Does any difference exist between 部门 and 系?
These are the two different results I get from Google translate:
I work in the university Chinese language department
我的工作在大学中国语文系
I work in the university IT department
我在大学的IT部门工作
Besides the fact that Google has opted for different grammar for these two similar English sentences. Is there are good reason to use 部门 in one option and 系 in the other or are these two interchangeable.
系 means college major and is exclusively used by the education system. 专业 is a synonym in this context.
For a student of the English major, he would say
我读英语系。
or
我读英语专业。
An institution, a faculty or a big department that hosts multiple majors is usually translated into 学院. In a college, there can be only one language department which teaches multiple languages as different majors.
So when you say
我在英语系工作。
It means you work for the English department (if there is), or you work on stuffs related to English major for the language department. While
我在语言学院工作。
Means you work for the department/school of language.
部门, or 部 for short, is usually connected with the roles from an (commercial) enterprise, such as HR Department (人力资源部门), Operations Department (运营部门), Sales Department (销售部门), IT Department (信息技术部门), etc.
Sometimes you can connect 部门 with the 'business subject'. It's not the best word choice but is acceptable, such as 洗衣机部门, 冰箱部门, if you are a manufacturer and have dedicated sector for each product.
Back to the education system, you should stick with 系, 专业 or 学院 mentioned above. '英语部门' sounds very weird to me. However you can say '语言学院的IT部门' meaning the 'IT office for the language department'.
As a recap, 系 and 部门 means different things and are not interchangeable in this context.
Update:
When I wrote this answer, I didn't realize there is a difference between Chinese college organizational model and the U.S. one.
To clarify, the education system in China used to follow the Russian model, that is, there are different offices for different majors in one department, and there are supporting staffs like administrators and operation personnel within the department, each of whom may be assigned to serve a specific major or all majors in the department.
Now they are gradually switching to the Western model, that is, each major is a department, and supporting services are run by the college.
系 is used exclusively for a department in a university, and you should not use any other word for it. (Of course, Faculty of Engineering/College of Engineering are translated into 学院 like 工程学院, but that's an upper-level organisation of a department)
When referring to a department in a hospital, use 科. For instance, department of radiology/internal medicine/obstetrics and gynaecology are called 放射科/内科/妇产科, respectively.
When referring to a government division or office, the names could vary among 局, 处, 厅, 部, etc depending on the level of that government division. For instance, Department of Personnel of the central Chinese government is called 人事部, of a provincial government 人事厅, of a city government 人事局, of a public university (which is sort of part of the government system) 人事处. This is the naming system in mainland China. The names are different in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
When referring to commercial organisations, it is typically 部门. A company's department of human resources would be called 人力资源部.
The established name of a department usually contains a single character 部 (department of procurement 采购部), while 部门 would be used for generic references such as IT部门 (IT department).
系 and 部门 have different connotations. 系 applies to academic departments, while 部门 applies to professional/corporate departments. With these definitions in mind, it should be clear that working for the 中系 (Chinese academic department) justifies the use of 系, whereas working for the university's IT部门 (IT professional department) does not. Thought of a different way, you work in an IT department that happens to be at a university; there is nothing inherently academic about your work.
However, if the school is teaching "Information Technology" (IT) as an academic discipline, there may be an academic department called the "IT (academic) Dept." (though most universities would dub this a sub-section of their Computer Science department). In this case, you would be working for the IT系 (IT academic department).
tl;dr It doesn't matter what job you do, it's who you are doing it for. If you work for an academic department, it's X系; if you work for a professional (non-academic) department, even if it's at a university, it's still just X部门.
