Translation Portuguese - English II

Code:

FLUP0823

Acronym:

TPI2

Instance: 2006/2007 - 2S

Active?	Yes
Web Page:	http://web.letras.up.pt/egalvao/translation_main_page.htm
Responsible unit:	Department of Anglo-American Studies
Course/CS Responsible:	Modern Languages and Literature - Portuguese and English Studies

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
EFI	6	Official Study Plan - LEFI	4	2,5	5	-
EIA	9	Official Study Plan - LEIA	4	2,5	5	-
EPI	18	Official Study Plan - LEPI	4	2,5	5	-

Objectives

The second module of the Translation Portuguese into English class will concentrate on further developing and consolidating the translation skills students started acquiring in the first semester. For this reason, the underlying philosophy and general teaching approach will remain the same (see next two paragraphs). Students who already attended the first module will be encouraged to specialize in a subject area and/or text type of their choice.

Our class is a learner-centred environment, so we have to work together to create that kind of environment. This means:
The teacher is not the source of all knowledge, but a facilitator of students’ learning experiences, and a learner along with the students.
The students are not passive recipients of knowledge or know-how but its active generators, and thus teachers along with the teacher.
People learn best not by listening passively and memorizing what they hear but by doing things, actively participating in a process. This hands-on pedagogy lies behind the practical translation seminar: if you learn to translate best by translating, then the best way to teach students how to translate is to give them texts and have them translate them into another language.
from: ROBINSON, Douglas. Becoming A Translator. London: Routledge, 1997 (pp. 265 and 275).

Don Kiraly’s position paper (available at http://www.fut.es/~apym/symp/kiraly.html) in the online symposium INNOVATION IN TRANSLATOR AND INTERPRETER TRAINING (ITIT), 17-25 January 2000, is a good illustration of how we hope to proceed in our class:

Here the classroom is seen as embedded in the real world, not cut off from it. Students might work on authentic translation assignments, interacting with authors, clients and potential readers, and drawing on the expertise of the teacher as well as other human resources to provide needed information or suggest possible modes of action. [. . .] (it is) a collaborative learning environment including not only interaction among students but also the extensive involvement of the students in every aspect of the teaching/learning process.

Program

We learn mainly by doing, so we learn to translate mainly by translating. We also learn by reading about translation, analysing other people’s translations, discussing the problems, difficulties, and solutions we encounter when we translate, and by sharing the joys and frustrations of our activity as language mediation experts. This is why our course is best described as a TRANSLATION WORKSHOP. All the members of our small discourse community will take an active part in the joint process of enquiry, asking questions, giving and taking ideas, opinions, and reasons for translation choices. Remember that having an inquisitive mind is the first step to learning successfully and is a prerequisite for a life-long learning activity such as translating. The purpose of our workshop is therefore to practise translating a variety of mainly written texts. We shall become familiar with various translation approaches and procedures and focus on different areas such as context and register, language functions and text types, as well as source text and target text objectives and audiences. We will also deal with specific terminology, as well as with collocations, false friends, idioms, and culture-bound terms. Keep in mind that this is a SKILLS COURSE, where we start to become acquainted with some of the multiple tools required of a translator today.

Students, divided into ‘translation companies’, will work on authentic translation jobs, whose nature will largely depend on the teacher’s contacts with various Portuguese institutions. In the past, group projects included the translation of the FLUP website, the FENACERCI website, the FLUP Portuguese Utopias website, and a Career Choice Questionnaire. Groups will also be encouraged to work on specialised themes and/or text types, with the aid of small comparable Portuguese and English corpora built with Corpógrafo (www.linguateca.pt). Here are some of the topics selected by students in the past: microbiology (bacteria), stigma and mental health, endometrial cancer, the Visionarium website, psychological tests, social phobia, energy from landfill gas, gastronomy (e.g., recipes from Portuguese-speaking countries), nutritional intervention in palliative care, and many others.

Main Bibliography

Recommended books (available in the library):
AUSTERMÜHL, Frank. Electronic Tools for Translators. Translation Practices Explained. Manchester: St Jerome, 2001.
BAKER, Mona. In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. London: Routledge, 1992.

Complementary Bibliography

HATIM, Basil and MUNDAY, Jeremy. Translation. An Advanced Resource Book. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
ROBINSON, Douglas. Becoming A Translator. London: Routledge, 1997.
SNELL-HORNBY, Mary. Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach (Revised Edition). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1995.

Students should regularly consult the Translation Portuguese-English website (web.letras.up.pt/egalvao) for information about the course, projects, homework, useful links, etc.

Teaching methods and learning activities

In this second module, students will be divided into groups of 3 or 4 and will form their own Translation Companies. Each company will be responsible for:
• creating their own image (through a webpage and Power Point presentations);
• deciding on each partner’s specific responsibilities (project management, translation, revision, overall quality control, etc.);
• managing each translation job in a professional way (from answering requests for quotation and planning the project to delivering the final product and invoicing the client);

Feedback will be provided on each job, which will have to be revised following the comments and suggestions received.

Software

All classes will take place in the Translation Room (Room 211), where each student will work at a computer using a variety of software and the Internet for terminology and style mining.

Evaluation Type

Eligibility for exams

Students doing continuous assessment are expected to attend 75% of classes. Students who do not comply with this rule will automatically have to opt for taking the final exam.

Calculation formula of final grade

To be announced at the beginning of the semester.

Examinations or Special Assignments

Not applicable.

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Applicable to working students. To be announced at the beginning of the semester.

Classification improvement

Students wishing to improve their grade will have to take the final exam in the relevant exam session (July).

Observations

Language of Instruction: English

Translating from Portuguese into English
Although the direction of translation has been traditionally assumed to be into the translator’s mother tongue, it is by now widely recognized that translations from languages of limited diffusion into major languages, such as English, often have to be carried out by non-native English translators. Moreover, “English has long since left the ownership of the native speakers in England, and has become, as Henry Widdowson has described it, ‘world property’” (Snell-Hornby, 2000*). Many authors (among whom Cay Dollerup and Mary Snell-Hornby) have repeatedly pointed out that English has become, volens nolens, the international lingua franca; that translations into English are very frequently meant to reach audiences made up mostly of non-native speakers of this language; and that, as a consequence, it is rather unrealistic, if not even arrogant (Stewart, 2000**), to insist on the somewhat old-fashioned notion that translators should translate only and exclusively into their mother tongue (a concept which is undergoing drastic changes in our increasingly globalised world). In Portugal, for instance (and although Portuguese is among the top ten languages in the world in terms of number of speakers) many years of experience with translation trainees have demonstrated very clearly that a large number of employers tend to assume that translation students must be able to translate from and into the foreign language. For this reason, the texts chosen for this class (for individual and group projects as well as for homework) will be selected from areas which a translator may realistically be confronted with on the Portuguese market – the Internet, business, tourism, international conferences, exhibitions, etc. The following is a list of potential text-types: websites, abstracts; brochures and catalogues (tourist, commercial, institutional); academic papers; research projects; conference programmes, etc.
*Snell-Hornby, Mary. “’McLanguage’: the identity of English as an issue in translation today” in M. Grosman, M., Kadric, I. Kovačič, M. Snell-Hornby (eds.). Translation into Non-Mother Tongues. In Professional Practice and Training. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 2000.
**Stewart, Dominic. “Conventionality, Creativity and Translated Text: The Implications of Electronic Corpora in Translation.” in Olohan, Maeve (ed.). Intercultural Faultlines. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 2000.