Faculty
The MTI faculty consists of NTU full-time faculty from different schools, NTU part-time lecturers, and professional interpreters and translators from public and private sectors. They each have a unique background with specialised training in the disciplines that include translation studies, linguistics, literature, multilingual studies, Chinese studies, English literature, language and communication, broadcast and cinema studies, media, marketing, community and public services, information and technology, science, Western and Chinese medicine. They teach and/or co-teach the MTI courses by integrating their distinctive expertise and state-of-the-art research into the professional training.
NTU Faculty
Assoc. Prof. Uganda KWAN
Associate Professor, Chinese Programme
Senate Member
School of Humanities
Uganda Kwan is an Associate Professor at the School of Humanities and the Director of the Master of Arts in Translation and Interpretation Programme at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She also serves as an elected Senate Member at NTU, and as the Co-Chair of the Ethics Review Committee at the School of Humanities.
Research Interests: Translation Studies Chinese Translation History | Literary translation comparative Modern Sino-Japanese Literature | British Sinology in the 19th Century Hong Kong Literature
Ms. Hedwig ALFRED
Lecturer, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Hedwig Alfred is the Department Lead for Journalism and Media Policies at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, where she teaches News Writing & Reporting, Science & Health Journalism, and Going Overseas for Advanced Reporting. She is the recipient of the College award for Teaching Excellence, and joined NTU Singapore after a career as an award-winning journalist at SPH.
Dr. Jennifer CASH
Lecturer, School of Humanities
School of Humanities
Jennifer pursued a Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology because she wanted to be an ethnographer and to facilitate inter-cultural translation and dialogue. Asking “what is Europe?” Jennifer has conducted ongoing fieldwork in South-East Europe on cultural transformation, identity, and continuity. As a professional editor, Jennifer supports the development of early career writers – especially those for whom English is not a first language.
Dr. Melvin CHEN
School of Humanities
Research interests: Artificial Intelligence Research (Applied) | Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence | Formal Epistemology |Aesthetics | Metaethics & Normative Ethics | Philosophy & Literature
Dr. CUI Feng
School of Humanities
Dr. CUI Feng obtained his PhD in Translation Studies from NTU Singapore. He is a Senior Lecturer and a Ph.D. Supervisor in the Chinese department at NTU. He has published two monographs, more than 40 journal papers and book chapters.
Research Interests: History of translation | Translation theories | Criticism of translation skills | Translation and ideology | Comparative literature
Dr. Ritu JAIN
Senior Lecturer, Language and Communication Centre
School of Humanities
Research interests: Language Policy and Planning | Social and Behavioural Aspects of Healthcare
Ms. Umarani JAYAPAL
NTU Library
Asst. Prof. LIM Ni Eng
School of Humanities
Lim Ni Eng received his doctoral degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The scope of his disciplinary training includes interactional linguistics, conversation analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, and corpus linguistics. His ongoing interest is on the interactional, socio-cultural and cognitive operations at work in everyday and institutional talk.
Research Interests: Medical Interaction | Conversation Analysis | Interactional Linguistics | Chinese Linguistics | Ethnomethodology
Dr. Benedict LIN
School of Humanities
Research Interest: English as a medium of instruction in higher education | Literary stylistics, stylistics in Translation | Language and discourse of science and engineering
Assoc. Prof. LIN Jingxia
Associate Professor, Chinese Programme, School of Humanities
School of Humanities
Research Interests: Chinese linguistics | Cognitive functional linguistics | Syntax-semantics/pragmatics interface | Language variation and change | Global Chinese and Singapore Mandarin | The Wenzhou dialect
Prof. LUKE Kang Kwong Kapathy (K.K. LUKE)
School of Humanities
K.K. Luke is President’s Chair Professor of Linguistics of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Prior to joining NTU in 2009, he was Professor and Head of Department of Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong from 1997 to 2006. K.K. has done work in a number of areas of linguistics, including Phonology, Syntax, Sociolinguistics and Natural Language Understanding. The main focus of his recent research is on talk and social interaction using an Ethnomethodological Conversation Analytic approach.
Research Interests: Interaction between tone and intonation | Prosody in Conversational Interaction | Conversation Analysis | English and Chinese grammar | Chinese Linguistics | History and structure of Cantonese | Language and Cognitive Neuroscience | Corpus Linguistics | Natural Language Processing
Assoc. Prof. Barrie Wayne SHERWOOD
School of Humanities
Barrie Sherwood is Associate Professor in English and Creative Writing. His published works include the novels Speed of Lightness (Granta Books) and The Macanese Pro-Wrestler’s Cookbook (Penguin SEA), and a collection of short stories, The Angel Tiger (Epigram).
