phd chinese translation

Ph.D. in Chinese Literature and Culture

The Ph.D. program is designed to prepare students for a doctoral degree in Chinese literature and culture.

Students should consult the most up-to-date version of the degree plan on the Stanford Bulletin  as well as the EALC Graduate Handbook . Each student should meet with their faculty advisor at least once per quarter to discuss the degree requirements and their progress.

Admission to Candidacy

Candidacy is the most important University milestone on the way to the Ph.D. degree. Admission to candidacy rests both on the fulfillment of department requirements and on an assessment by department faculty that the student has the potential to successfully complete the Ph.D.

Following University policy ( GAP 4.6.1 ), students are expected to complete the candidacy requirements by Spring Quarter of the second year of graduate study.

Pre-Candidacy Requirements

• CHINLANG 103 - Third-Year Modern Chinese, Third Quarter (5 units)
• CHINLANG 103B - Third-Year Modern Chinese for Bilingual Speakers, Third Quarter (3 units)
• CHINA 208 - Advanced Classical Chinese: Philosophical Texts (3-5 units)
• CHINA 209 - Advanced Classical Chinese: Historical Narration (2-5 units)
• CHINA 210 - Advanced Classical Chinese: Literary Essays (2-5 units)
• CHINLANG 225 - Chinese through Modern Fiction (3 units)
• CHINLANG 251 - Chinese for Academic Discussion and Reading (2 units)
• EALC 201 - Proseminar in East Asian Humanities I: Skills and Methodologies (3 units)
• EALC 202 - Proseminar in East Asian Humanities II: Current Scholarship (1 unit)
• Four courses numbered above 200 in the field of China studies, at least two of which must be listed with the CHINA  subject code, and the other two of which may be in different sub-fields such as anthropology, art history, history, philosophy, political science, religious studies, or another relevant field, as approved by the student’s advisor.

All doctoral students must complete an MA qualifying paper. An MA thesis is accepted instead of a qualifying paper for students initially admitted as EALC MA students. Students seeking an MA en route to the PhD must secure approval from the primary advisor and submit an MA thesis.

A graded MA qualifying paper or thesis must be submitted to the DGS and SSO with an accompanying note from the student’s primary advisor by week five of spring quarter of the second year of study for the annual review and candidacy decision.

During the quarter when students complete the MA qualifying paper or thesis (25-30 pages), they must enroll in EALC 299 .

Teaching Requirement

• DLCL 301 - The Learning and Teaching of Second Languages (3 units)
• Demonstrate pedagogical proficiency by serving as a teaching assistant for at least three quarters, starting no later than autumn quarter of the third year of graduate study. The department may approve exceptions to the timing of the language teaching requirement.

Post-Candidacy Requirements

Demonstrate proficiency in at least one supporting language (beyond the near-native level required in Chinese and English) to be chosen in consultation with the primary advisor according to the candidate’s specific research goals. For this supporting language (typically Japanese, Korean, or a European language), students must be proficient at a second-year level at the minimum; a higher level of proficiency may be required depending on the advisor’s recommendation. Reading proficiency must be certified through a written examination or an appropriate amount of coursework to be determined on a case-by-case basis. This requirement must be fulfilled by the end of the fourth year of graduate study.

Students in Chinese literature must take CHINA 291 - The Structure of Modern Chinese (2-4 units). Literature students must also take at least one EALC course in a field different from the student’s primary specialization (e.g., a modern literature course for students specializing in premodern literature, and vice versa, or a course in Japanese or Korean literature).

Complete two relevant seminars at the 300 level. EALC 200  may be substituted for one of these two seminars.

Pass three comprehensive written examinations, one of which tests the candidate’s methodological competence in the relevant discipline. The remaining two fields are chosen, with the approval of the student’s advisor, from the following: Chinese literature, Japanese literature, Korean literature, archaeology, anthropology, art history, comparative literature, communication, history, linguistics, philosophy, and religious studies. With the advisor’s approval, a PhD minor in a supporting field may be deemed equivalent to completing one of these three examinations.

Students should submit a dissertation prospectus before advancing to Terminal Graduate Registration (TGR) status. The prospectus should comprehensively describe the dissertation project and include sections on the project rationale, key research questions, contributions to the field, a literature review, a chapter-by-chapter outline, a projected timeline, and a bibliography.

Pass the University Oral Examination (dissertation defense). General regulations governing the oral examination are found in Graduate Academic Policies and Procedures ( GAP 4.7.1 ). The candidate is examined on questions related to the dissertation after acceptable parts have been completed in draft form.

Following university policy ( GAP 4.8.1 ), submit a dissertation demonstrating the ability to undertake original research based on primary and secondary materials in Chinese.

All students in the Ph.D. program in modern Chinese literature must pass three comprehensive written examinations (a.k.a. field exams or qualifying exams) by the end of their ninth quarter: Theory, Literature, and X. The theory exam tests the student’s competence in the fundamental methods and issues of literary and cultural studies. The literature exam tests the student’s familiarity with the basic canon of modern Chinese literature, representative texts in his or her own area/period/genre of interest, and the core secondary scholarship of the field. The third field (X) may be chosen, with the approval of the Director of Graduate Studies in consultation with the student’s primary advisor from the following: comparative literature, premodern Chinese literature, linguistics, history, film, art history, philosophy, religious studies, archaeology, anthropology, political science, sociology, Japanese literature, Korean literature, FGSS, environmental humanities, digital humanities, or medical humanities. It is the student’s responsibility to secure a faculty member’s (EALC or non-EALC) consent to supervise the third exam. With the primary advisor's approval, a Ph.D. minor in a supporting field may be deemed equivalent to the completion of the third exam. Comprehensive/field exams must be completed before students can register for TGR; students should take their first field exam at the latest in the spring or summer quarter of their second year to be on track to complete all three exams by or before the end of their third year.

Students should prepare for each exam by taking the following steps:

• Prepare a reading list. Start with the core list and add 10-20 more titles that pertain directly to his/her own area/period/genre of interest; the list should be organized into 4-5 topics and must conform to a standard bibliographical style. Submit the list to both the primary advisor and field supervisor (if different) for approval.
• Set a date for the exam. Two weeks prior to the exam date, submit a list of 4-5 discursive questions each keyed to a topic in the reading list.
• On the day of the exam, the student receives three or four questions from which s/he chooses to answer two. Each exam essay should be 5-6 pages, double-spaced, and proofread. Footnote citations or a works cited list is not necessary. The allotted time for each exam is 4 hours with a half hour break. The exam may be administered by email.

