Min-Hsiu Liao

My research interests mainly lie in three areas.

• The role of translators in the written interaction. I have invesitgated how translators relay expert-lay interaction in the genre of popular science by focusing on the patterns of interactive linguistic features, such as hedges, deixis, conjunctions, personal pronouns. The research also further relates the translation strategies to how the genre, the translation of the genre, and the science translators are perceived in the society.
• Interactive features in Chinese. I am conducting a diachronic study of how English or the translations from the English have influenced the interactive features in the Chinese popular science texts by following the development of the genre for four decades, with the focus on speech acts and politeness features in the Q&A column in Taiwanese science magazines.
• Translation of cultural objects in the multimodal museum space. The research investigates how the translators interact with other participants in the museum communication, and argues the discursive power of translations in interpreting and shaping the value of cultural objects from a different perspective.