At 2:00 p.m. on November 1, 2018, with students from the French Department of Southwest Jiaotong University entering the hall, Professor Annick Jaulin, who was the head of the Philosophy Department of University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, held a lecture entitled “Zero Writing and the Structure of Language -- Comments on Roland Barthes’ Thoughts” in classroom 1408. In addition to the students in the French Department of our University, this lecture also attracted many students from other majors who interested in semiotics, translation, and philosophy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the beginning of the lecture, Tang Jialu, a young teacher of the French Department of our college, gave a speech. She pointed out that, as translators, we should always keep anxiety, modesty, and prudence in front of excellent French writers. At the same time, Ms. Tang also pointed out the main problems and obstacles that we encounter in our translation work today. She then proposed solutions to the problems. Firstly, it’s the content involved in this lecture. Secondly, in the future, the French Department of our college could deepen the students’ social science foundation through the philosophy course of Sichuan University.

 

After that, Ms. Zeng Yi from the Department of Philosophy of Sichuan University gave a speech. She said that the College of Foreign Languages of our university has an initial cooperation project with Sichuan University, and the cooperation will be carried out from the practical level and teaching level. Mr. Zeng expressed the hope that the two universities would face the difficulties in translation field together, and the two universities should set up cooperation such as “ workshop”. Besides, Mr. Zeng also said that our French students would have priority to participate in exchange programs of France at Sichuan University.

 

The culmination of the lecture was Prof. Annick Jaulin’s explanation of zero-degree writing and language structure. Her lecture started from the discipline of “semiotics” and gradually expanded to the level of language, style, and text. During the lecture, Professor Annick Jaulin mentioned the philosophy of Hegel, Marx, Saussure, Barthes, etc., and told us their ideological system, highlighted Saussure’s and Barthes’ thoughts on language and structure, deeply analyzed their ideological background and the relationship between ideological resources, language structure, and interpretation, also emphasized the importance of structural elements in translation activities between China and France.

 

 

 

 

 

                                           

Text: Wu Yushan Department of French 2017;

Photography: MengDu Xingyi and Zhou Rui Department of French 2017