The exam essays are evaluated for breadth, accuracy, and analytical acumen. Students will be graded on a scale from Fail to Pass and Pass with Distinction. A student who receives the "Fail" grade will be placed on probation and must retake the exam within three months. A second "Fail" grade will result in dismissal from the program.

The Dissertation Prospectus Defense constitutes the first step toward faculty approval for the student’s proposed dissertation project and should be completed before or soon after the student applies for external funding to conduct doctoral research - typically by Winter quarter of the fourth year, or no later than Spring quarter of the fourth year. The defense is a two-hour oral exam conducted by the student’s dissertation reading committee (minimum of three faculty members, including the primary advisor). The prospectus, 12-15 pages not including bibliography, must be submitted to the committee members at least two weeks prior to the defense.

Chinese Language PhD

The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures offers a PhD program in Chinese Language. The department only admits students into the PhD program.

As a rule, students wishing to enter the graduate program should have completed an undergraduate program comparable to the undergraduate major in this department. Students who do not have BA or MA degrees in East Asian Languages and Cultures, Chinese, or in similar fields can be considered for admission. If admitted, these students are often required to make up deficiencies in their course work. This can result in a lengthening of the normative time to degree (seven years).

The department only admits students into the PhD program. You must indicate that a PhD is your degree goal on the application materials. Students who have not completed an MA degree before beginning study at Berkeley will have to complete the requirements for the MA before proceeding to the PhD program. After completion of the MA requirements (coursework and thesis), students are evaluated for permission to proceed to the PhD portion of the program. Students who have completed an MA degree before beginning study at Berkeley may apply for admission directly to the PhD program. After one year in the PhD program, such students will be evaluated before being permitted to continue in the program.

UC Berkeley graduate students from other disciplines who are considering transferring into the degree program in Chinese language undergo the same faculty review as first-time applicants. Students in this category should contact the department graduate assistant for instructions.

The length of time needed to complete an advanced degree in the department depends on financial considerations, the extent of the student's earlier preparation, and other factors. Under optimum conditions, the MA can be earned in two years and the PhD in an additional four to five years.

Step by Step

To learn how best to prepare for study at the graduate level in the humanities and the social sciences, current undergraduates may find Step by Step useful, a resource for UC Berkeley students to enrich their undergraduate academic experience and to prepare for graduate school.

Contact Info

[email protected]

3413 Dwinelle Hall

Berkeley, CA 94720

At a Glance

Department(s)

East Asian Language & Culture

Admit Term(s)

Application Deadline

December 4, 2023

Degree Type(s)

Doctoral / PhD

Degree Awarded

GRE Requirements

Translation Studies MPhil/PhD

London, Bloomsbury

At the UCL Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS), we enjoy an international reputation for the quality of our research and teaching in a wide range of translation and interpreting-related subjects, as well as translation technology.

UK tuition fees (2024/25)

Overseas tuition fees (2024/25), programme starts, applications accepted.

• Entry requirements

A Master’s degree with Merit (ideally Distinction) in translation studies, in a language and culture subject or other relevant field from a UK university, or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard. Admission is dependent on the submission of a detailed research project proposal and applicants must have the agreement of their potential supervisor before submitting a formal application.

The English language level for this programme is: Level 4

UCL Pre-Master's and Pre-sessional English courses are for international students who are aiming to study for a postgraduate degree at UCL. The courses will develop your academic English and academic skills required to succeed at postgraduate level.

Further information can be found on our English language requirements page.

Equivalent qualifications

Country-specific information, including details of when UCL representatives are visiting your part of the world, can be obtained from the International Students website .

International applicants can find out the equivalent qualification for their country by selecting from the list below. Please note that the equivalency will correspond to the broad UK degree classification stated on this page (e.g. upper second-class). Where a specific overall percentage is required in the UK qualification, the international equivalency will be higher than that stated below. Please contact Graduate Admissions should you require further advice.

About this degree

Research proposals which engage with theoretical, linguistic and technical aspects of translation and interpreting are welcomed. Examples of current research projects undertaken by PhD students in Translation Studies include the translation of humour in video games, the subtitling of gender stereotypes, translating British and American science fiction, exploring the notion of reflexivity in translation, and translating political speeches.

How to apply:

As a first step, please complete the Online Enquiry Form, which will be considered at our next regular PhD supervisors meeting. PhD places are tightly limited and we are only able to encourage those with outstanding research proposals to move ahead to a formal application to UCL. Please therefore take care to present a fully developed 500-word summary of your project as part of this enquiry. Further information on writing research proposals can be found in the ' Need to Know ' box on our Postgraduate Research page. Please do not apply formally to UCL until you have received a response regarding your initial enquiry.

Who this course is for

This MPhil/PhD is for applicants with a strong interest in conducting multi-disciplinary research, who may have completed post-graduate training or study and want to develop an advanced critical analysis in a specific translation research area. The programme is for applicants with a background or interest in translation theory and history; audio visual translation; literary translation and performance; translation technology; languages and interpreting. It is suitable for both recent Masters graduates as well as early or mid-career professionals.

What this course will give you

Located in the heart of multicultural London, UCL provides a uniquely rich environment for researching translation and interpreting in all its facets. Doctoral students can draw on a broad and diverse range of expertise from the Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS), the Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry (CMII) and the School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS).

Students are supported by a dynamic research culture, a stimulating environment and excellent opportunities for research training. UCL runs numerous seminar series and guest lectures, and researchers have access to state-of-the-art translation technology as well as world-class libraries, including those at UCL itself, the British Library, the School of Advanced Study, and the School of Oriental and African Studies.

The foundation of your career

The programme provides students with a range of professional and academic skills that will enable them to pursue careers in translation, higher education, government agencies, non-governmental organisations, international bodies, and other institutions around the world.

Recent PhD graduates have gone on to pursue postdoctoral study, have obtained lectureships in translation studies at reputable universities in the UK and abroad (Australia, Italy, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan), and have joined companies such as British Telecom, Expedia and Paramount.

Employability

With the research training and experience gained during the PhD, students are excellently placed to pursue a career in the fields of academia and professional translating and interpreting.

Translation PhD students will acquire extensive transferable skills, including the ability to analyse and process vast amounts of data, to teach courses in their field of expertise, to present research to small and large audiences, to network with diverse groups. This ample and highly adaptable skill base gives students an unparalleled edge and employment opportunities.  

UCL is extremely well positioned to offer students opportunities for networking and to establish academic and professional contacts. Supervision and mentorship is available from world-leading researchers, with 83% of SELCS-CMII research activity being graded 4* ‘world leading’ and 3* ‘internationally excellent’ in the REF 2021.

