and how we perceive things incline towards homogeneity to some extent. Yet, our focuses of attention are somewhat different as a minority of us is limited to a regional point of view while a majority of the Mainland citizens were used to view things regionally and nationally.