Advanced Chinese language 1 and translation
Students attending this course are required to have certified a level A2+/B1 Chinese language proficiency (HSK IV).
The final exams consists in a an written and an oral part.
The written part is composed of different sections:
- A listening comprehension test;
- A Chinese-Italian business translation test;
- A composition of a business e-mail in Chinese;
- A Chinese-Italian translation test based on materials studied during the course;
- An Italian- Chinese translation text based on materials studied during the workshops.
The oral part will consist in the reading and translation (Chinese-Italian) of texts studied during the course.
The main goal of the Advanced Chinese and Translation I course is to consolidate and increase the language skills acquired by students who have already studied Chinese for several years and have likely reached an HSK4 level of Chinese language. In addition to expanding the students’ working vocabulary and their understanding of complex syntactic structures, this course puts the students on track to pass the HSK V exam (which Chinese Hanban has determined to be a C1 level), certifying a B1+/B2 proficiency level according to the Common European Framework. At the end of the course, the students will have learned how to employ up to 3.000 high-frequency characters and 4.000 high-frequency words in a variety of different contexts. They will be able to express themselves correctly both in oral and written form in everyday situations, competently managing conversations at the intermediate level. A key objective will be to provide strong translation skills, with specific regard to expressions and sentence patterns typically used in formal and literary written Chinese, which are very common in Chinese writing pertaining to politics, law, commerce, and a great number of socially and culturally relevant topics.
By reading and translating texts of an increasing degree of complexity, students will acquire and learn how to use specialized lexicon and sentence patterns that will enable them to construct complex discourses in speech and in writing on a wide variety of topics regarding everyday China. In addition to their Advanced Chinese textbook, the students will also study Business Chinese and texts drawn from contemporary publications on topics related to politics, law, business, tourism, and culturally or socially relevant issues. Along with the course lessons, two parallel translation workshops of 60 class hours each will enable students to hone their translation skills in the two interdisciplinary curricula offered within the Master’s course in Modern Languages for International Communication and Cooperation, i.e.: juridical and economic translation; and linguistic, cultural and juridical mediation. During the workshops, the workshop teacher will offer a set of study materials, selected from real documents in actual use in a variety of relevant contexts.
Primarily frontal lectures, flipped classroom and peer-teaching, with occasional workshops on specific topics.
Student counseling time is set on Friday, from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm upon confirmation by email.