PhD students are actively involved in attending and organising seminar series and guest lectures, and have the opportunity to liaise with world-renowned scholars and experts in the field of translation and interpreting. Students have opportunities to engage in numerous projects involving research such as Global Health and Crisis Translation, Audio-visual Translation, as well as translation technology and theory.

Teaching and learning

Research students undertake relevant induction sessions and can take advantage of the Doctoral Skills Development Programme. PhD students meet regularly in term time with their supervisors and may be offered opportunities to gain valuable teaching experience and participate in reading groups and conferences.

To successfully upgrade to a PhD you are required to submit a piece of writing (this is usually based on one chapter from your thesis and a chapter plan for the remainder). You are also required to present and answer questions about this work to a panel consisting of your subsidiary supervisor and another member of the Faculty who acts as an independent assessor.

PhD students should treat their research programme as a full-time job, which equates roughly to 35 hours per week, or 15 hours for Part-time students. Students agree to a timetable of regular meetings with the Principal Supervisor to effectively manage the progression of project aims. This is flexible, at some points it may be necessary to meet more or less often.

Full-time students can expect to meet supervisors every two weeks during the academic year, and part-time students every four weeks. If a student has external funding, they should also ensure they meet the Terms & Conditions of the funder.

Research areas and structure

UCL offers expertise in translation technology, audiovisual translation, localisation, literary and theatre translation, history of translation, translator and interpreting training, technical and scientific translation, translation and accessibility to the media, translation theory.

Research environment

Research students are encouraged to participate in research seminars and networks across and outside SELCS-CMII. Students contribute significantly to the research environment through the organisation of annual conferences, and participation in seminars and online journals. 

Our Transcluster, a suite of 60 IT stations, is equipped with cutting-edge eye-tracking equipment and programmes, developed specifically for CenTraS staff and research students. Students can access special collections at UCL and other world-class libraries (Senate House and British Library) within walking distance of campus. As well as access to research support in the form of academic skills courses, student-led workshops and reading groups.

The length of registration for the research degree programmes is usually three years for full-time and five years for part-time. You are required to register initially for the MPhil degree with the expectation of transfer to PhD after successful completion of an upgrade viva 9-18 months after initial registration.

Upon successful completion of your approved period of registration you may register as a completing research student (CRS) while you write up your thesis

In the first year, you will be required to take part in a mandatory Skills Seminar Programme. You are expected to agree with your supervisor the basic structure of your research project, an appropriate research method and a realistic plan of work. You will produce and submit a detailed outline of your proposed research to your supervisor for their comments and feedback and be given the opportunity to present your research to UCL academic staff and fellow PhD students

In the second year, you will be expected to upgrade from MPhil to a PhD. To successfully upgrade to a PhD you are required to submit a piece of writing (this is usually based on one chapter from your thesis and a chapter plan for the remainder). You are also required to present and answer questions about this work to a panel consisting of your subsidiary supervisor and another member of the Faculty who acts as an independent assessor.

Accessibility

Details of the accessibility of UCL buildings can be obtained from AccessAble accessable.co.uk . Further information can also be obtained from the UCL Student Support and Wellbeing team .

Fees and funding

Fees for this course.

The tuition fees shown are for the year indicated above. Fees for subsequent years may increase or otherwise vary. Where the programme is offered on a flexible/modular basis, fees are charged pro-rata to the appropriate full-time Master's fee taken in an academic session. Further information on fee status, fee increases and the fee schedule can be viewed on the UCL Students website: ucl.ac.uk/students/fees .

Additional costs

Additional costs may include expenses such as books, stationery, printing or photocopying, and conference registration fees.

The department strives to keep additional costs low. Books and journal articles are usually available via the UCL library (hard copies or via e-journal subscriptions).

The wealth of departmental seminars / colloquiums / symposiums and student organised work in progress sessions give ample opportunities to present research, receive feedback and participate in discussion.

For more information on additional costs for prospective students please go to our estimated cost of essential expenditure at Accommodation and living costs .

Funding your studies

For more details about departmental funding available to postgraduate research students in the department, please refer to our Funding, Scholarships and Prizes (Research) webpage .

For a comprehensive list of the funding opportunities available at UCL, including funding relevant to your nationality, please visit the Scholarships and Funding website .

Quirk PhD Scholarship

Deadline: 26 January 2024 Value: Fees and maintenance (3yrs) Criteria Based on both academic merit and financial need Eligibility: UK

All applicants must identify and contact potential supervisors before making their application. For more information see our ' Need to Know ' page.

Please note that you may submit applications for a maximum of two graduate programmes (or one application for the Law LLM) in any application cycle.

Choose your programme

Please read the Application Guidance before proceeding with your application.

Year of entry: 2024-2025

Got questions get in touch.

Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry

[email protected]

UCL is regulated by the Office for Students .

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• Arts & Sciences
• Graduate Studies in A&S

Chinese Graduate Programs

Requirements for students who matriculated in fl22 or earlier.

The graduate programs in Chinese at Washington University are now in their fifth decade of growth. In addition to the MA in Chinese and the PhD in Chinese and comparative literature, in 2010 we initiated the doctoral program in Chinese language and literature wholly housed in this Department. After thirty-five years of successful programs combining the advanced study of Chinese literature with courses offered through the university’s doctoral program in comparative literature, we now offer the option of a doctoral program that emphasizes deep training in Chinese literature with a second field in another East Asian literature or in Chinese studies in another discipline.

Among our internationally-recognized Chinese literature faculty, our research strengths are in premodern poetry, religious and women’s writings, narrative and dramatic literature of the late imperial period, and modern and contemporary literature from all parts of greater China. Our research areas include book culture, gender questions, popular culture, translation theory and practice, and globalization and cosmopolitanism. Our East Asian Library has substantial collections in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and European languages, along with the major online resources for research in these areas. As one national literature program among many at WashU, our students are regularly treated to lectures by noted writers and literary scholars from around the world. Recent visitors have included Salman Rushdie, Homi Bhabha, Helen Vendler, Orhan Pamuk, and Slavoj Žižek. Among our 2010 Chinese visitors were Ma Dazheng from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, and Jiang Jin, East China Normal University, Shanghai.

Studying Chinese at WashU

Students in our programs will take a combination of advanced courses and seminars in Chinese literature, in literary theory and analysis to enhance their investigative skills, and in Chinese history and other fields to strengthen their grasp of the contexts in which literature was historically written and read. Most students will also gain teaching experience during their years of study; some may wish to take a graduate certificate as well. Our faculty are few, but all work closely with students through courses and research as well. Consequently our program has had outstanding success in placing our graduates in doctoral study (after the MA) or in academic positions (after the PhD).

