Professor Binhua Wang

Profile

I am Chair/Professor of interpreting and translation studies in the Centre for Translation and Interpreting Studies, School of LCS at University of Leeds (since July 2017). Previously I was 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.

I am an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and Fellow of the “Chartered Institute of Linguists”.

I have taught extensively for two decades in three top professional interpreter traning programmes in China mainland, Hong Kong and the UK. Awarded Training for Trainers Certificate by the DG Interpretation of the European Commission, I am a regularly invited trainer for the annual Training for Trainers of Translation and Interpreting Programmes in China during the past decade, which have been organised by the Translators Association of China and the China National Committee for Translation & Interpreting Education. I was 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 my academic career, I am also a veteran Chinese/English conference interpreter with 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 for Languages (UCFL), UK

• Vice Chair, Academic Committee of the "World Interpreter and Translator Training Association" (WITTA)

• The Interpreters Committee member, 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 (conference series)

• Founding Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Chinese and English Translation & Interpreting

• Co-editor, Interpreting and Society. An Interdisciplinary Journal (a Scorpus-indexed journal published by Sage)

• Associate Editor, Frontiers in Psychology (Language Sciences) (SSCI journal)

• 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’), 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), Corpus-based Studies across Humanities (De Gruyter), Digital Studies in Language and Literature (De Gruyter), Translation Quarterly (翻译季刊, journal of ‘The Hong Kong Translation Society’), The Linguist (journal of the Chartered Institute of Linguists), Translation Today (National Translation Mission, India); 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)

• Expert panellist, Belgian Flanders Research Foundation (FWO) Review College

• Peer College member, The Martha Cheung Award for the Best English Article in Translation Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University & 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 publication of books by international publishers: Routledge, Springer Nature, Palgrave Macmillan, John Benjamins, etc.

• Academic committee member, Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, Shanghai Jiaotong University

• International Advisory Board member, BOOK SERIES – Routledge Studies in East Asian Interpreting

• 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

My research interests focus on interpreting and translation studies, with interdisciplinary extension to digital humanities, Chinese studies, intercultural studies and language education, in which I have published many research articles in world-leading SSCI/A&HCI/CSSCI journals and in edited volumes published by Routledge, John Benjamins, Springer, Brill, Palgrave and Bloomsbury. I have been mentioned by some scientometric studies as a representative researcher in Chinese interpreting and translation studies.

My recent articles have appeared in ‘Digital Scholarship in the Humanities’, ‘Across Languages and Cultures’, ‘Perspectives’, ‘Babel’, ‘Translation Review’, ‘The Translator’, ‘Language and Intercultural Communication’, ‘Chinese Translators Journal’  and in ‘The Routledge Handbook of Conference Interpreting’ and ‘The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Discourse Analysis’. 

My monographs include New Orientations in Interpreting Studies and Education (Routledge, forthcoming), Theorising Interpreting Studies (2019) and A Descriptive Study of Norms in Interpreting (2013). I have edited with Prof. Jeremy Munday ‘Advances in Discourse Analysis of Translation and Interpreting’ (Routledge) and guest edited themed special issues for some top international journals such as ‘Perspectives’, ‘Frontiers in Communication’ and ‘Asia-Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies’. I co-translated the book Introducing Interpreting Studies into Chinese (Pöchhacker, 2010). My textbooks for interpreter training are used widely in China’s MTI and BTI programmes.

I’m the Co-Investigator of the UK Government funded project on computational linguistics and language learning, and the institutional coordinator of a EU funded project on interpreter training platform. My project on corpus-based studies of interpreted and translated political discourse was approved for the competitive grant of the General Research Fund (GRF, the Hong Kong Research Grants Council). My project on interpreter competence and its development was funded by the China Ministry of Education Research Grant for Humanities and Social Sciences.

PhD Supervision

I received the ‘AHC Partnership Award for Academic Supervision’ (2022) at University of Leeds.

I welcome PhD proposals on various aspects of interpreting and translation studies, particularly PhD applicants with interdisiplinary perspectives, such as those 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, applicants who are interested in examining language-pair specificity in interpreting, applicants with computing or NLP background who are interested in exploring application of AI technologies in interpreting and translation, and applicants conversant with literary studies who are keen to study translation of contemporary and modern Chinese literature.

I have supervised/co-supervised the following PhDs, who have published research articles in top international journals such as Meta, Perspectives, Interpreting, The Translator, Across Languages and Cultures, Critical Discourse Studies, Text&Talk, Journalism, Chinese Translators Journal, etc.

• 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
• Xiaoman Wang, 2024. Developing An Automated Graded Assessment System for Interpreting. PhD dissertation, University of Leeds
• Clarissa Guarini. 2024. Rethinking anticipation - an experimental study of negation in German to English simultaneous interpreting. PhD dissertation, University of Leeds

I have acted as external examiner for PhD examinations/vivas in interpreting and translation studies at UCL, SOAS of London University, Durham University, University of Manchester, University of Stirling, Queen’s University Belfast, Macquarie University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Shanghai International Studies University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and as internal examiner for PhD vivas at University of Leeds.

Guest-edited special issues for international journals

1. Wang, Binhua, Walker, Callum & Munday, Jeremy (eds.). 2023. Special Issue. Convergence and Divergence in Recent Chinese Translation and Interpreting Studies. Perspectives, 31(6). [SSCI/A&HCI journal]

2. Wang, Binhua & Gu, Chonglong (eds.). 2023. Special Issue. Translation and Interpreting as Communication: Issues and Perspectives. Frontiers in Communication, Vol.8. [ESCI journal]

3. Wang, Binhua & Walker, Callum (eds.). 2022. Special Column. The Impact of Translation Activities in History and Now. Asia-Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, 9(2). [ESCI journal]

Conference keynote presentations and invited talks

I have been invited to give keynote/plenary presentations in over 30 international and national conferences, and give invited guest talks at many universities in China mainland, Hong Kong, the US, EU countries and the UK, such as Lancaster University, Stirling University, Leicester University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Shanghai International Studies University.

• Aug 2024. Keynote speech. International Symposium on Translation and Cognition Studies at the Age of AI. High-level Forum of PCTI of the CACSEC. University of Cambridge

• Jun 2024. Keynote speech. International Conference on Shaping the Future of T&I Studies. Hong Kong Polytechnic University

• Jun 2024. Plenary speech. Conference on Chinese News Discourse in the Digital Era. University of Nottingham Ningbo China

• May 2024. Plenary speech, International Symposium on Translation, Communication and Intercultural Studies, PCTI of CACSEC & University of California San Diego, U.S.A.

• Apr 12-14, 2024. Keynote speech, International Conference on Translation Education. Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen)

• Jan 11-12, 2024. Plenary speech. International Conference on Creativity and Translation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, University of Innsbruck, Austria

• Oct 2023, Keynote speech, The 1st Conference on Chinese in Greece and Beyond, Aristotle University

• 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.

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

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

Currently contributing to teaching various modules in Interpreting Skills - Consecutive and Simultaneous, Advanced Retour Interpreting, Methods and Approaches in Translation Studies, etc.

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

• Ms. SONG Meihua
• Xiaoman Wang
• Lu Yuan
• Meng Du