Introductory description

This cross-School module provides students with an introduction to the principles of translation studies, including the challenges that translators encounter. It investigates how we read and analyse translations and explores the relationship between the source and the target text. Students will learn how to critically analyse translations and to explore translation as a process of negotiation between texts and cultures. Furthermore, they will have an opportunity to engage in the practice of translation and to analyse their own translation strategies.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Term 1, week 1
Lecture: Defining Translation
The lecture will provide students with an introduction to the concept and definition of translation in its multiple forms (ranging from literary translation to community interpreting).

Term 1, week 2:
Lecture + Seminar: Reading and Analysing Translations (1)
The session will look at translation as ‘transfer’ between two languages as well as two cultures.

Term 1, week 3 and 4:
Lecture + Language-specific seminar: Reading and Analysing Translations (2)
The lecture will discuss the different forms which reading a translation may take, spanning the practice of reading a translation as a text on its own right to comparative analysis of multiple translations.

Term 1, week 4:
Lecture and Seminar: Translation and Equivalence
The lecture will examine the concept of equivalence and its historical relevance in translation studies. The language-specific seminar will provide students with language-specific case studies.

Term 1, week 5: Lecture and Seminar: Foreignisation and Domestication
This session will discuss these notions in current translation practices and apply this to specific case-studies in the seminar.

Term 1, week 6: Reading Week

Term 1, week 7: Lecture and Seminar: Genre and Translation (Poetry) (1)
The lecture will look at the concept of genre and how it affects the theory and practice of translation, with a particular focus on literary texts.

Term 1, week 8: Lecture and Seminar: Genre and Translation (Poetry) (2)
The lecture will look at the concept of genre and how it affects the theory and practice of translation. The language-specific seminar will provide students with language-specific case studies.

Term 1, week 9: Referencing & Translating Literary Texts (e.g. Short Prose)
The language-specific seminar will also provide students with language-specific case studies.

Term 1, week 10:
Essay Writing Workshop in preparation for the submission of Assignment 1 (Critical Evaluation)

Term 2, week 1:
Lecture: Intersemiotic Challenges

Term 2, week 2:
Lecture and Seminar: Translating Advertising

Term 2, week 3:
Lecture: Culture and Translation (1)
The lecture will look at the cultural factors involved in translation as a concept and as a practice.

Term 2, week 4:
Lecture and Seminar: Culture and Translation (2)
This session will discuss the role of publishers and other cultural gatekeepers in current translation practices and analyse this in relation to seminar case studies.

Term 2, week 5:
How to Tackle Translation Analysis

Term 2, week 6: Reading Week

Term 2, week 7:
How to Make your Commentary more Critical

Term 2, week 8:
Lecture and Language-specific seminar: Honing Translations (writing and rewriting)
This session will look at the practice of translation as writing and rewriting.

Term 2, week 9:
Lecture and Language-specific seminar: Honing Translations (editing)
This session will look at the relevance of editing in translation practice.

Term 2, week 10:
Review

Term 3, week 1 and 2: Drop-in session in preparation for Assignment 4 (Annotated Translations).

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Understand the linguistic and cultural implications of translating cultural products
• Reflect on the specific strategies that translators adopt when translating and how these strategies mirror linguistic as well as cultural dynamics.
• Use their language specialism and cross-cultural awareness to review published translations
• Use their language specialism and cross-cultural awareness to self-reflect on their own translating strategies
• Gain an understanding of key terms and concepts in translation studies and experience in applying these terms when commenting their own or other translations
• Produce short translations into English that are appropriate for their specified purpose

Indicative reading list

Baker, Mona, In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation, (London: Routledge, 1992)
Baker, Mona and Gabriela Saldanha, eds. Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies (London: Routledge, 2009).
Bassnett, Susan, “The Translation Turn in Cultural Studies.” In Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation, edited by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, 123-140 (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1998)
Bassnett, Susan, Translation Studies (London: Routledge, 2014)
Benjamin, Walter, “The Task of the Translator.” in Illuminations, translated by Harry Zorn. (London: Pimlico 1968/1999.)
Duff, Alan, The Third Language: Recurrent Problems of Translation into English (Oxford: Pergamon, 1981)
Munday, Jeremy, Introducing Translation Studies (London: Routledge, 2001)
Venuti, Lawrence, ed, Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology (London: Routledge, 1992).
Venuti, Lawrence, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (London: Routledge, 1995).
Venuti, Lawrence, ed. The Translation Studies Reader (London: Routledge, any edition).

View reading list on Talis Aspire

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of modern language culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of translation will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage in scholarship in the field.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with artefacts from target-language cultures. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.