Department of Linguistics and Translation & College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS)

Module: 01 Academics · Sub-file: Department of Linguistics and Translation (LT) + CLASS overview CityU’s Linguistics subject climbed two places in the 2026 QS global rankings, breaking into the top 40—a result built across three fronts: interpreting pedagogy, computational linguistics, and legal translation. This piece first excavates the Department of Linguistics and Translation (LT)—its programmes, laboratories, and research standing—before pulling back to survey the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS). The full college overview appears at colleges-and-schools.md.

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# I. What distinctive role does LT play within CLASS?

The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) at City University of Hong Kong houses 7 academic units^※. Among them, the Department of Linguistics and Translation is the only unit that simultaneously covers language science, translation and interpreting practice, and language technology. The Department of Chinese and History and the Department of English each focus on specific language traditions, whereas LT is distinguished by its dual-track approach: it supplies language-technology support for STEM fields (computational linguistics, natural language processing) while also channelling linguists with bidirectional interpreting and legal translation skills into law, diplomacy, and the media. According to the department’s own account^※, its head describes LT as offering “the most comprehensive, applicable, and continually evolving curriculum covering all language-related areas of study.”

The department currently has 21 full academic staff^※ at the professor, associate professor, and assistant professor levels. Their collective research output stands at 1,677 items^※, with a Scopus h-index of 25^※ and 262 academic awards^※.

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# II. What undergraduate pathways are available?

Under the JS1109 (BA Linguistics and Language Applications)^※ framework, CityU’s LT Department offers five distinctive streams:

The core curriculum includes foundational linguistics (phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax, semantics and pragmatics) and language applications (introduction to language technology, computational linguistics, project design). Advanced electives span computational lexicography, computer-aided translation and language learning, corpus linguistics, experimental phonetics, and sociolinguistics. This is a UGC-funded undergraduate degree^※. In the 2025 JUPAS cycle, the programme admitted 25 local students^※ in its first-year intake (out of roughly 1,250 applications; around 23 were eventually enrolled).

The department also runs joint dual-degree programmes with National Taiwan University and with Columbia University—students spend two years at each institution and earn two degrees. The Columbia programme has been open for direct JUPAS application from the 2026/27 academic year^※.

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# III. How does the translation and interpreting strand extend into postgraduate study?

The LT Department’s flagship taught postgraduate programme is the MA Language Studies (MALS)^※, organised into four streams:

MALS is a self-financed programme: one year full-time, two years part-time, or a mixed mode. Teaching is concentrated on weekday evenings and Saturday afternoons^※ to accommodate working professionals. The target intake is around 400 students^※ per academic year (across MA, PGD, and PGC levels). Research degree routes (MPhil and PhD) are also available for students pursuing academic careers. The Translation and Interpretation stream is led by Associate Professor Jackie Xiu Yan^※, whose research focuses on interpreting and translation training as well as audio description services for visually impaired audiences. She received the Teaching Excellence Award for 2024/25.

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# IV. Where does legal translation sit, and how is the course designed?

The co-existence of Hong Kong’s common-law system and the civil-law systems of mainland China and Taiwan creates a sustained demand for translators who can work across legal traditions. At the postgraduate level, the LT Department offers LT6505 Legal Translation^※, a 3-credit course taught and assessed primarily in English. Taking Hong Kong’s bilingual legal system as its core scenario, the course trains students to analyse the nature and challenges of translating different legal texts and to master the principles and techniques of legal translation (listed in the 2024/25 course catalogue).

On the publishing side, CityU Press has launched a dedicated “Legal Translation Series.” Key Terms in Contract Law of Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan^※ (Chan Ho-yan, 2014) and its companion on tort law have already been published, each collecting over a hundred bilingual terms with citations to case law from all three jurisdictions. The series holds a pioneering position among trilateral legal translation references—the contract-law volume is positioned as “the first monograph to discuss contract-law terminology across the three jurisdictions from a translation perspective.” This legal-translation axis also resonates with the School of Law’s traditions in Chinese and comparative law (see school-of-law.md).

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# V. What does the Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies do?

The LT Department is deeply linked with the Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies (HCLS)^※. Named after M.A.K. Halliday, the founder of systemic functional linguistics, the Centre is currently directed by LT Professor Alex Chengyu Fang. Its research is organised around five domains: corpus linguistics, language education, natural language processing (NLP), sociolinguistics, and translation studies.

NLP research covers biomedical information extraction and terminology management/translation, computer-assisted language learning, event recognition and extraction, and syntactic parsing and semantic annotation (evaluation analysis, dialogue-act recognition, theme-rheme annotation), with the Centre developing its own HCLS Tagger tool. Translation research spans culture and translation (East-West cultural exchange and the rendering of classical texts into Western languages), translation history (the history of scientific and technical information translation), translation quality assessment, and translation universals (via contrastive linguistics).

In January 2025, Professor Fang was appointed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as Chair of Technical Committee TC 37 “Language and Terminology”^※, becoming the first Asian representative to hold the post—a landmark endorsement of LT and HCLS’s standing in the international language-standards arena. The Centre also maintains partnerships with Lancaster University, the University of Vienna, Macquarie University, and Tilburg University.

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# VI. What specialist research laboratories does the department run?