As WashU’s institutional affiliations with Chinese universities grow and develop, our students have ever more chances to meet and to work with top faculty in East Asia. Recent visiting scholars include Professors Wang Ning of Tsinghua University and Guo Yingde of Beijing Normal University. Our doctoral candidates have regularly carried out research in Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Taipei with financial aid from the university.

PhD in Chinese Language and Literature

The PhD in Chinese Language and Literature at Washington University enhances a traditionally broad grounding in all periods and forms of Chinese literature and a narrow field of research concentration with China-related courses drawn from several departments and programs: Anthropology, Art History and Archaeology, Film and Media Studies, History, Religious Studies, and the School of Law. It provides a balance of theory and history of Chinese literature and culture, while offering numerous opportunities for interdisciplinary research and study. In order to participate in international academic conversations on literature, students are required to take a substantial number of courses and seminars in the theory and methods of literary studies, primarily through the program in Comparative Literature. Given present faculty strengths, students in this program are encouraged to focus on the literature and culture, including visual culture, of the late imperial period through the early 21st century.

Fully-funded program

The Office of Graduate Studies in Arts & Sciences regularly provides financial aid to students in PhD programs. Students who make normal progress toward completion can expect six years of awards that include tuition remission, fees, and a stipend sufficient to cover living expenses. Stipends are usually in the form of an A&S Fellowship. Students may apply for Dissertation Travel funds for the year during which they complete the degree. Students are encouraged to apply for summer support for research in East Asia or at library collections elsewhere. WashU also has several special fellowship programs such as the Olin Fellowship for Women or the Chancellor's Graduate Fellowship Program for outstanding students from underrepresented groups in American society who are interested in careers as college or university professors. Applicants for our doctoral programs from other countries may also be considered for the McDonnell Academy scholarships which include tuition remission and generous annual stipends.

Admission to the program

Preference will be given to applicants who have the MA degree in a relevant discipline and area and have native or advanced competence in the language of their major literature and reading competence in at least one other research language. However, students who have unusually rich undergraduate backgrounds may apply for these programs after completing the BA in Chinese or in a related field. Students who are non-native speakers of Chinese or Japanese are strongly encouraged to apply for external funding for one or more years of language study abroad while still taking courses. In addition, qualified students should seek external funding for research abroad for dissertation research to supplement financial aid provided by the Office of Graduate Studies in Arts & Sciences.

Joint PhD with Comparative Literature

The PhD in Chinese and Comparative Literature is offered jointly with Comparative Literature. The focus of this program is comparison of the contents, theoretical bases, and methodologies of Chinese literature and a second literature (Western or non-Western), within the context of a familiarity of the cultural context and historical background of the literatures, and the critical and historical methodology of modern literary study.

Which PhD program is for me?

Students who are primarily interested in literature as a general field of study, which includes the study of critical theory and methodology and at least one literature in addition to Chinese, should choose our highly successful PhD Program in Chinese and Comparative Literature. In addition, the Department now offers the option of deep training in Chinese literature with a second field in another East Asian literature or in Chinese studies in another discipline: history, anthropology, art history, or film and media studies. Students whose interests are less comparative and more focused on China should choose this PhD Program in Chinese Language and Literature.

Students in both doctoral programs will have a variety of teaching experiences, including language teaching at several levels, grading essays in English, leading discussion sections, and giving lectures. When available, students will also have the opportunity to teach or to team-teach a course under the supervision of a faculty member.

Preference will be given to applicants who have the MA degree in a relevant discipline and area and have native or advanced competence in the language of their major literature and reading competence in at least one other research language. However, students who have unusually rich undergraduate backgrounds may apply for these programs after completing the BA in Chinese or in a related field.

Application process for joint program with Comparative Literature

Prospective students interested in pursuing a joint program with Comparative Literature should apply through the pertinent home department, which in this case is East Asian Languages and Cultures. On your application you will be able to find a degree program for all of the joint degrees, with the home department listed first and Comparative Literature listed second. When you go to "Select A Program," you will first choose "Office of Graduate Studies in Arts and Sciences" as the Academic Division from the top drop-down menu, then under the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures you will see options for Chinese or Japanese. You should send your application materials to East Asian Languages and Cultures. It will, however, be vetted by both the home department and Comparative Literature.

MA in Chinese

A two-year program housed in an internationally-recognized community for research on Chinese literature, language, and culture, the MA in Chinese requires 36 units of graduate study in Chinese which may include courses from related fields, such as East Asian Studies and Comparative Literature.

Financial aid is available through the Office of Graduate Studies in Arts & Sciences in the form of tuition scholarships. Our masters students usually receive a high percentage of tuition remission which helps to ease the burden of pursuing a graduate degree. All applicants are automatically considered for financial aid. No additional application is required.

Graduate Resources

See commonly used resources here, or SEE ALL EALC RESOURCES .

MA in Chinese Requirements

learn about the requirements for completing an MA in Chinese

PhD in Chinese Requirements

learn about the requirements for completing an PhD in Chinese

PhD in Chinese and Comparative Literature

learn about the requirements for completing an PhD in Chinese and Comp Lit

search more resources

• Office of Graduate Studies Resources
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Our beautiful library with the competent and helpful librarians, the nice and capable administrators, the best Chinese teachers in the US, and the knowledgeable and friendly professors, all these people make my studies at WashU an unforgettable experience.

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PhD in Translation Studies

Gain an intellectual and philosophical perspective on the activity of translation.

How to apply for a PhD in Translation Studies

Before you formally apply for a Translation Studies through the University of Edinburgh’s online system, you will likely find it beneficial to get to know us first so that you are confident we’re the best place for you to undertake your research.

We ask candidates to take the following two steps before applying for a PhD: 

Have a look at the research interests and expertise of our staff. Please do take some time to read over staff members’ profiles, research interests, and publications, to ensure that your project is something we can effectively supervise. We are much more likely to supervise a project if it closely relates to our own expertise and research interests. Together with colleagues across our School, the following Translation Studies staff are available to supervise PhD research:

Browse a directory of all academic staff in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Find out more about our research in Translation Studies

Languages offered

At PhD level, we  typically offer the following languages, but not necessarily on a year-on-year basis due to staff commitment and leave .

This list was last updated on 15 September 2023

Following our guidelines, write a draft PhD proposal detailing your research project. This will enable us to evaluate the general and specific areas of your research interests, the originality and importance of your topic, and the feasibility of the proposed project within the given timescale. 