Research Interests: The contemporary novel | The Short Story | Narratives of photograph and text | Creative writing: research-led teaching | WG Sebald
Assoc. Prof. SIM Wai Chew
School of Humanities
Research Interests: Singapore literature and culture | Postcolonial literature and theory | Sinophone studies | Comparative literature | Southeast Asian studies
Assoc. Prof. Joanna SIN
Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Sei-Ching Joanna Sin is an Associate Professor and the Associate Chair, Graduate and Continuing Education at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University. Joanna holds a Ph.D. and a master's degree in library and information studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and a bachelor's degree in social science (Major in Geography; Minor in Anthropology) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She teaches in the areas of research methods, information behaviour, and information organisation.
Research Interests: Structural and Individual Factors in Information Behaviour | Public Library Usage | Social Media Information Seeking | Bibliometrics
Assoc. Prof. Michael STANLEY-BAKER
Head, History Programme
Associate Professor, History Programme
School of Humanities
Michael Stanley-Baker is an Associate Professor in History in the School of Humanities, and also teaches Medical Humanities at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. He received his PhD from University College London in the History of Medicine and has held prior research appointments at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Academia Sinica and the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge. He is an editor of the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine, and Situating Medicine and Religion Across Asia. A practitioner of Digital Humanities, he is the PI of PolyglotAsianmedicine.com, which provides digital tools and resources for the cross-cultural study of Asian medicine. His forthcoming monograph examines relationships between Chinese medicine and Daoism in the early imperial period.
Collaborators, Industry Partners and Practitioners
Ms. Shelly BRYANT
Shelly Bryant divides her year between Shanghai and Singapore, working as a poet, writer and translator. She is the author of twelve volumes of poetry, a pair of travel guides, a book on classical Chinese gardens, and a short story collection, and she has translated more than 150 books from Chinese. Her translation of Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls was long listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012, and her translation of You Jin’s in Time, Out of Place was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2016. Her company, Tender Leaves Translation (Singapore), was shortlisted for The Literary Translation Initiative Award by the London Book Fair in 2021.
Research Interests: Literature translation | Poetry translation | Creative writing | Reading Theory
Dr. Caroline CHIA
Caroline Chia received her PhD from the University of Melbourne. Besides being an avid researcher on Chinese heritage and theatre, she has worked as a media writer and translator for more than two decades.
Research Interests: Study of Playscripts | Heritage Studies | Chinese Heritage and Theatre
Ms. Judy CHIA
Judy was the former commissioning editor with national broadcaster Mediacorp, managing channel’s news & CA, factual entertainment, kids and info-educational programme grid. With two decades of media experience, she has helmed various positions, both on-screen as current affairs show host and behind-the-scenes in content development. She is currently a part-time broadcaster with SPH radio station, runs a translation company and regularly interprets for conferences and meetings. Judy also serves as the Vice-Chairperson of PACE (Advisory Committee for English Programmes) with Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI).
Research interests: Media Translation | Content Localisation | Event Interpretation
Prof. HO Puay Peng
Ho Puay Peng is a Professor at the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore. He currently holds the UNESCO Chair on Architectural Heritage Conservation and Management in Asia. Having close to 30 years of experience in academia, Puay-Peng’s main research interests are architectural history and conservation practices, and how the knowledge can be translated into teaching and practice. Prior to joining NUS in 2017, Puay-Peng was Professor of Architecture and served as Director of the School of Architecture and University Dean of Students at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Sustaining his research is the quest to understand religious culture and its architectural forms. His main focus is Buddhist architecture and rituals of medieval China. As an art historian, Puay Peng focuses on the intersection between art, religious practice, and architecture. Professor Ho is also an architect, conservation consultant and adviser to some 100 conservation projects in Hong Kong, China and Singapore since 2003, including PMQ, Haw Par Villa, Comix Homebase, Oil Street Art Space, Court of Final Appeal, and New Campus for Chicago University Booth School. Puay-Peng Ho was also appointed to many public and private boards and committees in Hong Kong, including as Chairman of the Lord Wilson Heritage Trust, and a member of the Town Planning Board and Antiquities Advisory Board. Currently, in Singapore, he serves as the Vice-chairman of the Heritage Advisory Panel of the National Heritage Board and a member of the Heritage and Identity Panel. Internationally, he is currently a member of the Senior Advisory Board of the Global Heritage Fund and a Patron of the International Dunhuang Project of the British Library.
