Professor Binhua Wang

Professor Binhua Wang

Profile

Chair/Professor of interpreting and translation studies in the Centre for Translation Studies, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at University of Leeds since July 2017. Previously Associate Professor at University of Leeds, Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Interpreting at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

Having a PhD in interpreting and translation studies; conducted post-doctoral research funded by the competitive CSC post-doctoral grant in the Centre for Translation Studies at University of Leeds (2010-11).

Having taught extensively in three top professional interpreter traning programmes in China mainland, Hong Kong and the UK during the past two decades. Awarded Training for Trainers Certificate by the DG Interpretation of the European Commission. A regularly invited trainer for the annual Training for Trainers of Translation and Interpreting Programmes in China (organised by the Translators Association of China and the China National Committee for Translation & Interpreting Education). A tutor of the National-level Excellence Course in English/Chinese interpreting accredited by the China Ministry of Education in 2007 and a member of the National-level Teaching Team of English/Chinese interpreting accredited by the China Ministry of Education in 2010.

Parallel to academic career, also a veteran Chinese/English conference interpreter with about 20 years’ part-time interpreting experience.

Service and impact to the wider academic and professional community:

  • Executive Committee member & Representative for East Asian Studies, University Council of Modern Languages (UCML), UK
  • Vice Chair, Academic Committee of the "World Interpreter and Translator Training Association" (WITTA)
  • The Interpreters Committee member of the Translators Association of China (TAC)
  • University of Leeds representative, Conférence internationale permanente d'instituts universitaires de traducteurs et interprètes (CIUTI)
  • Chair and organiser, The UK-China Symposium on Translation Studies
  • Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Chinese and English Translation & Interpreting
  • Co-editor, Interpreting and Society (SAGE Publishing)
  • Associate Editor, Frontiers in Psychology (Language Sciences) (SSCI-indexed journal)
  • Guest editor of themed special issues: Perspectives, Asia-Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, Frontiers in Communication
  • International Advisory Board member, BOOK SERIES – Routledge Studies in East Asian Interpreting
  • Editorial board member: Babel - International Journal of Translation (SSCI/A&HCI journal of ‘The International Federation of Translators’, FIT), The Interpreter and Translator Trainer (SSCI journal), Chinese Translators Journal (中国翻译, CSSCI journal of ‘The Translators Association of China’, TAC), Foreign Language Teaching and Research (外语教学与研究, top CSSCI journal in China), Forum: International Journal of Interpretation and Translation (ESCI journal, John Benjamins); Translation Quarterly (翻译季刊, journal of ‘The Hong Kong Translation Society’); etc.
  • Invited academic assessor of the annual Academic Reputation Survey for the QS World University Rankings and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2011–Present)
  • Peer College member, The Martha Cheung Award for the Best English Article in Translation Studies, Baker Centre for Translation & Intercultural Studies at Shanghai International Studies University
  • Academic reviewer for top international academic journals in translation & interpreting studies and top academic journals in translation & interpreting studies in China
  • Academic reviewer for international publishers: Routledge, Springer Nature, Palgrave Macmillan and John Benjamins 
  • Academic committee member, Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, Shanghai Jiaotong University
  • Editorial Board, ‘Textbook Series for Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) in China’, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (2009–Present)
  • Editorial Board, ‘Textbook Series for BA in Translation and Interpreting (BTI) in China’, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (2010–Present)

Responsibilities

  • Served as Director of the Centre for Translation Studies from 2019 to Jan 2022
  • Served as Programme Manager of MA/PGDip Conference Interpreting & TS (Aug 2015 - Jan 2020)
  • Served as Programme Manager of MA/PGDip Business and Public Service Interpreting (Jul 2019 -Jan2020)

Research interests

Publications in recent years have focused on the following aspects:

  • theoretical and methodological issues in interpreting studies
  • interpreter competence and its development
  • descriptive studies of norms in interpreting
  • corpus-based interpreting studies
  • language-pair specific issues in Chinese/English interpreting
  • the role of interpreting and translation activities in history
  • discourse analysis of interpreting and translation 
  • interpreting and translation as international communication
  • translated literature from Chinese

Published many articles in refereed SSCI/A&HCI/CSSCI/Core journals such as Babel, Meta, Perspectives, Translation Review, Chinese Translators Journal and Foreign Language Teaching & Research, and in collected volumes published by Routledge, Springer, John Benjamins, Brill and Palgrave, such as The Routledge Handbook of Conference Interpreting, The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Discourse Analysis.