Please note that this document is not assessed. We request it so that we can offer useful comments on your proposed topic and research outline, and we strongly encourage you to incorporate our feedback into your final application, which you submit to the University via its online system.

We value your privacy and will hold your information in line with the University of Edinburgh’s  Privacy Policy for Applicants . 

Guidelines for writing a PhD proposal for Translation Studies

Below you will find certain headings under which it's useful to present your research proposal. The headings are listed in chronological order.

1. Territory/ Introduction

The first stage of your proposal establishes the territory in which the proposed research will place itself. This territory can be either

• a research territory (i.e. the academic field that is going to be addressed by the research), or
• a ‘real world’ territory (i.e. what kind of applications or implications the proposed project can have in the world outside the immediate academic field).

In some research proposals both territories can be usefully addressed.

2. Gap/ Rationale

Here you indicate the gap in the knowledge or the problem in the territory. With your research, you want to fill in this gap or to solve this problem. If the gap is in the research territory, it means you aim at contributing to the general understanding and knowledge within the discipline. If it is in the ‘real world’ (e.g. environmental, social, commercial problems), it means your objective is to offer a solution to particular problems.

3. Goal/Objective

Here you state the aim or general objective of your study. You explain what the project intends to do, what its chief contribution will be. It is in this stage that you can suggest how to fill in the gap presented in the previous stage.

4. Reporting Previous Research/ Literature Review

Here you can report or refer to the earlier research in the field, either by yourself or by others.

5. Theoretical framework

This is the section where you elaborate on the theoretical approach(es) you will adopt while examining your data or those approaches which you will be challenging, enhancing or refuting. This section is crucial in giving the evaluators an idea about how prepared you are to do research at doctoral level.

6.  Data and accessibility

The material you will be looking at in your research will be presented here. This section should also mention any particular difficulties envisaged in accessing your data and how you are planning to overcome them.

7. Means/Methodology

Here you specify how the goal will be achieved, describing the methods, procedures, plans of actions and tasks that lead to the goal. At the initial stage of your research, you do not need to put a lot of details here. Yet there should still be an obvious link between the gap, the goal, the theoretical framework, the data and the means.

8. Achievements

You might wish to conjecture about the anticipated results, findings or outcomes of the study, if you already have a general idea about them. Of course, the actual results, findings or outcomes may differ drastically in the end.

9. Benefits

You can then briefly explain the usefulness and value of these achievements for the domain of research itself, for the world outside or for both.

10. Competence Claim

It is here that you might wish to boast about yourself! You can make a statement to the effect that you are well qualified to undertake this research and to carry out the tasks involved.

11. Importance Claim

You may wish to conclude your proposal by emphasising the urgency or importance of your proposal’s territory, its objectives, or its anticipated outcomes with respect to either the ‘real world’ or the research field.

12. References

Here list only those texts you referred to within your proposal. We do not ask for a bibliography, but a references list.

Prepared by:

Dr Şebnem Susam-Sarajeva

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Foreignization and Assimilation: Translated World Literature and Modern Chinese Literature

• First Online: 10 October 2017

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This chapter starts with a discussion about the nature of translation. It argues that this is a process of rewriting and that translation issues are cultural in nature. It relates the multitude of translation activities since premodern times to the desperate need to modernize Chinese by introducing Western technology, social institutes, and essentially Western culture. A comparative approach is taken to the argument that translations into classical Chinese ( wenyan ) give Chinese versions a flavor of antiquity while translations into baihua give a modern flavor. It is translation that has introduced such basic modern terms and concepts as freedom, democracy, politics, economy, human rights, and so on. This chapter articulates the dialectical relation between transference and assimilation during the process of translating Western literary works. It argues that the dynamic interaction between transference and assimilation qualifies modern Chinese literature as a third type, not a transplantation of Western literature, nor a continuance of classical Chinese literature.

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Gao, Y. (2018). Foreignization and Assimilation: Translated World Literature and Modern Chinese Literature. In: The Birth of Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55936-4_5

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(w.e. talk) the role of translation in promoting sino-japanese exchange.

By Su Jingxin from CNS

Matsuoka Eiji is an honorary professor at the Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan and a visiting professor at several universities in China. He is also President of the Japanese-Chinese Translation and Cultural Education Association, director general of the Japanese-Sino Youth International Exchanges Association and a consultant at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is the chief editor of several Chinese-Japanese dictionaries and the author of On the Streets of Beijing, Japanese Kanji vs. Chinese Characters and other books on Chinese characters. His translations include sociolinguist Chen Yuan’s Language and Social Life, Wang Yao’s Studies of Chinese Ancient Literature History and the Grand Dictionary of Chinese Medicine-Medical History Literature. In 2015, he translated the complete Shi Jing, the oldest collection of Chinese poetry, and in 2017 the Anthology of Song Ci as part of the Library of Chinese Classics project.

Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges have a long history, spanning a wide range of areas. Throughout history, Japan sent envoys to China to learn about Chinese culture. During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, when Japan sent assistance materials to China, in a moving gesture, the packages were printed with ancient Chinese verses expressing solidarity and the close bond between the two nations.

Matsuoka Eiji talks about the role of translation in intercultural communication. Japanese and Chinese literature have always influenced each other, with excellent literary and academic translations making important contributions to the Sino-Japanese cultural exchange.

CNS: You translated Shi Jing and Anthology of Song Ci into Japanese and you also participated in the Library of Chinese Classics project, which introduces readers to many Chinese classics, providing a translation along with the original Chinese text. In the past, other Japanese scholars attempted to translate Shi Jing and some of them followed kun’yomi (the Japanese pronunciation) while others used on’yomi (Chinese-based pronunciation). Why did you choose to translate Shi Jing in modern Japanese?

Matsuoka Eiji: When I was translating Shi Jing, the readers were my first consideration, particularly those in the future. When our children and grandchildren read Shi Jing, what kind of translation will they read? For example, Guofeng (literally meaning Airs of the States, this is the first part of Shi Jing comprising 160 “airs” from different states) consists of folk songs collected from all parts of China at the time. One of them, Zhengfeng-Qinwei, is about a young man and woman expressing intense romantic emotions. It is difficult to convey the emotion accurately if it is translated rigidly based on on’yomi. Therefore, I chose to translate it in modern Japanese. It is also important to consider the importance of style while translating. The poems in the Ya (Court Hymns) and Song (Eulogies) sections of Shi Jing are solemn ritual songs that were sung in the court, different from the folk songs in Guofeng. When translating Guofeng, I used softer and emotional Japanese phrases and more hiragana (Japanese phonetic lettering system.) When translating Ya and Song, on the other hand, I used more Chinese characters and Chinese words to convey a sense of solemnity.

