Caritas Institute of Higher Education establishes the world-first Saint Francis Prize in Techno-Humanities

01 Oct 2021

Prize Area for 2021-2022: Translation Technology

Caritas Institute of Higher Education is proud to announce the establishment of the world-first Saint Francis Prize in Techno-Humanities in September 2021, to be presented to an individual or institution in recognition of outstanding contributions to the development of technologies in the humanities for the well-being of humankind. The Prize area for 2021-2022 is Translation Technology.

The award of this Prize is closely related to the aspiration of the Techno-Humanities Research Centre of the School of Humanities and Languages of the Institute to usher in a new research orientation, pioneer into a virgin area of scholarship, and develop technologies for the humanities. We aspire to be a leading institution in the field and a world hub for techno-humanities.

The trophy symbolizes glory with the body in gold, distinction with a tall curvy frame in the shape of a bauhinia leaf, and techno-humanities with a human-shaped base and a silver-coloured tube that stands for brain and technology.

Prize Award: US$15,000, Certificate, and trophy

Nomination Period: 1 October - 1 December 2021

Nomination Form: Please download here.

Email for form submission: SFPrize@cihe.edu.hk

Prize Categories

The categories of the Prize are Language, Art, and Culture.

Language covers the domains of language studies, linguistics, translation technology, machine translation, computer-aided translation, localization, and speech translation.

Art covers the areas of dance, design, fashion, filmmaking, painting, photography, sculpture, music, and theatre.

Culture includes the fields of anthropology, archaeology, architecture, business, religion, education, environment, history, law, literature, and politics.
The Prize will be awarded biennially. The category and area for the Prize for a specific year shall be decided by the Prize Committee. The Prize Committee decided that the Prize area for 2022 is Translation Technology.

Prize Management

The Prize is managed by the Prize Committee and the Selection Committee, supported by a Logistics Team from the School of Humanities and Languages.

Prize Committee

The Prize Committee decides on the prize area of the year, manages matters relating to the Prize, and approves the recipient(s) recommended by the Selection Committee.

The Prize Committee 2021-2022 is as follows:

Chairperson
Dr Kim Mak Kin-wah Dr Kim Mak Kin-wah
President, CIHE and CBCC
Members
Professor Rosie Young Tse Tse Professor Rosie Young Tse Tse
Council member, CIHE and CBCC
Professor Annie Bligh Professor Annie Bligh
Provost, CIHE and CBCC
Dr Dennis Law Dr Dennis Law
Vice-President (Academic and Quality Assurance)
Mr Manhoe Chan Mr Manhoe Chan
Vice-President (Resources and Finance)
Dr  Kat Leung Sze Ming Dr Kat Leung Sze Ming
Vice-President (Administration)
Professor Chan Sin-wai Professor Chan Sin-wai
Dean, School of Humanities and Languages

Selection Committee

The Selection Committee is charged with selecting a recipient from all nominations.
      Members of the Selection Committee 2021-2022 are as follows:
      Professor Chan Sin-wai (Chairperson)
                Caritas Institute of Higher Education (Hong Kong)
      Professor Lynne Bowker
                University of Ottawa (Canada)
      Professor Alan K. Melby
                Brigham Young University (the United States)
      Professor Mark Shuttleworth
                Hong Kong Baptist University (Hong Kong)

Professor Chan Sin-wai (Chairperson)

Professor Chan Sin-wai

Professor Chan Sin-wai is Dean of the School of Humanities and Languages, Caritas Institute of Higher Education, President of the Association for Translation Technology, and was a member of the Translation Technology Committee of the International Federation of Translators (FIT).

He received his Bachelor of Arts from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and his doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has taught courses in translation technology and computer-aided translation for many years. His research interests lie in translation technology, bilingual lexicography, and Chinese-English translation.

He has to date published 66 academic books in 85 volumes. His book publications on translation technology include The Human Factor in Machine Translation (Routledge 2018), The Future of Translation Technology: Towards a World without Babel (Routledge 2017), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Technology (Routledge 2015), 《翻譯科技新視野》(New Vistas in Translation Technology) (Tsinghua University Press 2014), The Teaching of Computer-aided Translation, Special Issue of the Journal of Translation Studies (Chinese University Press 2010), A Topical Bibliography of Computer (-aided) Translation (Chinese University Press, 2008), A Dictionary of Translation Technology (Chinese University Press, 2004), and Translation and Information Technology (The Chinese University Press 2002).

He played a key role in the establishment of the Techno-Humanities Research Centre at the School of Humanities and Languages of Caritas Institute of Higher Education in 2021 with a UGC funding of HK$3.94 million. He has conducted research projects on translation technology, the most recent ones include Creating an Automatic Football Commentary System with Image Recognition and Cantonese Voice Output (Co-Principal Investigator, with a RGC Funding of round HK$6.9 million in 2021) and VisualRecipe: An Online Visual Translation System for Chinese Cookbooks (Principal Investigator, funded in 2020 with an amount of around 2 million Hong Kong dollars by Caritas Institute of Higher Education).