Authored the monographs Theorising Interpreting Studies (2019) and A Descriptive Study of Norms in Interpreting (2013), edited with Jeremy Munday the themed volume Advances in Discourse Analysis of Translation and Interpreting Studies (Routledge, 2020) and co-translated Introducing Interpreting Studies into Chinese (Pöchhacker, 2010). Published several textbooks for interpreter training, which are used widely in China’s MTI and BTI programmes.

The project on corpus-based studies of interpreted and translated political discourse was funded by the competitive grant of the General Research Fund (GRF, the Hong Kong Research Grants Council). The project on interpreter competence and its development was funded by the China Ministry of Education Research Grant for Humanities and Social Sciences.

PhD Supervision

Awarded the "AHC Partnership Award 2022" for academic supervisor in University of Leeds.

Welcoming particularly PhD applicants with psycholinguistic or neuroscience background who are keen to conduct interdisciplinary research into the interpreting process as complex bilingual and cognitive processing, applicants proficient in using multimodal analysis tools who are keen to analyse the interpreting product and process, and applicants who are interested in examining language-pair specificity in interpreting, as well as applicants conversant with literary studies who are keen to study translation of contemporary and modern Chinese literature.

Supervised and co-supervised the following PhD projects to completion:

  • Fei Gao, 2020. Interpreters’ Ideological Positioning through the Evaluative Language in Conference Interpreting. PhD dissertation, University of Leeds
  • Yuan Ping, 2020. Representations of Hong Kong in News Translation: A Corpus-Based Critical Narrative Analysis. PhD dissertation, University of Leeds
  • Zien Guo, 2022. Translation of Treaties between China and Great Britain during 1842-1911. Translation, Ideological Reconstruction and Discursive Power. PhD dissertation, University of Leeds
  • Xiaorui Wang, 2022. Translation as Activism: The Case of Yan Fu as a Pioneer Activist Translator in China at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. PhD dissertation, University of Leeds
  • Meihua Song, 2023. Contemporary Tibetan Literature in English Translation by the Anglophone World: Narrative Examination of Selection, Paratext and Reviews. PhD dissertation, University of Leeds

Currently supervising and co-supervising the following PhD students:

  • Xiaoman Wang
  • Lu Yuan
  • Meng Du
  • Yan Chen
  • Clarissa Guarini (for one year in 2021)

Having acted as external examiner for PhD examinations/viva in interpreting and translation studies at SOAS of London University, Durham University, University of Manchester, University of Stirling, Macquarie University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Shanghai International Studies University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, etc., and as internal examiner for PhD viva at University of Leeds.

Conference keynote presentations and invited talks

Having been invited to give guest talks in many universities in China mainland, Hong Kong, the US, EU countries and the UK (e.g., Lancaster University, Stirling University, Leicester University, Chinese University of Hong Kong and University of Massachusetts Amherst) and give keynote/plenary presentations in over 20 international and national conferences, such as:

