Contrastive Analysis of American and Chinese University Websites—A Case Study of Tsinghua and Harvard University

Abstract

With the improvement of China’s national strength, more and more institutions of higher learning begin to seek international development, and the willingness of overseas institutions of higher learning to conduct international exchanges and cooperation with Chinese institutions of higher learning is also increasing. In the era of increasingly fierce competition in the world of higher education, colleges and universities are trying to seek higher level of cooperation institutions, which can not only train their students into more international talents, but also improve their own international image. For this reason, many Chinese colleges and universities’ web pages are made in both Chinese and English, and the English profile of the university plays an important role in providing foreign scholars and students with a better understanding of the university. In recent years, the number of Chinese students who go aboard for further study has risen sharply, however, the number of students coming to China to study grow slowly, one of the reasons is that the publicity of Chinese colleges and universities foreign propaganda is not enough, or the web site home page introduction in English does not accord with international friends of reading and thinking habit, which leads to the lack of the understanding of foreign students in Chinese universities, and then they don’t come to study in China.By comparing the differences between the website of Harvard University in the United States and the English version of the website of Tsinghua University in China, this thesis makes a comparative analysis of the differences between English and Chinese languages, hoping to give an in-depth thought on the comparative study of English and Chinese languages and the English translation of the websites of Chinese universities.