This book serves as an introduction to contrastive linguistics - the synchronic study of two or more languages, with the aim of discovering their differences and similarities, especially the former, and applying these discoveries to related areas of language study and practice. It discusses the principles and methods, and contrasts English, Chinese, German, and other languages at phonological, lexical, grammatical, textual, and pragmatic levels, focusing more on the useful insights contrastive analysis provides into real-world problems in fields such as applied linguistics, translation and translation studies, English or Chinese as a foreign language, and communication than on the discipline itself.

Introduction.- The Principles and Methods of Comparing and Contrasting Languages.- Phonetic and Phonological Contrastive Analyses.- Lexical Contrastive Analysis.- Grammatical Contrastive Analysis.- Textual Contrastive Analysis.- Pragmatic Contrastive Analysis.- References.- Index.

Ping Ke
is Professor of English and Translation Studies at Nanjing University, where he teaches E/C & C/E translation, translation studies, contrastive linguistics, language and translation technology, and research methodology at undergraduate or post-graduate levels. He has also taught translation at Peking University and the University of Macau, and has worked for UNESCO as a senior translator. His research interests include principles of translation, contrastive study of English and Chinese, corpus linguistics, bilingual lexicography, terminology, and computer translation. His work has appeared in such publications as Zhongguo Fanyi [Chinese Translators' Journal], Babel, META, Perspectives, and The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2nd ed). His book Yinghan yu Hanying Fanyi Jiaocheng [A Textbook of English-Chinese and Chinese-English Translation] represents a major effort in mainland China toward systematizing the teaching of English/Chinese translation and has been published by Peking University Press and Bookman Co, Ltd, Taiwan in several editions. Prof. Ke is a Council Member of the Jiangsu Provincial chapter of the Translators' Association of China (TAC), an Expert Member of the TAC, and a Council Member of China Association for Comparative Studies of English and Chinese.