LN919 Specialised Translation Skills
Module Tutors
Description
15 CATS
This MA module supports students in the development of practical specialised translation skills that are essential for language professionals. Departing from functionalist and text-based methods applied to translation, the module fosters a reflective and critical approach to the analysis of source texts and translation situations that will allow students to design, develop and evaluate specialised translation decisions.
Within a multilingual setting with English as a common language and the framework of the translation profession, the students will become familiar with text and genre conventions, features of specialised language, documentation and terminology, as well as translation challenges, strategies and solutions. The module will develop as a series of seminars and workshops. The multilingual translation workshops will focus on specific specialised translation genres that will provide students with hands-on translation experience as well as critical awareness, analytical writing proficiency, and key transferable skills. The translation assignments will reflect real-life professional settings. Throughout the classes and in their projects, students will have opportunities to reflect on the process of translating specialised texts and apply their skills to realistic translation projects.
Module aims
This module equips students with a range of practical and professional translation skills that will allow them to successfully design, complete and evaluate specialised translation projects in their language combinations. The module focuses on making students reflective and self-critical of their translation process, their use of resources and tools and their ability to propose and choose suitable translation solutions for their texts. Departing from English-language texts of different genres, students learn to identify typologies, conventions, and features of specialised texts (such as medical texts, patents, legal and institutional documents, business reports, technical manuals and brochures). The module endeavours to provide students with real-life translation assignments that language professionals encounter in their daily lives. The module fosters and hones skills in text analysis, documentation, terminology management and transfer to ensure students can effectively tackle specialised translation projects.
Outline syllabus
The module follows a step-by-step approach that provides students with an overview of specialised translation grounded in theory and practice. After reviewing the principles of a functionalist approach to translation, students become familiar with concepts of text genre conventions, terminology management, communicative functions, and macrotextual and microtextual features. With this solid framework to approach specialised translation tasks, students work independently and collaboratively to produce translations in specialised domains and language pairs of their choice.
Indicative module syllabus*
The module consists of 12 teaching hours.
Session 1. Introduction to specialised translation
- Functionalism applied to practical translation:
- Translation Problems & General Translation Strategies
Session 2. Genre and text type analysis
- Text-type conventions in different genres
- Corpus compilation
Session 3. Terminology
- Terminology mining and management
Session 4. Multilingual translation workshop on specialised translation
- Analysing a text: identifying problems and strategies
- Focus on the source text
Reading Week
Session 5. Multilingual translation workshop: student-led (1 hour)
- Analysing a text
- Suggesting translation solutions
Session 6. Multilingual translation workshop on specialised translation
Session 7. Multilingual translation workshop and Wrap-up (1 hour)
*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.
Assessment
100% Specialised translation project
The specialised translation project will be a comprehensive study of textual conventions designed to support a specialised translation project. The project will include the compilation of a small sample corpus, a comparative study of the conventions and textual features at a macrotextual and microtextual level, a glossary, the translation of an excerpt from the corpus and a report on translation problems and solutions. Students will receive formative feedback on their project proposals in preparation for the submission of the project.
Requirements
- Students will need to bring their own laptops to the class.