Chinese-language course targets all professionals
THE CHINESE LANGUAGE has been the mother tongue of tens of millions of people around the world, but never in Hong Kong's history has the language been as important as it is now.
Since Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony in 1997, the city has been warming up to the more frequent use of the language. The government has applied a policy of bilingualism in its education, administrative and legal systems, while communication in Chinese has become the trend in the private sector, where China trade has grown in significance in the global business arena.
But local academics say Hong Kong people, who went through schools where English was the medium of instruction, need to improve their ability to speak and write Chinese, know more about different Chinese cultures and be able to apply the language at a professional level.
At the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), for instance, a new programme, titled Master of Arts in Chinese for Professional Purposes, will take in its first batch of students this September.
The course aims to enable graduates of all disciplines in the public and private sectors to communicate effectively in Chinese.
Believing that there is much room for development in Chinese studies, Ng Sheung-chee, associate professor at the CityU's department of Chinese, translation and linguistics, said: 'For a long time, government departments and the private sector used very little Chinese. It was hard to imagine in those days that the Legislative Council would use Chinese in its proceedings.
'Today, many government and legal documents are bilingual. The ultimate goal of Hong Kong's education system is to enable students to write Chinese and English, and speak Cantonese, English and Putonghua.
'We would like to contribute to this aspect and provide an opportunity for further studies in the Chinese language.'
The part-time course takes students up to five years to complete and is the first of its kind in the Greater China region.
Included among the subjects are 'Chinese practical writing in the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan' as well as 'Chinese creative writing'.
As knowledge of Chinese language alone is not enough to narrow the gaps between different Chinese cultures, the course has made 'Chinese culture and Chinese for professional purposes' a core subject, with the aim of teaching the different meanings and usage of the Chinese language across China. The case studies cited in the course are mostly based on mainland scenarios.
Mr Ng expects the course to attract people who have the practical need to acquire a higher level of Chinese-language ability, as well as those interested in a new dimension of learning. Applications for the course close on April 30.
Hong Kong Baptist University will also launch a new course in September to provide training in bilingual communication in English and Chinese under a translation programme offered by its English language and literature department.
The course, Master of Arts in Translation and Bilingual Communication, differentiates itself from traditional translation courses by focusing on strategies in the process of translation for more effective communication, according to John Lai Tsz-pang, assistant professor in translation.
'The translation process may involve rewriting rather than being loyal to the original version as practised traditionally,' he said.
One example of when content needed to be rearranged was when an English speech had to be translated into Chinese to be presented in public. 'It will not be purely translation, but Hong Kong does not have many such professional translators,' he said.
The two-year part-time course is divided into research and practical sections. The former is expected to be particularly welcomed by mainland graduates as China so far lacks systematic research programmes of this kind.
The application deadline for the programme ends on March 31. The full-time mode will start in 2008.