The LT Department currently operates three laboratories, each with a distinct focus:

Language and Cognition Laboratory (LCL): Described by its official page^※ as “one of the region’s most comprehensive facilities for (neuro)cognitive language research,” it houses an EyeLink 1000/Portable DUO eye-tracker (up to 2,000 Hz sampling rate), an ANT Neuro 128-channel EEG system (supporting dual-subject simultaneous hyperscanning), a Neuroscan 64-channel system, and stimulus presentation software (E-Prime, PsychoPy) with millisecond-level precision. Research spans child language acquisition, adult L2 learning, cross-linguistic comparisons among Cantonese, Putonghua, and English, and the neural mechanisms of reading.

Phonetics Laboratory: Founded in 1995^※, it is equipped with a Carstens EMA AG501 (electromagnetic articulograph), a micro-ultrasound system, a glottal-imaging system, and a Kay-PENTAX Computerized Speech Lab. It has systematically investigated the acoustic, articulatory, and perceptual properties of Chinese dialects including Beijing Putonghua, Cantonese, Hakka, Ningbo, Suzhou, Fuzhou, Xiangxiang, and Taizhou varieties.

Simultaneous Interpretation Laboratory: Located in room LI-5145, it provides professional simultaneous and consecutive interpreting training facilities. The department describes it as featuring “the most advanced equipment and facilities in the industry,” and it additionally supports language-learning purposes.

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# VII. What representative research defines the computational linguistics strand?

The computational linguistics strand within LT is epitomised by Professor Chunyu Kit. Holding a BEng in Computer Science from Tsinghua University (1985), an MSc in Computational Linguistics from Carnegie Mellon University (1994), and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Sheffield (2001), he is a classically trained computational linguist. His research interests cut across computational linguistics, machine translation, terminology, text and web mining, psycholinguistics, and Chinese poetics. He has published over 150 papers^※ in top venues such as ACL, COLING, CoNLL, EMNLP, IJCAI, as well as journals like Machine Translation, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, and Terminology, and has been cited by over 3,322 authors^※. His recent work has extended into intelligent legal judgment prediction, demonstrating the cross-fertilisation potential between LT’s computational and legal-translation strands.

Undergraduate courses such as “Computational Linguistics,” “Introduction to Language Technology,” “Computational Lexicography,” and “Computer-Aided Translation”—together with the “Corpus and Empirical Linguistics” stream within MALS—translate this research into teachable professional skills, forming a complete training chain from undergraduate to PhD level. This “linguistics plus computing” trajectory also echoes the AI agenda of the newly established College of Computing (2024) (see college-of-computing-2024.md).

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# VIII. What does QS global #36 actually mean?

QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 — Linguistics^※: CityU places 36th globally, two places up^※ from 38th in 2025. It is one of five CityU subjects to break the QS global top 50 in that cycle (the other four are Materials Science at 39, Law at 41, Social Policy & Administration at 46, and Communication & Media Studies at 49). In 2026 CityU had 20 subjects in the global top 100^※ by QS’s metric.

Within the Hong Kong linguistics landscape, the LT Department’s research intensity (h-index 25, 1,677 outputs, 19 active projects) and its cross-cutting deployment across experimental linguistics, computational linguistics, and translation studies are the main factors underpinning that rank.

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# IX. CLASS overview: the seven academic units

CLASS, the home college of the LT Department, is CityU’s integrated home for the humanities and social sciences, spanning languages, literature, translation, communication, politics, sociology, and psychology.

CLASS comprises seven academic units^※ (six departments plus one language centre), offering undergraduate, taught postgraduate, and research (MPhil/PhD) degrees. The College describes its disciplinary coverage as spanning approximately 30 fields^※.

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# X. CLASS departments: distinctive features and majors

# 1. Department of Chinese and History

Formed from the merger of Chinese (language and literature) and History units, it covers Chinese language and literature, history, and cultural heritage.

# 2. Department of English

Offers programmes in English language and literature, professional writing, and related fields.

# 3. Department of Linguistics and Translation

The unit excavated in depth in the first half of this piece—a signature department within CLASS.

# 4. Department of Media and Communication

Runs programmes in journalism, communication, new media, PR, and advertising, and houses the Centre for Communication Research^※.

# 5. Department of Public and International Affairs (formerly Asian and International Studies)

Offers undergraduate majors in BSocSc Public Affairs and Management (PAFM) and International Relations and Global Affairs (IRGA)^※, alongside an Asian Studies stream. According to the department, its Asian Studies major was the first—and remains the only—UGC-funded undergraduate programme in Hong Kong focused on the Asian region^※. It also houses the Centre for Public Affairs and Law (run jointly with the School of Law).

# 6. Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences

According to the department, its undergraduate programme in Criminology and Sociology is the only UGC-funded programme in Hong Kong offering integrated training in both criminology and sociology^※. It also runs majors in Psychology (BSocSc Psychology), Social Work, and other areas, covering five disciplines: applied sociology, counselling, criminology, psychology, and social work. Interdisciplinary combinations such as the Criminology + Law double degree are also available.

# 7. Language Centre

The Chan Feng Men-ling Chan Shuk-lin Language Centre is responsible for university-wide Chinese and English language teaching support.

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# XI. CLASS research platforms

CLASS operates multiple research centres. According to the College, these include the Centre for Communication Research; the Centre for East Asian and Comparative Philosophy; the Centre for Public Affairs and Law (jointly with the School of Law); and the Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies^※, among others.

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