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WAN HU
EDUCATION,
TRANSL ATION AND
GLOBAL MARKET
PRESSURES
CU
RR
IC
UL
UM
DE
SI
GN
IN
CH
IN
A
AN
D
TH
E
UK
Education, Translation
and Global Market Pressures
Wan Hu
Education, Translation
and Global Market
Pressures
Curriculum Design in China and the UK
Wan Hu
School of Foreign Studies
CUFE
Beijing, China
vii
viii Preface
Bibliography
Schäffner, C. (2012). Standardisation and benchmarking for improving translator
training. Chinese Translators Journal, 33(6), 37–45.
Tang, J., & Gentzler, E. (2008). Globalisation, networks and translation: A
Chinese perspective. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 16(3/4), 169–182.
The European Master’s in Translation. (2010). The European Master’s in
Translation (EMT) Strategy. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/info/depart-
ments/translation_en (Accessed: 31 July 2015).
Acknowledgements
Undertaking the research for this book was a long, challenging but
rewarding journey. I was very lucky to have many people help me to fin-
ish this book, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them all
here.
First and foremost, great thanks go to Dr. Maike Oergel, who has
spent numerous hours reading, reviewing and making suggestions for
the improvement of the book. I am deeply grateful to her for sensitivity
and intelligence, and above all for genuinely guiding me to become an
academic. She has been a great supervisor in the academic world and a
role model in life.
I am deeply indebted to my six anonymous interviewees who pro-
vided me with invaluable details for the analysis of the case studies in this
book. I thank Prof. Defeng Li and Dr. Kathryn Batchelor, whose insight-
ful comments helped me refine this book.
My sincere thanks also go to Dr. Yannan Guo, Dr. Xiaohui Yuan,
Dr. Julie King and Dr. Yvonne Lee for their teaching in the early years
of my studies in the UK. I am also deeply grateful to Mr. David Bowen,
Mr. Klaus Mundt, Mr. Gareth Shaw and Ms. Ya-chun Liu. Many thanks
for their constructive discussions about the book, and for their guidance
on language and formatting issues.
It would be remiss of me if I didn’t thank the anonymous reviewer
and the excellent editorial team of Palgrave Macmillan. The reviewer’s
encouraging and insightful comments helped me regain confidence when
xiii
xiv Acknowledgements
xv
xvi Contents
Conclusion 235
Appendices 239
Abbreviations
xix
xx Abbreviations
HE Higher Education
HEIs Higher Education Institutions
IO International Organisations
IP Intellectual Property
KTPs Knowledge Transfer Partnerships
LSP Language Service Providers
MATI MA in Translation and Interpreting
MATIS MA in Translation and Interpreting Studies
MATS MA in Translation Studies
MBA Master of Business Administration
MLA Master of Language Administration
MoE Ministry of Education
MPA Master of Public Administration
MTI Master of Translation and Interpreting
PACTE Process of Acquisition of Translation Competence and
Evaluation
PBL Project-based learning
RAE Research Assessment Exercise
REF Research Excellence Framework
T&I Translation and Interpreting
TAC Translators Association of China
TOT Training of Trainers
TS Translation Studies
UCL University College London
UN The United Nations
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization
WEG Wanli Education Group
WTO World Trade Organisation
List of Figures
xxi
List of Tables
xxiii
xxiv List of Tables
1.1 Introduction
Universities have never before (in human history) been so significant
(Collini 2012). The role of universities has also been a perennial ques-
tion in the field of higher education. In defining and encapsulating the
idea of the university, Wilhelm von Humboldt at the turn of the eight-
eenth and nineteenth centuries and John Henry Newman in the mid-
nineteenth century made invaluable contributions. Humboldt’s idea of
the university, as Holford puts it, ‘is freedom of scientific research and
autonomy in teaching: for Newman, students, and their liberal educa-
tion and character information, are at the heart of the idea of the univer-
sity’ (2014, p. 13). An assumption they both shared is that the purpose
of universities should be the pursuit of knowledge for individuals. The
social role of universities was given attention, but with a greater focus on
the individual contribution to society.
