Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2006. / (UMI)AAI3254008. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0741. Advisers: Neil Fligstein; Trond Petersen.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Western Ontario (Canada), 2007. / (UMI)AAINR30853. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 3848.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-233). Also available via the World Wide Web.

In recent years, more and more Chinese films have been exported abroad. This thesis intends to explore the subtitling of Chinese cinema into English, with Zhang Yimou’s films as a case study. Zhang Yimou is arguably the most critically and internationally acclaimed Chinese filmmaker, who has experimented with a variety of genres of films. I argue that in the subtitling of his films, there is an obvious adoption of the domestication translation strategy that reduces or even omits Chinese cultural references. I try to discover what cultural categories or perspectives of China are prone to the domestication of translation and have formulated five categories: humour, politeness, dialect, history and songs and the Peking Opera. My methodology is that I compare the source Chinese dialogue lines with the existing English subtitles by providing literal translations of the source lines, and I will also give my alternative translations that tend to retain the source cultural references better. I also speculate that the domestication strategy is frequently employed by subtitlers possibly because the subtitlers assume the source cultural references are difficult for target language subtitle readers to comprehend, even if they are translated into a target language. However, subtitle readers are very likely to understand more than what the dialogue lines and the target language subtitles express, because films are multimodal entities and verbal information is not the only source of information for subtitle readers. The image and the sound are also significant sources of information for subtitle readers who are constantly involved in a dynamic film-watching experience. They are also expected to grasp visual and acoustic information. The complete omission or domestication of source cultural references might also affect their interpretation of the non-verbal cues. I also contemplate that the translation, which frequently domesticates the source culture carried out by a translator who is also a native speaker of the source language, is ‘submissive translation’.

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As a global language, English has spread to the extent that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers. In the last few decades, a body of research literature has emerged demonstrating the decreasing global relevance of native English speakers, and calling for a re-evaluation of English Language Teaching (ELT) practices, in order to better prepare students for using English as a global lingua franca. However, students’ needs and attitudes towards English and ELT must be fully investigated before curriculum changes can be suggested. Many attitude studies conclude that students favour native varieties of English. However, such research often uses single research methods and very few relate attitude studies to ELT. Further research is required regarding students’ attitudes towards English, the factors influencing these attitudes and how they relate to ELT. Moreover, few studies have investigated these proposals in any depth or explored the impact of course instruction in the global uses of English on students’ attitudes. This thesis is an investigation of Japanese university students’ attitudes towards English and English teachers in relation to the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF). In order to widen the scope of understanding, this research employed a mixture of quantitative and qualitative measures to obtain data about the participants and their attitudes. Thus, questionnaires, interviews and focus groups were used. Following the introduction, chapter two and three provide a literature review. Chapter four outlines the methodology, and the results are presented in chapters five, six and seven. Chapter eight presents a discussion of the results and the implications of this study for teaching English are discussed in chapter nine. The findings suggest that English is seen as a language belonging to native English speakers and those students want to learn native English. However, the results highlighted that a number of factors influence students’ attitudes. The findings also demonstrated that the study of Global Englishes influenced students in a number of ways, including their motivation for learning English, attitudes towards varieties of English and attitudes towards English teachers. It encouraged them to question notions of ‘standard English’, was helpful for future ELF communication and raised their confidence as English speakers. In sum, the findings of this study provide an empirical basis for a re-evaluation of ELT and suggest that Global Englishes Language Teaching is something that should be further investigated.

The current language teaching and learning environment in British higher educational establishments appears to have two main characteristics. Firstly, an unprecedented number of students from various cultural backgrounds now study in the UK, including students with a cultural background that is very different from the Anglophone educational culture. Secondly, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) remains the prevailing teaching method used in higher educational establishments, however, CLT is based on assumptions that relate closely to the Anglophone language teaching and learning environment. This study poses a question of whether CLT should continue to be valued and relied upon in this new international teaching and learning environment. Out of many non-Anglophone educational cultures in the world, Japanese educational culture was selected as the focus of this study to help explore this question. In the empirical study, two teaching methods, Japanisation and CLT, were used to investigate the impact of Japanese educational culture in a British university's Japanese language teaching classes where the British educational culture currently dominates. The study was conducted for one semester at the University of Southampton. The concept of Japanisation is drawn from the study of the Japanese car manufacturing industry and is transferred to a language teaching context. The study was investigated by tests (two assignments and Reading and Written Test) that provided quantitative data, questionnaires that provided quantitative and qualitative data and classroom observation that provided qualitative data. There was no statistically significant difference between the two teaching methods regarding attainment in the two assignments. However, Japanisation was associated with significantly improved results in the Reading and Writing Test, compared with CLT. These results seem to suggest that embedding elements of Japanisation and Japanese educational culture into the teaching of Japanese to non-Japanese speakers in British language classrooms might possibly enhance students' learning of reading and writing skills. This study also presents possibilities as to how the Japanese educational cultural method of teaching could be incorporated into the teaching of Japanese to non-Japanese speakers. In addition, this study indicates that language teachers facing a multicultural classroom might consider the international students' educational cultural expectations and needs in learning. Those who develop the teaching curriculum are encouraged at a strategic level to examine other educational cultures and teaching practices from non-Anglophone countries and assess how they may be combined with CLT to reflect the new international characteristics of teaching and learning environments.