Research Interests: Architectural history | Conservation practices | Religious culture and architectural forms | Buddhist architecture | Rituals of Medieval China | Intersection between art, religious practice, and architecture
Dr. HONG Huaqing
Dr Hong holds a MA and a PhD on Corpus Linguistics from the National University of Singapore. He was formerly a Senior Assistant Director and Head of e-Learning Research & Development at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University. He is currently a Professor and the Director of the Centre for Language Intelligence and Smart Education at the Shanghai International Studies University.
Research Interests: Translation Technology | Learning Sciences & Technologies | Multimodal Discourse Analysis| Corpus/Computational linguistics | Computer-assisted language learning
Dr. JIN Song
Dr. Jin Song is a China-born, Singapore and US trained bilingual veteran in private equity, banking, fund management and Fintech industries, with a vast professional network and a proven successful investment track record. He is currently the CEO and Founding Partner of W.I. Consulting, a leading investment consulting firm in Asia. W.I. Consulting provides high-quality, global investment management and risk control consulting services mainly for institutional and individual investors in Asia. He holds an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis, USA; a Master and a Ph.D. degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and a bachelor's degree from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China.
Research Interests: Financial Translation | Banking, Equity and Investment | Global Investment Management
Mr. KUEK Jinhua
Jinhua is a certified professional translator with more than 10 years of experience in translation, transcreation, government public communications and lifestyle media. A Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL), he is deeply committed in raising the awareness of functionally appropriate translation and nurturing the growth of translation in Singapore. Outside of work, Jinhua has diverse interests in urban exploration, public transport, the Deaf community, theatre arts, and culture and heritage. He is also passionate in learning languages and exploring the relationships between them.
Research Interests: Translation quality assessment | Translation theories | Translation and media studies | Song lyric translation | Translation historiography with focus on Singapore | Translation pedagogy, translation training and continuing education | Biography translation studies
Dr. KUO Szu-Yu, Arista
Arista Szu-Yu KUO received her PhD from Imperial College London and taught at City University London and University College London (UCL) before she joined NTU. Arista also worked as a freelance translator, interpreter and subtitler for over 10 years and was involved in a variety of projects in diverse fields, including finance, business, law, politics, diplomacy, technology, cultural and creative industries.
Research Interests: Audio-visual translation | Translator training | Translation quality assessment | Cross-cultural communication | Translanguaging | Translation and ideology
Dr. Grandee LEE
Grandee received his PhD from the National University of Singapore and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Human Language Technology Lab (NUS). He likes to explore the multilingual aspects of natural language processing including machine translation, multilingual language representation and code-switching dialogue. He is equally interested in educational technology and enjoys teaching.
Research Interests: Multilingual NLP | Code-switching language modelling | Cross-lingual representation | Edtech
Mr. LEE Hui Huan
Mr Lee Hui Huan spent 39 years in the civil service as an interpreter, rising to become Chief Interpreter of Parliament before retiring. In 1989, he was the first Singaporean to be admitted as a member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC), and was invited to join the pool of freelance interpreters in the United Nations (UN). He also served as the official interpreter for the Prime Minister and various Ministers, and has been interpreting the Prime Minister’s National Day Rally simultaneously “live” on TV annually since 1987.
Research Interests: Parliament interpreting | Conference interpreting | Characteristics of Interpreting Political Speeches in Singapore | Best practice in Interpreting between English and Mandarin/Hokkien/Cantonese
Prof. LI Haizhou
Haizhou Li is a Presidential Chair Professor and Executive Dean of the School of Data Science, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China. He is also an adjunct Professor at the National University of Singapore. Dr Li has served as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, the President of the International Speech Communication Association.
Research Interests: Speech information processing | Natural language processing | Human-robot interaction | Machine translation
Ms. Christina NG
Christina Ng is a Singaporean writer and translator based in Berlin. Working between English and Chinese, she has interpreted for film and theatre productions, as well as written and translated essays and features on art, travel and culture. Her Chinese to English literary translations include poetry/fiction by Singaporean poets Liang Wern Fook, Dan Ying and Pan Shou, which have appeared in adda magazine, Pathlight, Contour: A Lyric Cartography of Singapore and Words Without Borders. She was one of the translators in residence at the National Centre of Writing, UK, in 2024 and her translation of Liang’s debut short story collection in English, The Joy of a Left Hand, was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2024 Translation Category. She also teaches literary translation classes and leads literary translation workshops internationally.