In today’s world, however, ‘modern information technology is spread-
ing information more widely than ever before in history’ (Nye 2004,
p. 1). The connections among both nations and industries have been
largely increased. The commercialisation of higher education is being
pushed ahead by governments worldwide (Bok 2004). As a result, the
purpose of universities has changed in accordance with increasingly
knowledge-driven economies, indicating that knowledge is required in
order to make their contribution to society. This demands that degree
courses need to be developed with the market’s needs in mind to
This specifies that the key principles of neoliberalism are ‘market dereg-
ulation, state decentralisation, and reduced state intervention into eco-
nomic affairs in general’ (Campbell and Pederson 2001, p. 1). Despite
criticism, it is acknowledged that neoliberalism has been regarded as the
reigning policy framework in contemporary globalisation (Scholte 2000,
p. 35) and still influences today’s political, economic and cultural systems.
and culture. In terms of teaching and learning, despite debate, the idea
of embedding employability into the curriculum has been recognised in
most universities. With market and global forces, the HE sector is now
required to supply suitably skilled graduates to the workplace. Therefore,
the strategy of enhancing the skills of students in order to meet employ-
ers’ recruitment requirements has now been put on the agenda (Hills
et al. 2003, p. 211; Rodríguez de Céspedes 2017).
According to Lambert et al. (2007, p. 526), the commercialisation
and marketisation of education is a ‘global’ phenomenon, albeit the
effects may be displayed in different ways due to different national edu-
cational systems. The HE sectors in both the UK and China,2 the two
subjects of this study, have also been affected by this global economic
development in recent years.
The period since the introduction of neo-liberal values has witnessed
numerous changes to UK universities, including the expansion of higher
education as well as the strengthening of the higher education market
in a global context (Krause 2009). These changes come from many
directions. Firstly, ‘an opening up of the student recruitment market
is spiced by a sense of consumerism among those who will pay higher
fees (or strictly, higher graduate contributions)’ (Greenaway and Rudd
2014, p. 1). Secondly, students request that greater employability skills
be taught in academic classroom hours (Atkins 1999; Boden and Nedeva
2010; Jameson et al. 2012), which poses tensions between academia
and profession, and between theoretical teaching of content and the
skills needed in the market in many degree programmes. Thirdly and
most importantly, in order to maintain the UK HE sector as a byword
for excellence in the global market, the HE-Business engagement3 is
much enhanced nowadays. This engagement can be explained as a bilat-
eral relationship between the HE sector and the private sector includ-
ing business and industry. Within this partnership, HE providers serve
as sources of graduate talent, academic expertise, international reach and
technology, while companies have the capacity to absorb innovation,
to support business growth, trade and inward investment (Rudd 2013;
Greenaway and Rudd 2014). This HE-Business interface belongs to the
wider method of ‘knowledge transfer partnerships (KTPs)’, which refers
to a range of activities usually directed at producing practical outcomes,
often stemming from research (Schofield 2011, p. 5). In the UK, knowl-
edge transfer is a growing tendency with regard to the research and
impact mission among most universities. This process could mutually
6 W. Hu
benefit both universities and the business sector in many ways,4 but the
notion is still controversial among some academics, and it may be too
naïve to expect academics fully and suddenly to accept business engage-
ment and innovation due to the longer established research-intensive sys-
tem, and it could be more difficult for academics working in the Arts
and Humanities to build up partnerships with industry and to generate
enough impact on the wider society than for their colleagues in the facul-
ties of science and engineering. In view of all these changes, universities
in the UK are becoming practical in terms of knowledge and technology
transfer, and economic development and global forces. They are increas-
ingly considered as an instrument to boost economic growth via creating
and applying new knowledge.
Since its integration into the world economy, the Chinese govern-
ment has also emphasised the importance of knowledge in enhancing
its economic development and ability to compete in the global econ-
omy. Despite the fact that each country might adopt different national
policies, similar developments and challenges can be found in China in
that the HE sector has also experienced pressures from neo-liberal glo-
balisation. In this sense, policy arrangements should be implemented
along market lines, and educational reforms are required to be in line
with those in economic sectors to establish close links between educa-
tion and the market. This has been the most prominent orientation
(Yang 2012). The social and economic impacts of universities are also
reinforced by government, specifying that the optimised higher educa-
tion structure needs to meet national and regional socio-economic devel-
opment needs. These themes have formed the milieu for the reform
of China’s higher education sector since the 1980s (Jiang 2005; Mok
2009; Yang 2012). As such, a series of reforms and strategies have been
adopted in its HE system in response to market forces. Firstly, in order
to create more opportunities for access to universities, China has wit-
nessed the expansion of higher education in both student numbers and
in the number of Chinese universities since the late 1990s. This indicates
that a massification of the HE sector in China has been implemented.
Another change in Chinese society is the introduction and adoption
of a decentralisation policy, which replaces the former ‘centralised’ and
‘state-dominated model’5 and gives more authority to local governments
in terms of allocating resources, financing higher education, and man-
aging personnel and salaries in universities (Mok 2001, 2009; Mok and
Ngok 2001); while the Ministry of Education (MoE) acts as coordinator
1 TRANSLATION STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEMS … 7