  • Jul 2023, Keynote speech, International Symposium on Translation, Communication and Intercultural Studies, PCTI of CACSEC & Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Jun 2023, Plenary, International Symposium on Linguistics, Language Applications and Translation Studies in the Big Data Era, City University of Hong Kong
  • Mar 2023, Keynote speech, Conference on Reimagining Global Politics through Arts and Media, University of Kent
  • Mar 2023, Plenary, CIOL Conference 2023, Chartered Institute of Linguists
  • Nov 2022, Plenary keynote, The 14th National Conference and International Forum on Interpreting, Wuhan University
  • Jun 2022, Plenary keynote, The 26th International Conference on Interpreting & Translation Teaching, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology
  • Jun 2022, Plenary, LSADTS Seminar 2022 (Language Service, Audio Description and Translation Studies: Research and Pedagogy), City University of Hong Kong
  • May 2022, Plenary, The 2nd Symposium on Country-specific Translation and Interpreting Capacity, Beijing University of Foreign Studies
  • Dec 2021, Plenary keynote, International Forum on the Comparison and Communication between Chinese and Foreign Languages & Cultures, Wuhan University of Technology
  • Oct 2021, Plenary, The Fifth Conference on Interdisciplinarity in Translation and Interpreting, Shanghai International Studies University
  • July 2021, Plenary keynote, The International Symposium on T&I as Social Interaction, University College London
  • June 2021, Plenary keynote, International Symposium on Translation and Communication, Hunan Normal University
  • January 2021, Plenary keynote, The 20th ITRI Interntional Conference, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea
  • December 2020, Plenary keynote, The Symposium on Public Service Interpreting: Practice and Training, Xi'an International Studies University
  • August 2020, Plenary keynote, The 1st WITTA Conference on Interdisciplinary Translation and Interpreting Studies, WITTA & Hunan Institute of Engineering
  • November 2019, Plenary keynote, Summit Forum on Translation & International Communication, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
  • August 2019, Plenary keynote, International Conference on Translation Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • July 2019, Plenary keynote, The 1st Congress of COTIP on Translation and International Promotion of Traditional Chinese Culture, Beijing Languages and Cultures University
  • June 2019, Plenary keynote, The 2nd Symposium on International Frontiers in Translation Studies, Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Research & Harbin Normal University
  • May 2019, Plenary keynote, The International Forum on Identity and Representation in Translation and Interpreting, Shanghai Jiaotong University
  • January 2019, Plenary keynote, Symposium on Critical Translation Studies, Shanghai Jiaotong University
  • September 2018, Plenary keynote, Forum on Educating Languages+ Professionals for International Organisations, Shanghai International University
  • April 2017, Plenary keynote, The 4th National Symposium on Corpus Translation Studies, Xi’an International Studies University.
  • February 2017, Plenary keynote. The 5th Durham Postgraduate Colloquium on Translation Studies, Durham University.
  • May 2014, Plenary keynote, The 1st International Conference on Empirical Translation Studies, Shanghai Jiaotong University and SOAS, University of London.
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

Qualifications

  • PhD in interpreting and translation studies
  • Fellow, The Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL)
  • The Interpreters Committee member of The Translators Association of China
  • Certificate of Training for Interpreting Trainers, DG Interpretation, European Commission
  • Certificate of Training in Public Administration, Oxford University, 2006

Professional memberships

  • Fellow, The Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL)
  • Expert member (Fellow), The Translators Association of China (TAC)

Student education

Taught both practical and theoretical modules/courses for postgraduate programmes in professional interpreting and in translation during the past two decades, including various practical interpreting modules/courses, translation modules/courses such as ‘Literary Translation’, modules/courses on interpreting and translation studies such as ‘Interpreting Studies’, ‘Translation Studies’, and modules/courses on cross-cultural reading of Chinese and Western classics.

Contributing now mainly to teaching of the following modules/courses in different years:

  • Interpreting Skills: Consecutive and Simultaneous
  • Consecutive Interpreting: Chinese
  • Simultaneous Interpreting: Chinese
  • Advanced Retour Interpreting: Simultaneous
  • Methods and Approaches in Translation Studies

Research groups and institutes

  • Interpreting
  • Centre for Translation Studies
  • Discourse analysis
  • Linguistics and Translation
  • Centre for New Chinese Writing
  • Language processing
  • Translation
  • Chinese

Current postgraduate researchers

<h4>Postgraduate research opportunities</h4> <p>We welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in PhD study. Our <a href="https://phd.leeds.ac.uk">research opportunities</a> allow you to search for projects and scholarships.</p>