Diana Yue, a well-known translator, Emeritus Professor from the University of Hong Kong, along with Thomas Hun-tak Lee, famous linguist from the Chinese University of Hongkong, delivered speeches in Guangdng University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS) and donated books to the library.
Shi Youqi, Vice President of the university expressed sincere appreciation of them. He pointed out that the books donated covered a wide range of fields, including Linguistics, Translation Studies, Lexicography, Literature, Art, Law and so on. Among the books, some original English books are very rare, therefore, the donation has great significance as it does not only represent the personal charm of the two scholars, but also meets the need of students for being well informed of the latest academic research.
Later, the two scholars, together with faculties from School of Interpreting and Translation studies, had a heated discussion on cross-cultural communication. Diana talked about the bilingual history of Hong Kong. She argued that the status of Chinese changed since 1970, as Chinese was adopted as the legalized language in various fields like law, public administration and daily life, which latter led to the great call of translation between Chinese and English and highly competent translators. After Diana’s talk, the audience raised a number of questions, including the relationship between translation and interpretation, the principle of poem translation and so on.
When the ceremony and the speech were over, Diana and Thomas visited the Center of Translation Studies and Computer-Assisted Translation Laboratory. They two spoke highly of GDUFS for its contribution to promoting translation studies in China.