Thai characters pose some unique problems, which differ from English and other oriental scripts. The structure of Thai characters consists of small loops combined with curves and there is an absence of spaces between each word and sentence. In each line, moreover, Thai characters can be composed on four levels, depending on the type of character being written. This research focuses on OCR for the Thai language: printed and offline handwritten character recognition. An attempt to overcome the problems by simple but effective methods is the main consideration. A printed OCR developed by the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC) uses Kohonen self- organising maps (SOMs) for rough classification and back-propagation neural networks for fine classification. An evaluation of the NECTEC OCR is performed on a printed dataset that contains over 0.6 million tokens. Comparisons of the classifier, with and without the aspect ratio, and with and without SOMs, yield small, but statistically significant differences in recognition rate. A very straightforward classifier, the nearest neighbour, was examined to evaluate overall recognition performance and to compare with the classifier. It shows a significant improvement in recognition rate (about 98%) over the NECTEC classifier (about 96%) on both the original and distorted data (rotated and noisy), but at the expense of longer recognition times. For offline handwritten character recognition, three different classifiers are evaluated on three different datasets that contain, on average, approximately 10,000 tokens each. The neural network and HMMs are more effective and give higher recognition rates than the nearest neighbour classifier on three datasets. The best result obtained from the HMMs is 91.1% on ThaiCAM dataset. However, when evaluated on a different dataset, the recognition rates drastically reduce, due to differences in many aspects of online and offline handwritten data. An improvement in classification rates was obtained by adjusting the stroke width of a character in the online handwritten dataset (12 percentage points) and combining the training sets from the three datasets (7.6 percentage points). A boosting algorithm called AdaBoost yields a slight improvement in recognition rate (1.2 percentage points) over the original classifiers (without applying the AdaBoost algorithm).

Translation is not simply a transmission from one language to another language, but the bridge connecting languages, cultures, and people around the world throughout history, from past to present, in time and space. In the mutual relationship with literary systems, translation in some cases is the pioneer orienting domestic literature from stylistics, genres to content. Translation in Viet Nam, however, has never been studied systematically, and at present is like a chaotic market in which the rhythm of three main factors, translation, proof-reading, and criticism are marching to different tunes. The thesis focuses on evaluating the functions and contributions of translation in the development of literature and society in Vietnam. Besides, the thesis uses Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a case study to clarify problems in translation in Vietnam. The results synthesized from the formulation of research questions have revealed that translation in Vietnam is absolutely a great transformer of culture and a fertilizer of Vietnamese literature. The case study Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has pointed out that present problems of translation in Vietnam are the shortage of criticism which consequently produces many poor quality translations called ‘disasters’, and of classic books for high education and research. Within deep analysis into the sematic features of the Vietnamese translation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in comparison to its Shakespeare’s English, the thesis has concluded that this translation, which has been used popularly in schools over fifty years, is no longer suitable for present audiences. It is, therefore, encouraged to re-translate the text. The thesis besides providing a whole picture of translation in Vietnam and insights into the practice of translating Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet into Vietnamese, is a valuable source for Vietnamese translation scholars to indicate strategies for the development of translation in Vietnam, and for Vietnamese translators to re-translate not only other plays of Shakespeare but also classical works of the world.

This thesis investigates text memorization, a widely used yet under-explored language practice in foreign language teaching and learning in mainland China. The inquiry was conducted along two lines: to conceptually examine a number of issues central to the understanding of the practice of text memorization in the Chinese context, and empirically inquire into Chinese learners/teachers’ practices and perceptions of the inclusion of text memorization in foreign language learning and teaching. The review of literature shows that (text) memorisation had been widely practiced in other parts of the world until recently, including the Anglophone west. By challenging the belief that emphasis on memorisation stifles and creative thinking, which is believed to be one of the key aims of Western education, I argue that memorisation or memorised knowledge is not only legitimate in but constitutes an important part of learning. I also demonstrate that Confucius’ theory of learning, which allows the coexistence of emphasis on memorisation and critical thinking arguably can be of relevance to education in the 21st century. Also advanced in the conceptual study is the argument that the methodological considerations underlying ALM (Audio Lingual Method), despite its western origin, match up to some fundamental Chinese conceptions of learning and teaching. The empirical study reported in this thesis addresses the need for a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the practices and beliefs of Chinese learners and teachers regarding the use of text memorization in foreign language learning and teaching. This study bases its methodology on semi-structured interviews complemented by small-scale surveys. The data was collected from a group of Chinese learners (N=42) and teachers (N=20) affiliated with 10 schools and 6 universities at three different educational levels, i.e. junior high, senior high and college, which constitute the major part of foreign language education in China. Data collection was mainly based in a single Chinese inland capital city and lasted for one year and two months involving two fieldwork trips to China. Analyses of the data lead to two major findings. First, both learners and teachers hold overwhelmingly positive perceptions of the use of text memorization in foreign language learning and teaching. The practice was perceived to be beneficial not only because it assists learning in a number of ways but because it builds the learners’ sense of achievement and confidence. Second, the informants’ positive beliefs about text memorisation, though context-constrained, might be more attributable to their perception of benefits to their language learning and teaching than to the view that the practice is consistent with traditional Chinese culture and values. In sum, this inquiry promotes a ‘different-rather than-deficit’ perspective in understanding Chinese learners and their learning practice as well as problematizing the uncritical assumptions about the negative impact of a Confucian philosophy of education.