Introductory description

This cross-School postgraduate module provides students with an introduction to the principles of translation, with a particular focus on the challenges that translators encounter in their practice. In the general lectures, students will explore the theoretical challenges that specific genres (both literary — poem, short story, children's literature - and media genres — audio-visual, advertising, newspapers, social media) will pose to the practice of translation. Crucially, in the language-specific seminars and through independent study, 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.

• Week 1: Genre analysis and news (2 hours)
• Week 3: Children’s literature/poetry (2 hours)
• Week 4: Language-specific seminar (1 hour)
• Week 5: Audiovisual (subtitling) and writing a commentary (2 hours)
• Reading week for research and independent study - no seminar
• Week 7: Advertising (2 hours)
• Week 8: Language-specific seminar (1 hour)
• Week 9: Language-specific seminar (1 hour)
• Week 10: Consolidation on assessment and translation analysis (plenary sessions with module convenor) (1 hour)

Learning outcomes

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

• Subject-specific skills: Evaluate autonomously the complex linguistic and cultural implications of translating cultural products.
• Subject-specific skills: Translate and mediate at an advanced level of linguistic, cultural accuracy, and originality from/to the target language and English.
• Subject-specific skills: Interpret the specific complex strategies that translators adopt when translating and how these strategies mirror linguistic as well as cultural dynamics; evaluate these strategies in her/his own translating practice.
• Cognitive skills: Use their language specialism and cross- cultural awareness independently to evaluate on their own translating strategies.
• Cognitive skills: Use conceptual knowledge acquired in seminars and from prescribed reading as basis for independent creative translation project; demonstrate advanced skills in critical textual analysis, originality and linguistic/cultural problem-solving.
• Key skills: Successfully conceive, plan, and deliver their independent translation portfolio, to an advanced academic standard and within the specified deadline.

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 Andre 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).

*The portfolio supervisor will provide a language and genre-specific bibliography when students decide on their texts.

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 language culture, and translation theory, through analysis of this primary material and secondary sources, 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.