CNS: Both Shi Jing and Song Ci are poetry, and rhyme is a key component of that. How similar or different are the rhyme schemes and meters in Chinese and Japanese poetry? How did you handle the differences?

Matsuoka Eiji: Japanese verses are mainly written in the “five/seven syllable” format, that is, a line is composed of five characters followed by another with seven characters. Two Chinese verse forms, jueju and lüshi, are also composed of five-character lines and seven-character lines respectively. So I think the poetic meters in the two countries are similar. However, Japanese has fewer vowels and consonants, so its tone tends to be monotonous. In addition, Japanese tones are different from Chinese tones. As Japanese is a monosyllabic language, the rhythm of Japanese poetry usually lacks variety.

If I translate Chinese poetry into classical Japanese, the rhythm problem may be easier to deal with, but the meaning would be hard to comprehend. Translation into modern Japanese, on the other hand, is easy to understand, but it cannot handle rhythm properly. However, I still want to maintain a sense of rhythm in my modern Japanese translation. When working on the translation, I invited several young teachers and students to read my translated poems and we had many discussions about their rhythm. My translation of the Anthology of Song Ci also employs the melody of Japanese ballad songs from the 1960s to the 1990s, which may strike a chord in older readers.

CNS: Chinese and Japanese cultures are similar in some ways but different in others. You must have encountered some Chinese concepts that have no equivalent in Japanese. How did you address them?

Matsuoka Eiji: It’s difficult to explain it simply. Even in China, there are many concepts that have changed over time. Shi Jing has a detailed classification of different types of horses according to their color, mane, etc. Unfortunately, I could not present those types completely. When translating Anthology of Song Ci, I basically focused on how to accurately convey to Japanese readers the emotions in the original text, which may be demonstrated through an object or a scenery. For example, the concept of hanchan (cicadas chirping in the cold) in (Song Dynasty poet) Liu Yong’s Yu Lin Ling (Bells in the Rain). It would be difficult to convey the atmosphere of the cicadas’ song in a literal translation. So I used an onomatopoeic Japanese word with the Japanese word for cicadas to make it easier for Japanese readers to sense the loneliness in late summer. There is a line—“On miles and miles of misty waves where sail the ships,” where I tried to combine the scenery with the author’s emotions—“the tears induced by parting”—so that the reader would understand that when these two elements overlapped, the author could only see “misty waves” (because of his tears).

CNS: We know that Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi is very popular in Japan, and the Japanese classic The Tale of Genji was inspired by his work. How did Bai Juyi become so popular? How do different cultures’ mutual influence impact their literary creations?

Matsuoka Eiji: Japan’s environment and climate are similar to southern China’s. Japanese botanist Sasuke Nakao describes this similarity in customs, cultures and the ways of thinking as “laurel forest culture” (since the cultures in the regions where the evergreen laurel forests grow are generally similar). Perhaps it is because of the similarity of the climate and terrain that the readers can more easily empathize with the poets’ thoughts. Indeed, poets like Tao Yuanming, Li Bai and Su Shi, who grew up or spent their childhood in southern China, have always been popular with Japanese readers.

It is true that the literature of Japan and China has influenced each other. For over a thousand years, Japan has been studying Chinese culture. The words of the first part of Nihon Shoki, the oldest extant book of classical Japanese history, were taken almost verbatim from the Huainanzi, an ancient Han Dynasty text. The earliest collection of poetry in Japan, Man’y ̄osh u, was also influenced by China’s Shi Jing. During the late Qing Dynasty, the number of Chinese studying in Japan increased, and in return a large number of Japanese literary works were introduced in China at that time. Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, Guo Moruo and other well-known figures were also inspired by modern Japanese literature and created many literary works with novel ideas and styles.

CNS: What role can literature play in promoting exchanges between the two countries?

Matsuoka Eiji: Many Japanese aphorisms and proverbs originated from Chinese classics. Works by Lu Xun, such as Hometown and Mr. Fujino, are often included in junior and senior high school textbooks in Japan. These were translated into Japanese and read by many Japanese, forming a foundation for Japanese readers to know more about China and grow fond of China. It demonstrates the importance of translation, and the important role excellent literary and academic translations play in promoting Sino-Japanese exchanges. The Japanese-Chinese Translation and Cultural Education Association aims to do the same—promote exchanges between Japan and China by cultivating excellent translators.

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GPT-4o’s Chinese token-training data is polluted by spam and porn websites

The problem, which is likely due to inadequate data cleaning, could lead to hallucinations, poor performance, and misuse.

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Soon after OpenAI released GPT-4o on Monday, May 13, some Chinese speakers started to notice that something seemed off about this newest version of the chatbot: the tokens it uses to parse text were full of spam and porn phrases.

On May 14, Tianle Cai, a PhD student at Princeton University studying inference efficiency in large language models like those that power such chatbots, accessed GPT-4o’s public token library and pulled a list of the 100 longest Chinese tokens the model uses to parse and compress Chinese prompts. 

Humans read in words, but LLMs read in tokens, which are distinct units in a sentence that have consistent and significant meanings. Besides dictionary words, they also include suffixes, common expressions, names, and more. The more tokens a model encodes, the faster the model can “read” a sentence and the less computing power it consumes, thus making the response cheaper.

Of the 100 results, only three of them are common enough to be used in everyday conversations; everything else consisted of words and expressions used specifically in the contexts of either gambling or pornography. The longest token, lasting 10.5 Chinese characters, literally means “_free Japanese porn video to watch.” Oops.

“This is sort of ridiculous,” Cai wrote, and he posted the list of tokens on GitHub .

OpenAI did not respond to questions sent by MIT Technology Review prior to publication. GPT-4o is supposed to be better than its predecessors at handling multi-language tasks. In particular, the advances are achieved through a new tokenization tool that does a better job compressing texts in non-English languages.

But at least when it comes to the Chinese language, the new tokenizer used by GPT-4o has introduced a disproportionate number of meaningless phrases. Experts say that’s likely due to insufficient data cleaning and filtering before the tokenizer was trained. 

Because these tokens are not actual commonly spoken words or phrases, the chatbot can fail to grasp their meanings. Researchers have been able to leverage that and trick GPT-4o into hallucinating answers or even circumventing the safety guardrails OpenAI had put in place.