Professor Lynne Bowker

ProfessorLynne Bowker

Lynne Bowker has a BA and MA in Translation from the University of Ottawa (Canada), a Master's in Computer Applications for Education from Dublin City University (Ireland), and a PhD in Language Engineering from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (United Kingdom). She taught translation and computational linguistics at Dublin City University for several years before relocating back to the University of Ottawa, where she is now a Full Professor at the School of Translation and Interpretation with a cross-appointment to the School of Information Studies. Author of more than 50 journal publications and book chapters, she has also (co-) authored and (co-)edited a number of books, including Computer-Aided Translation Technology (2002, University of Ottawa Press), Working with Specialized Language: A Practical Guide to Using Corpora (2002, Routledge), and Machine Translation and Global Research (2019, Emerald). She has held visiting scholar appointments at KU Leuven (Belgium), the University of Verona (Italy), and Jyväskylä University (Finland). In 2020, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, which is this country's national academy. In addition to her academic accomplishments, Professor Bowker is a certified translator (French to English) with the Association of Translators and Interpreters of Ontario. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Professor Bowker's current area of research focuses on Machine Translation Literacy and the importance of helping those outside the language professions become savvy users of translation technologies.

Professor Alan K. Melby

Professor Alan K. Melby is professor emeritus of the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the Provo campus of Brigham Young University, the United States. He received his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, M.A. in Linguistics, and PhD in Computational Linguistics from Brigham Young University.

Professor Melby has been interested in terminology management and terminology exchange since the mid-1980s. He has been involved in various efforts to develop terminology exchange formats.

Professor Melby is an ATA-certified French-to-English translator. He worked on a machine translation project for a decade and does freelance translation and consulting in translation quality. He is a vice-president of the International Federation of Translators (FIT) and a member of the US delegation to the International Organization for Standardization, Technical Committee 37 for Terminology and Other Language Resources (ISO/TC37)

In 2007, Professor Melby received the Eugen Wüster prize awarded by Infoterm for lifetime achievement in the area of terminology. In 2003, he received the Gode Medal, which is the most prestigious award of the American Translators Association presented to an individual or institution in recognition of outstanding service to the translation and interpreting professions. 

His book publications include and The Possibility of Language: A Discussion of the Nature of Language, with Implications for Human and Machine Translation (co-authored with Terry Warner) (Amsterdam 1995), LACUS Forum XXVI - The Lexicon (co-edited with Arle Lommel) (Lacus Fullerton 2000), Multilingual Solutions (SMP, Geneva 2000), LACUS Forum XXVII - Speaking and Comprehending (co-edited with Ruth Brend and Arle Lommel) (California 2001), and Listening Comprehension, Laws, and Video: LACUS Forum XXIX - Linguistics and the Real World (co-edited with Douglas Coleman, William Sullivan, and Arle Lommel) ( Houston 2003).

Professor Mark Shuttleworth

Professor Mark Shuttleworth was educated at Merton College, Oxford, where he received a First Class Honours degree in Russian and German, at the University of Birmingham, where he studied for an MA in Special Applications of Linguistics, and at the University of London, from where he obtained his PhD in translation studies.

He has been involved in translation studies research and teaching since 1993, first at the University of Leeds, Imperial College London and University College London and now at Hong Kong Baptist University. His publications include the Dictionary of Translation Studies, as well as articles on metaphor in translation, translation technology, translator training, translation and the web, and Wikipedia translation. He has an interest in the use of digital methodologies in translation studies research. His monograph on scientific metaphor in translation, Studying Scientific Metaphor in Translation, was published in 2017.

Professor Mark Shuttleworth has been invited as a keynote speaker to translation studies conferences in Poland, China and Malaysia. He has also addressed industry conferences in the UK, Italy and Brazil on the subject of translation technology and has provided training in the same area in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Finland, Tunisia and Malaysia. In addition, he has links with universities in the UK, Norway, Brazil, Hong Kong, China, India, Malaysia, Qatar and Oman.

In September 2018 he moved to Hong Kong in order to take up a professorship at Hong Kong Baptist University. At HKBU he has been awarded funding for two research projects by the Hong Kong government and has focused his teaching on translation technology.

He is a fluent speaker of Russian, German, Polish and French and has some knowledge of a number of other languages including Cantonese and Putonghua. As and when time permits he is active as a translator.

The Prize Award

The Prize award carries a trophy, a certificate, and a monetary award of US$15,000. The Prize recipient shall collaborate with colleagues of the host institution in research, teaching, or other academic activities.

 The Trophy

The trophy was designed by Ms Haiji Lai, a 2021 Graduate of Higher Diploma in Design from the Department of Design, Caritas Bianchi College of Careers.

Nomination

Nomination and Rules

  1. All nominations are strictly confidential. 
  2. Self-nomination, nomination by nominator, and nomination by invitation are allowed.
  3. All nominations must be submitted through the Prize website.
  4. Each nominator can only make one nomination.
  5. Biographical information of the nominee and nominator (nominee only in the case of self-nomination) and a letter of recommendation from a third party must be submitted.
  6. Submissions after the close of the nomination period will not be considered.

Selection of the Recipient

The Selection Committee of the Prize reviews all submitted nominations and recommends a recipient for the Prize.

Announcement of the Prize Recipient

Announcement of the recipient of the world-first Saint Francis Prize in Techno-Humanities 2022 will be made in December 2021.

Prize-presentation Ceremony

The Prize-presentation Ceremony will be held on 5 January 2022 on the campus of the Institute, followed by a conference on techno-humanities.

Enquiries

Ms Florence Li
Email: fli@cihe.edu.hk
Phone: (852) 3702 4330

Nomination Form: Please download here.

Email for form submission: SFPrize@cihe.edu.hk

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