Narrative assessment for cantonese-speaking children

Background: This study examined the narrative skills of Cantonese-speaking school-age children to fill a need for a normative language test for school-age children. Purpose: To provide a benchmark of the narrative skills of Cantonese-speaking children; to identify which of the microstructure components was the best predictor of age; and to determine the diagnostic accuracy of the test components. Method and Procedure: Data were collected from 1,120 Cantonese-speaking children between the ages of 4;10 (years;months) and 12;01, using a story-retell of a 24-frame picture series. Four narrative components (syntactic complexity, semantic score, referencing, and connective use) were measured. Outcomes and Results: Each measure reflected significant age-related differences in narrative ability. Regression analyses revealed that vocabulary and syntactic complexity were the best predictors of grade. All measures showed high sensitivity (86%–94%) but relatively low specificity (60%–90%) and modest likelihood ratio (LR) values: LR+ (2.15–9.42) and LR– (0.07–0.34).Conclusion and Implications: Narrative assessment can be standardized to be a reliable and valid instrument to assist in the identification of children with language impairment. Syntactic complexity is not only a strong predictor of grade but was also particularly vulnerable in Cantonese-speaking children with specific language impairment. Further diagnostic research using narrative analysis is warranted

John Fryer and The Translator’s Vade-mecum: the identification of the “Vocabulary of Terms in Naval Architecture"

John Fryer was one of the most important foreign translators in China after the Opium Wars. The work that is the final result of his experience at the Jiangnan Arsenal is The Translator’s Vade-mecum. Among the preparatory manuscripts of the glossaries that were published in the Vade-mecum, the author has identified the “Vocabulary of Terms in Naval Architecture.” The purpose of this article is to examine the main features of the Vocabulary, its sources and the peculiarities of the manuscript. In the first and second sections, the Vade-mecum is concisely analysed; providing numerous references and simultaneously sketching an outlook of the production and circulation of knowledge in the period considered, the author presents theoretical discussions concerning the norms of translation applied in the Vade-mecum, its purpose and the patronage of the translation activity. In the third and main section, studying the historical significance and linguistic quality of some of the translated terms annotated in the “Vocabulary,” the author compares its terminology with the concurrent Japanese one and with other Chinese relevant nomenclatures, demonstrating the complicate interaction in the “Vocabulary” between lexical innovation and recovery of existing terms