Why non-English tokens matter

The easiest way for a model to process text is character by character, but that’s obviously more time consuming and laborious than recognizing that a certain string of characters—like “c-r-y-p-t-o-c-u-r-r-e-n-c-y”—always means the same thing . These series of characters are encoded as “tokens” the model can use to process prompts. Including more and longer tokens usually means the LLMs are more efficient and affordable for users—who are often billed per token.

When OpenAI released GPT-4o on May 13, it also released a new tokenizer to replace the one it used in previous versions, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. The new tokenizer especially adds support for non-English languages, according to OpenAI’s website .

The new tokenizer has 200,000 tokens in total, and about 25% are in non-English languages , says Deedy Das, an AI investor at Menlo Ventures. He used language filters to count the number of tokens in different languages, and the top languages, besides English, are Russian, Arabic, and Vietnamese.

“So the tokenizer’s main impact, in my opinion, is you get the cost down in these languages, not that the quality in these languages goes dramatically up,” Das says. When an LLM has better and longer tokens in non-English languages, it can analyze the prompts faster and charge users less for the same answer. With the new tokenizer, “you’re looking at almost four times cost reduction,” he says.

Das, who also speaks Hindi and Bengali, took a look at the longest tokens in those languages. The tokens reflect discussions happening in those languages, so they include words like “Narendra” or “Pakistan,” but common English terms like “Prime Minister,” “university,” and “international ” also come up frequently. They also don’t exhibit the issues surrounding the Chinese tokens.

That likely reflects the training data in those languages, Das says: “My working theory is the websites in Hindi and Bengali are very rudimentary. It’s like [mostly] news articles. So I would expect this to be the case. There are not many spam bots and porn websites trying to happen in these languages. It’s mostly going to be in English.”

Polluted data and a lack of cleaning

However, things are drastically different in Chinese. According to multiple researchers who have looked into the new library of tokens used for GPT-4o, the longest tokens in Chinese are almost exclusively spam words used in pornography, gambling, and scamming contexts. Even shorter tokens, like three-character-long Chinese words, reflect those topics to a significant degree.

“The problem is clear: the corpus used to train [the tokenizer] is not clean. The English tokens seem fine, but the Chinese ones are not,” says Cai from Princeton University. It is not rare for a language model to crawl spam when collecting training data, but usually there will be significant effort taken to clean up the data before it’s used. “It’s possible that they didn’t do proper data clearing when it comes to Chinese,” he says.

The content of these Chinese tokens could suggest that they have been polluted by a specific phenomenon: websites hijacking unrelated content in Chinese or other languages to boost spam messages. 

These messages are often advertisements for pornography videos and gambling websites. They could be real businesses or merely scams. And the language is inserted into content farm websites or sometimes legitimate websites so they can be indexed by search engines, circumvent the spam filters, and come up in random searches. For example, Google indexed one search result page on a US National Institutes of Health website , which lists a porn site in Chinese. The same site name also appeared in at least five Chinese tokens in GPT-4o. 

Chinese users have reported that these spam sites appeared frequently in unrelated Google search results this year, including in comments made to Google Search’s support community. It’s likely that these websites also found their way into OpenAI’s training database for GPT-4o’s new tokenizer. 

The same issue didn’t exist with the previous-generation tokenizer and Chinese tokens used for GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, says Zhengyang Geng, a PhD student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. There, the longest Chinese tokens are common terms like “life cycles” or “auto-generation.” 

Das, who worked on the Google Search team for three years, says the prevalence of spam content is a known problem and isn’t that hard to fix. “Every spam problem has a solution. And you don’t need to cover everything in one technique,” he says. Even simple solutions like requesting an automatic translation of the content when detecting certain keywords could “get you 60% of the way there,” he adds.

But OpenAI likely didn’t clean the Chinese data set or the tokens before the release of GPT-4o, Das says:  “At the end of the day, I just don’t think they did the work in this case.”

It’s unclear whether any other languages are affected. One X user reported that a similar prevalence of porn and gambling content in Korean tokens.

The tokens can be used to jailbreak

Users have also found that these tokens can be used to break the LLM, either getting it to spew out completely unrelated answers or, in rare cases, to generate answers that are not allowed under OpenAI’s safety standards.

Geng of Carnegie Mellon University asked GPT-4o to translate some of the long Chinese tokens into English. The model then proceeded to translate words that were never included in the prompts, a typical result of LLM hallucinations.

He also succeeded in using the same tokens to “jailbreak” GPT-4o—that is, to get the model to generate things it shouldn’t. “It’s pretty easy to use these [rarely used] tokens to induce undefined behaviors from the models,” Geng says. “I did some personal red-teaming experiments … The simplest example is asking it to make a bomb. In a normal condition, it would decline it, but if you first use these rare words to jailbreak it, then it will start following your orders. Once it starts to follow your orders, you can ask it all kinds of questions.”

In his tests, which Geng chooses not to share with the public, he says he can see GPT-4o generating the answers line by line. But when it almost reaches the end, another safety mechanism kicks in, detects unsafe content, and blocks it from being shown to the user.

The phenomenon is not unusual in LLMs, says Sander Land, a machine-learning engineer at Cohere, a Canadian AI company. Land and his colleague Max Bartolo recently drafted a paper on how to detect the unusual tokens that can be used to cause models to glitch. One of the most famous examples was “_SolidGoldMagikarp,” a Reddit username that was found to get ChatGPT to generate unrelated, weird, and unsafe answers.

The problem lies in the fact that sometimes the tokenizer and the actual LLM are trained on different data sets, and what was prevalent in the tokenizer data set is not in the LLM data set for whatever reason. The result is that while the tokenizer picks up certain words that it sees frequently, the model is not sufficiently trained on them and never fully understands what these “under-trained” tokens mean. In the _SolidGoldMagikarp case, the username was likely included in the tokenizer training data but not in the actual GPT training data, leaving GPT at a loss about what to do with the token. “And if it has to say something … it gets kind of a random signal and can do really strange things,” Land says.

And different models could glitch differently in this situation. “Like, Llama 3 always gives back empty space but sometimes then talks about the empty space as if there was something there. With other models, I think Gemini, when you give it one of these tokens, it provides a beautiful essay about El Niño, and [the question] didn’t have anything to do with El Niño,” says Land.

To solve this problem, the data set used for training the tokenizer should well represent the data set for the LLM, he says, so there won’t be mismatches between them. If the actual model has gone through safety filters to clean out porn or spam content, the same filters should be applied to the tokenizer data. In reality, this is sometimes hard to do because training LLMs takes months and involves constant improvement, with spam content being filtered out, while token training is usually done at an early stage and may not involve the same level of filtering. 

