The Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies (CBS), formerly known as the Department of Chinese, Translation and Interpretation, was established in 1988. Our department is one of the leading academic departments in Asia that studies Chinese and its interaction with English. It addresses real-life language issues in a bilingual society. As a department with two undergraduate programmes, several taught postgraduate programmes, and a PhD programme, CBS has come a long way and is now a widely recognized innovative pioneer in establishing academic programmes that are underpinned by our research while meeting the demands in society. Among our best-known milestones are the first MA in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (MATCFL) programme and the first Master of Speech Therapy (MST) programme in Hong Kong (professional entry qualification fully accredited by the Hong Kong Institute of Speech Therapists, HKIST).

As an active, research-oriented department, CBS has been strong in the research areas of Chinese linguistics, corpus linguistics, language and communication disorders, cognitive neuroscience, bilingual communication, Chinese language education, Chinese language testing, language technology, and translation and interpreting.

As a responsible member of the community, CBS constantly provides services to the people of Hong Kong, especially to those in need. For example, we have special programmes that help South Asian school children in Hong Kong to learn Chinese; we offer Chinese and Putonghua tests for local primary and secondary school students; and we provide speech therapy service to children suffering from communication disorders or learning deficiencies.