Research Interests: Postcolonial literature in Southeast Asia | Sinophone literature | Comparative literature | Contemporary poetry | Translation and multilingualism | Translation as a creative writing practice
Dr. Hadi OSNI
Hadi Osni earned his PhD in Architecture from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2023, with research focusing on the spatiality of memory in relation to community heritage. His work combines architectural history with community-based participatory methods, drawn from his experience as a Senior Community Researcher at My Community where he led cultural mapping and GIS-based projects. This work has focused on areas affected by mass relocation and urban redevelopment, such as Tanglin Halt. He is currently a curator at the Malay Heritage Centre (National Heritage Board), undertaking research and curatorial initiatives on Malay heritage in Singapore.
Research Interests: Community Heritage | Malay Heritage | Architectural History
Ms. TEO Kah Hui
Kah Hui Teo is the Portfolio Director at Keywords Studios, with more than 15 years of experience in the games industry. She is a part-time lecturer at Nanyang Technological University Master in Translation and Interpretation programme and serves on the Singapore National Translation Committee Chinese Resource Panel. She believes in bridging the gap between the industry and academia, and has collaborated with universities in Singapore, China and the UK on game localisation lectures and courses. Kah Hui was appointed a Women in Games Ambassador in 2020 and the Director of Women in Games Asia Chapter since 2022. She currently serves as a council member of the Keywords Studios Global Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Council. She had also served as an Advisor and on the Executive Committee of the Singapore Games Association, and as the Mentorship and Education Manager of Women in Localization Singapore Chapter.
Research Interests: Game localisation | Project management | Content localisation for OTT platforms
Dr. THAM Wai Mun
THAM Wai Mun, Professor at Shanghai University's School of Foreign Languages. She specialises in the history of translation and the translation of classical literature. She assisted the school in securing a translation project of Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences overseen by the National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences. Prior to joining Shanghai University, she received teaching and research honours from the Beijing Foreign Studies University. She co-authored an award-winning title on contrastive linguistics.
Research Interests: Community Interpretation between English-Chinese and Chinese-English | Translation history, theory and practice | Contrastive linguistics | Chinese language and culture
Ms. WANG Kun
A linguistics and communication major by training, Wang Kun has over two decades of experience in translation and interpretation. Starting as an English lecturer at Ocean University of China, she subsequently relocated to Singapore where she has built her professional life in the financial services industry, from Dow Jones, Bank Julius Baer, to CME Group. In her current role, she leads market education at CME Group in APAC, working with a broad range of stakeholders to drive business and brand growth.
Research Interests: Financial Translation | Localization Management in the Financial Services Industry | Cross Border Brand Building | Investment Product Marketing and Investment Communication
Dr. WANG Shengyu
Wang Shengyu holds a PhD in English Literature from the National University of Singapore. She started her lecturing career from 1988 in China, and has taught many courses in English language, English literature, as well as translation and interpreting between English and Chinese. In the past 15 years, she has been actively teaching at the postgraduate level in Singapore.
Research Interests: Contrastive study of English and Chinese | English-Chinese and Chinese-English literary translation
Mr. Yeo Keng Heng Nehemiah
Nehemiah Yeo graduated with a bachelor’s degree major in Civil & Structural Engineering, with Chinese and Psychology as minors from Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Upon graduation, he worked as an investigation officer in the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, combating corruption and other related offences for four years. In the subsequent 12 years, he went on to be a certified interpreter and translator in the State Courts which the scopes included criminal law, civil law and family law. He interprets and translates for law enforcement agencies mainly on a freelance basis today. He finds legal interpretation and translation to be interesting and advocate that every citizen would benefit from the Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and Evidence Act.
Research Interests: Legal interpretation and translation | Criminal Law | Civil Law | Family Law
Mr. YUEN Kum Cheong
Kum Cheong is a professional translator and interpreter in the English-Chinese language pair, serving various industry domains in the public and private sectors, and provides other language-related services, including transcription and language advisory. Trained in landscape architecture, he has also worked in the arts, intellectual property and business consultancy.
Research Interests: Chinese-English and English-Chinese translation | Translation of current affairs (politics, economy and culture) | Cross-cultural communication