GENERAL EDUCATION IN THE NEW UNDERGRADUATE TRANSLATION CURRICULA: THE CASE OF HONG KONG UNIVERSITIES

In recent years, more attention has been paid to undergraduate translation programmes, but students in these programmes are often found to lack the necessary background knowledge to cany out translation tasks effectively and efficiently. The research focus of this paper is Hong Kong, a cosmopolitan city in which there has been a constant demand for bilingual talents. In 2012, the four-year undergraduate programmes were introduced, and general education has become a significant component. Through a curricular analysis of the undergraduate translation programmes offered by five Hong Kong universities, it was found that general education courses account for about 20% of the total course credits and cover areas like ethics, science and technology, business and social science. This paper concludes that these courses may act as a scaffold for other specialised translation courses and help students develop soft and transferrable skills. There are implications for universities in other regions, because four-year undergraduate translation programmes with a significant general education element are unique on an international level.