109th BJTU Scholars Forum on Foreign Languages and Communication Held

April 29, 2025 – The 109th "BJTU Scholars Forum on Foreign Languages and Communication" was convened at Siyuan West Building, Beijing Jiaotong University. The lecture featured Professor He Keyong, a distinguished Rank-2 Professor from Minzu University of China and recipient of the 2024 "Senior Translator" honor, who delivered a presentation titled "The Standard of 'Fit' in Film and TV Translation: Theoretical and Practical Explorations". Hosted by Professor Feng Lei from the School of Languages and Communication Studies, Beijing Jiaotong University, the event attracted active participation from numerous faculty and students.

Professor He began by contextualizing contemporary film and TV translation within current trends. He noted that since 2012, cultural exchange between China and other countries has shown a dual emphasis on "importing and exporting" with audiovisual works becoming key vehicles for telling China's stories and promoting cultural dissemination. With strong state support, translation funding has been allocated to over 2,000 films and TV works in recent years, significantly expanding the reach and depth of Chinese productions abroad.

Against this backdrop, Professor He highlighted that despite China's status as a major producer of audiovisual content, it has yet to become a strong cultural exporter, with "language translation" being a critical bottleneck. He illustrated this with the example of a Beijing-based translation agency specializing in dubbing for African markets, which translates up to 10,000 hours of content annually, including popular series such as "Nirvana in Fire" and "The Journey of Flower". The rise of new formats like short-form dramas has further heightened the urgency of establishing clear standards for screen translation.

At the core of the lecture, Professor He proposed "fit" as the central standard for film and TV translation. He emphasized that screen language is characterized by ten features: comprehensibility, rhythm, individuality, situational context, artistic style and rhetoric, pragmatic implications, audience linguistic expectations, cultural adaptation, concreteness over abstraction, and contextual coherence. Therefore, translation criteria must differ from those for traditional texts and cannot simplistically apply principles like "faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance".

"Fit" or closeness, represents a translation concept that emphasizes "contextual appropriateness". Professor He vividly demonstrated its operational principles through examples, such as rendering the line from "Endeavour" – "I am no longer your little girl. People need to make their mistakes" – as "我不再是你的乖乖女了，人不犯错哪能成长？" This translation achieves strong alignment in both linguistic style and situational resonance, reflecting a unity of "spiritual resemblance" and cultural adaptation. He further contextualized "fit" within broader theoretical frameworks, including Fu Lei's "spiritual resemblance", Newmark's "communicative translation" and "principle of economy", and Chesterman's "ethics of representation", arguing that "fit" carries multidimensional significance in translation ethics, linguistic aesthetics, and cultural strategy. He stressed that "fit" is not merely a technical choice but also a value-oriented approach.

In closing, Professor He expanded on the advantages of the "fit" principle in addressing structural differences between languages and actively engaged with student questions on multimodal text translation. The forum concluded successfully in a vibrant academic atmosphere.

Following the lecture, Professor He met with faculty from the School, offering constructive insights on the development direction of foreign language programs and pathways for cultivating translation talent. The discussion was attended by Sun Wenbo, Secretary of the School's Party Committee; Liu Kai, Vice Dean; Dai Jiangwen, Chair of the Department of English; Feng Lei, Associate Chair of the Department of English; and He Li, key faculty member of the Department of English.