News

The Centre for Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2026 Martha Cheung Award is Dr. Qilin Cao, Assistant Professor in the School of Foreign Languages at Tongji University, Shanghai, China, for his article titled ‘Sound, Gender, and the Thing: Earphone and Miss Earphone in Shanghai Cinema, 1939–1949’, published in positions: asia critique, 33 (1) (2025).

Dr. Cao’s article focuses on the introduction of the earphone in 1940s Shanghai cinema as a means of rendering foreign language film content accessible to Chinese viewers. More specifically, it examines the phenomenon of “Miss Earphone”, the name given to the exclusively female interpreters whose voices provided the translation. Employing an impressively multilayered interdisciplinary approach that draws on thing theory, translation studies and film history, Dr. Cao shows how media cultures, gender and translation practices were intricately entangled in the cultural milieu of the period, with a shift occurring from the male-dominated translation of film-related materials such as programmes to the female interpreter who, through the earpiece, whispered into what Dr. Cao calls the “male ear”. Dr. Cao’s article makes a significant contribution to audiovisual translation, translation history and film history.

Runner up

The runner up for 2026 is Dr. Mattea Cussel, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and East Asian Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, for her article titled ‘An Ethnographic Account of Spanish-language Publishing and Reading in the United States: The Role of and Attitudes towards Translation’, published in Translation in Society, 4(2) (2025).

Dr. Cussel’s article examines the interface between Spanish-language translation, reading and publishing practices in the US. Her ethnographic account, which focuses in particular on the Spanish translation of English-language Latinx literature, explores the activities of a range of stakeholders including readers, book club participants, publishers and librarians.  She shows how “simultaneous and parallel publishing”, in which English originals and their Spanish translations are released at the same time, can lead in certain reading contexts to a kind of invisibility that downplays the nature of the translated work. Alongside this, Dr. Cussel also develops the concept of “translation avoidance” to account for how readers and booksellers construe translations as something best avoided. Such observations reveal how translation, reading practices and the book publishing industry exist in a complex balance that can work against a truly “cohabitive” and creative translation space.

For further information on the Martha Cheung Award, visit Martha Cheung Award.

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The award-winning articles and the awardees' bio-notes

Award Winner: Dr. Qilin Cao (Tongji University, China)

Cao, Qilin (2025) "Sound, Gender, and the Thing: Earphone and Miss Earphone in Shanghai Cinema, 1939–1949", positions: asia critique 33(1) 2025: 55-82. (Available for open access here. Copyright 2025, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Republished by permission of the publisher. www.dukeupress.edu)

Qilin Cao (pronounced “Chi-lin Tsao”) is an assistant professor in the School of Foreign Studies at Tongji University, Shanghai, China. He received his MA and PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Macau. His research interests lie at the intersection of translation studies, comparative literature, and cultural studies, with a particular focus on the materiality of translation and how translation theory engages with emerging digital trends. His articles can be found in journals including positions: asia critique, Modern Asian Studies, International Journal of Asian Studies, Neohelicon, Orbis Litterarum, Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies and Journal of Translation Studies. His first monograph, Translation as the Gaze: Conceptualizing the Sino-Western Encounter, 1839–1949 (Routledge), is forthcoming in April 2026.

Award Runner up: Dr. Mattea Cussel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)

Cussel, Mattea. (2025) "An Ethnographic Account of Spanish-language Publishing and Reading in the United States: The Role of and Attitudes towards Translation", Translation in Society 4(2): 1-21. (Available for open access at: https://doi.org/10.1075/tris.24023.cus)

Mattea Cussel is “Juan de la Cierva” Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and East Asian Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her research focuses on the sociology of translation, particularly in relation to migration, theory and literature. Her work has been published in Translation Studies, Social Science Information, Translation and Interpreting Studies, and Translation in Society, among others. Her monograph Migration Literature in Translation was recently published by Routledge. She is currently co-editing, with Jonathan Evans and Fruela Fernández, the second edition of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics.
She holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Following her doctorate, she has conducted postdoctoral research on the politics of translation in the humanities and social sciences, as well as on access to healthcare and intercultural communication for migrated populations.