While experts agree it’s not too difficult to solve the issue, it could get complicated as the result gets looped into multi-step intra-model processes, or when the polluted tokens and models get inherited in future iterations. For example, it’s not possible to publicly test GPT-4o’s video and audio functions yet, and it’s unclear whether they suffer from the same glitches that can be caused by these Chinese tokens.

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U.S. to Announce New Tariffs on Chinese Electric Vehicles

The administration could raise tariffs on electric vehicles from China to 100 percent in an attempt to protect American auto manufacturers.

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By Alan Rappeport and Jim Tankersley

Reporting from Washington and New York

The Biden administration is set to announce new tariffs as high as 100 percent on Chinese electric vehicles and additional import taxes on other Chinese goods, including semiconductors, as early as next week, according to people familiar with the matter.

The move comes amid growing concern within the administration that Mr. Biden’s efforts to jump-start domestic manufacturing of clean energy products could be undercut by China , which has been flooding global markets with cheap solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles and other products.

The long-awaited tariffs are the result of a four-year review of the levies that President Donald J. Trump imposed on more than $300 billion of Chinese imports in 2018. Most of the Trump tariffs are expected to remain in place, but Mr. Biden plans to go beyond those by raising levies in areas that the president showered with subsidies in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

That includes Chinese electric vehicles, which currently face a 25 percent tariff. The administration is expected to raise that to as much as 100 percent in order to make it prohibitively expensive to buy a Chinese E.V.

Mr. Biden has previously raised concerns about Chinese electric vehicles, saying that internet-connected Chinese cars and trucks posed risks to national security because their operating systems could send sensitive information to Beijing. He took steps earlier this year to try to block those vehicles from entering the United States.

The president is looking to ratchet up pressure on China and demonstrate his willingness to protect American manufacturing ahead of his face-off against Mr. Trump in the November presidential election.

The fate of the China tariffs has been the subject of intense debate within the White House since Mr. Biden took office, with economic and political advisers often clashing over how to proceed. But this year China has begun ramping up production of the same products — electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar panels — that the Biden administration has been investing billions of dollars to start producing in the United States. Beijing’s move has re-inflamed trade tensions between the two countries, compelling Mr. Biden to press ahead with more aggressive trade restrictions.

Mr. Trump has said he would escalate his trade war with China if re-elected and said this year that he was considering imposing tariffs of 60 percent or more on Chinese imports. In March, Mr. Trump said he would impose a 100 percent tariff on cars made in Mexico by Chinese companies.

The scale of the Biden administration’s tariffs, which are expected to be applied to Chinese electric vehicles, batteries and solar products, is not clear. The new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles are not expected to apply to traditional gasoline-powered cars that are made in China, according to a person familiar with the plans.

The planned release of the review, which is being conducted by the Office of the United States Trade Representative, was reported earlier by Bloomberg News.

Strategic tariffs are also expected to include new levies on semiconductors, which Mr. Biden sought to boost in the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, a 2022 law that includes grants and other incentives for chip-makers.

Some Democrats, including Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, have been urging the Biden administration to take more drastic measures to protect the U.S. automobile industry. Last month, Mr. Brown called for Chinese electric vehicles to be barred from the United States, arguing that they pose an “existential threat” to American carmakers, and on Friday he said import duties were insufficient.

“Tariffs are not enough,” Mr. Brown wrote on the social media platform X. “We need to ban Chinese EVs from the US. Period.”

Mr. Biden said last month that he was asking the trade representative, as part of the review, to also raise tariffs on imported steel and aluminum products from China. The president and his aides have accused the Chinese of selling heavy metals at artificially low prices worldwide in order to gobble up market share, to the detriment of American producers.

“My U.S. trade representative is investigating trade practices by the Chinese government regarding steel and aluminum,” Mr. Biden told steelworkers in Pittsburgh, referring to Katherine Tai, who heads the office. “If that investigation confirms these anticompetitive trade practices, then I’m calling on her to consider tripling the tariff rates for both steel imports and aluminum imports from China.”

The president added: “I’m not looking for a fight with China. I’m looking for competition — and fair competition.”

The U.S. solar industry has also been lobbying the Biden administration to impose new tariffs on Chinese imports as an influx of cheap solar panels and components has caused prices in that sector to drop by around 50 percent over the last year. Last month, a group of seven leading solar manufacturers filed trade complaints formally requesting that the Biden administration impose tariffs on solar products being imported to the United States from Southeast Asia, where Chinese companies have relocated their operations to avoid existing tariffs.

“We are hopeful the tariff review is done with an eye toward aligning tariffs with strategic priorities including the continued build out of domestic solar manufacturing,” said Michael Carr, executive director of the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America coalition.

The prospect of the United States imposing new China tariffs was criticized in Beijing on Friday. The spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lin Jian, said that the Trump administration’s tariffs “severely disrupted normal trade and economic exchanges between China and the U.S.” and argued that they were in violation of the World Trade Organization’s rules.

“Instead of ending those wrong practices, the U.S. continues to politicize trade issues, abuse the so-called review process of Section 301 tariffs and plan tariff hikes,” Mr. Lin said, referring to the legal provision that Washington is using to justify the tariffs. “China will take all necessary measures to defend its rights and interests.”

In 2020, during the Trump administration, the United States and China agreed to a sweeping “Phase 1” trade agreement that allowed each of the two countries to review their bilateral tariffs after four years. That bilateral agreement remains in force, but the United States deferred the outcome of its review when the four-year mark came up in January.

That pact probably gives Washington the latitude to increase tariffs. Beijing never complied with that agreement’s specific targets for Chinese imports of American manufactured goods, initially citing the onset of the pandemic. It later pursued a policy of replacing imports with domestic production.

Greta Peisch, a former general counsel at the U.S. trade representative’s office who helped oversee the trade investigation for the Biden administration, noted that the European Union was also weighing new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports, and that the anticipated action by Washington was the result of China’s persistently aggressive trade policies. Without higher tariffs, she said, the U.S. auto sector will not be able to compete with heavily subsidized Chinese electric cars.

“When you look at the impact of China’s longstanding policies on E.V.s, they are producing much more and have a lot more capacity than they can absorb,” Ms. Peisch said. “You really want to go high enough to make sure that you’re counteracting the trend that we’re seeing.”

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting.

Alan Rappeport is an economic policy reporter, based in Washington. He covers the Treasury Department and writes about taxes, trade and fiscal matters. More about Alan Rappeport

Jim Tankersley writes about economic policy at the White House and how it affects the country and the world. He has covered the topic for more than a dozen years in Washington, with a focus on the middle class. More about Jim Tankersley