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Culture is a way of life and embodiment of civilizations that is expressed through a language. The transfer of culture is a significant aspect of audio-visual translation as translators deal with more than just the written texts on surface level. Translating culture-specific items on paper cutting is an intercultural communication. However, translating cultural items in subtitling could cause challenges and problems for translators during the translation process. In this qualitative study, the translation strategies and challenges were explored in the subtitling of a Chinese cultural documentary on the art of papercutting titled The Life of Paper-cutting (剪紙人生; Jiǎn zhǐ rén shēng) retrieved from YouTube. The original video was subtitled to identify the challenges in subtitling. The strategies and challenges were first identified and then the process was described. It was found that the most appropriate translation strategies were omission, direct transfer, equivalence, and adaptation. The analysis revealed that the challenges were mainly technical, cultural, and linguistic. The findings can be used as a guide to utilise the translation strategies effectively in subtitling translations of similar audio-visual products to tackle the challenges faced in the Chinese to English translation of culture-specific items.

Understanding the make-up of gritty L2 students has garnered quite a lot of attention recently. In this descriptive narrative-based study, we looked at the interview data of eight English language learners who recorded high scores on a nine-item grit questionnaire. Specifically, two female university students each from Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan were interviewed and their interview scripts were transcribed and then coded looking for common threads to emerge from the data by applying the tenets of Charmaz’s (2006) Grounded Theory. The data show that beyond perseverance, gritty L2 students enjoy learning the L2, are consistently curious about the L2, are generally not bored by the L2, are confident using the L2 (not letting anxiety dissuade them), are extraverted—encompassing a strong willingness to communicate, have focused L2 vision and have had experiences and/or encounters that bolstered their L2 grittiness. As for encouraging L2 grit development, we suggest that good L2 classroom practice include frequent communicative activities so that students can see the practical side of learning a L2 with the hopes of strengthening their L2 vision.

Peer feedback is increasingly used in higher education. However, in China, peer feedback is not widely used in EFL writing classes. Distrust of students’ ability to provide comments and teachers’ fear of losing power are two frequently discussed reasons. For the lack of peer feedback, the study used teacher-student collaborative assessment (TSCA), a native classroom assessment proposed by Chinese researchers involving peer feedback supported by teachers, to find how it affects peer feedback quality and EFL writing performance. The study used a quantitative method and conducted a quasi-experiment. In the experimental group, 45 freshmen took TSCA after each writing task, while in the control group, 57 freshmen only received the teacher’s analysis of the writing sample. After the training of five weeks, participants in the experimental group showed significant improvement in the quality of their peer feedback and EFL writing than participants in the control group. Based on the findings, the study proposes a blended TSCA for better adaption to Chinese EFL writing teaching in higher education, i.e., with limited EFL teaching time and a large class. This also shows a middle way to provide feedback from teacher-centered transmission to student-centered process based on the sociocultural context of China.