The Foreign Language College consists of these units: English Department I (with emphasis on Shipping English) and English Department II (with emphasis on Translation), Japanese Department, Division of College English (for non-English majors), Division of Shipping English Teaching, Center of Chinese Language and Culture, Center of Chinese Studies (for foreign students), Foreign Language Testing Center, and Language and Culture Research Institute. After dozens of years’ development, the college has made great headway in both teaching and research. Deservedly, its English program received an A in the assessment by the Ministry of Education experts in October 2006. 

With a long history, the college was formerly known as the Foreign Language Department. As early as 1965, the Ministry of Communications decided that Shanghai Maritime Institute offer English and French undergraduate programs, which were in fact among the first few universities of science and engineering that offer foreign language programs. After a suspension of enrolment during the “cultural revolution”, the English program was resumed in 1978 and belonged to the newly established Foreign Language Department. More significantly, the department launched a postgraduate program in Translation Theory and Practice in 1979—the first Translation program in the nation. Then in 1986 it was authorized by the State Council to award the master’s degree. At that time our university and the Beijing Foreign Language Institute (the present Beijing Foreign Studies University) were the only two universities in the country that could confer MA in Translation.

 The English Department attaches great importance to the quality of teaching, and has run only small classes of 20-plus students. Not surprisingly, our students have consistently performed well in the National Grade 4 and Grade 8 Exams for English Majors. The Japanese Department started in 2000, and has been following the same educational policy and has steadily improved the pedagogic quality. Its students’ pass rates in the National Grade 4 and 8 Exams for Japanese Majors are about 20 percent higher than those of the nation’s average.  

 Now the Foreign Language College runs two master degree programs in “Foreign and Applied Linguistics” and “English Language and Literature” respectively. In 2005 the Municipal Education Commission organized an evaluation of the master degree programs in Shanghai. In the nine items evaluated, we received nine A’s.

Now the college has a staff of 130, including 10 professors and 30 associate professors. All teachers under the age of 40 have a master’s degree or above. The teachers are strong in both teaching and research. They have obtained 1 National Social Science Fund project and more than a dozen ministerial and municipal research projects. The undergraduate course of Translation was cited as an Excellent Course of Shanghai Municipality.