Transcript Padova Presentation

Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto
Línguas Aplicadas
General Translation
PORTUGUESE - ENGLISH
SPRING SEMESTER 2011
Tue. 15.30-17.30 Classroom 211
Wed. 15:30-17:30 Classroom 211
Teacher:
Elena Zagar Galvão
[email protected]
Webpage: web.letras.up.pt/egalvao
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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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 satisfactions
and frustrations we feel as future
language mediation experts.
This is why our course is best described as
a TRANSLATION WORKSHOP.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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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.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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This means that:
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.
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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.
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Theorizing translation is more important for the
translation student than theories of translation
as static objects to be studied and learned.
Students should become increasingly
comfortable thinking complexly about what they
do, both in order to improve their problemsolving skills and in order to defend their
translational decisions to agencies or clients or
editors who criticize them.
From:
ROBINSON, Douglas. Becoming A Translator. London: Routledge, 1997 (pp. 265 and
275).
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To practise deverbalisation through a variety
of exercises (note-taking, oral and written
summarising, etc.);
To practise analysing source texts from a
translator’s point of view;
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To introduce students to the various
strategies used by professional translators to
overcome difficulties at word, sentence and
text level;
To facilitate genre literacy by practising text
production of specific text types in the target
language;
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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To familiarise students with the multiple
translation resources available on the
Internet and help students separate the
wheat from the chaff;
To familiarise students with writing
conventions in the target language.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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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.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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BAKER, Mona. In Other Words: A
Coursebook on Translation. London and
New York: Routledge, 1992.
HATIM, Basil and Jeremy MUNDAY.
Translation. An Advanced Resource Book.
London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
NORD, Christiane. Translating as a
Purposeful Activity. Manchester:
St.Jerome Publishing, 1997.
ROBINSON, Douglas. Becoming A
Translator: An Accelerated Course.
London and New York: Routledge, 1997.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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Students should regularly consult the
Translation Portuguese-English website
(web.letras.up.pt/egalvao) for information
about the course, homework, useful links,
etc.
Students should keep an organized record
of all the useful sites they find and share
this information with the rest of the class.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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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 and presenting their staff and
services (through 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.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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Group Work: 40%
Class+Tutorial participation: 10%
Final test: 50%
NB: 75% compulsory attendance (working
students should come and talk to me at
the beginning of the semester)
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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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).
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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Many authors (among whom Cay Dollerup and
Mary Snell-Hornby) have repeatedly pointed
out that English has become 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 oldfashioned notion that translators should
translate only and exclusively into their mother
tongue (a concept which is undergoing drastic
changes in our increasingly globalised world).
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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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.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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Please send me an email with the following
information (mail to:[email protected])
 Brief bio
 Why translation?
 What translation?
 What do you expect from this class?
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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