Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto Línguas e Literaturas Modernas

TRANSLATION PORTUGUESE-ENGLISH 2

SPRING SEMESTER 2008 Mo. 17:30-19:30 – Room 211 Thu. 10:30-12:30 – Room 211 Teacher: Elena Zagar Galvão [email protected]

[email protected]

Webpage: web.letras.up.pt/egalvao FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

Programme overview

 Objectives  Course description  Teaching procedures  Assessment  Class website FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

OBJECTIVES (1)

 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. Students who already attended the first module will be encouraged to specialize in a subject area and/or text type of their choice. FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

Please remember that:

Our class is a learner centred environment, so we have to work together to create that kind of environment.

FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

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. FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

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). FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

Course description

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. FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

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 practise some of the multiple tools required of a translator today.

FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

Students, divided into ‘translation companies’, will work on authentic translation jobs, whose nature will largely depend on the teacher’s and students’ contacts with various Portuguese institutions. In the past, group projects included the translation of the SASUP site (Student Support Services of the University of Porto), the website of the

Associação de Paralisia Cerebral de Coimbra

, the E-learning Café site, 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. FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

Teaching Procedures

   Students will be divided into groups of 4 and will form their own Translation Companies. Each company will be responsible for: creating its own image (name, Power Point presentation of the service it offers, webpage); 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

Assessment

Continuous assessment: 75% compulsory attendance (i.e., you have to attend 20 classes)  Translation company work: 60% (comprising translation products and company performance) End-of-semester exam: 40% FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

Class website

   web.letras.up.pt/egalvao Consult it regularly, please!

Channel of communication between teacher and class:     Translation jobs Bulletin board Online resources Etc.

FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

Bibliography

Selected readings from:  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. FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

Bibliography

Selected readings from:  LEDERER, Marianne. (Trans. By Ninon Larché)

Translation. The Interpretive Model

. Manchester, UK and Northampton, MA: 2003.

 ROBINSON, Douglas.

Becoming A Translator.

London: Routledge, 1997.

 SNELL-HORNBY, Mary.

Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1988.

FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

For Thursday

Do Task 1.

For Monday

Read the booklet

Translation, getting it right

and be prepared to discuss it.

FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão

Thank you!

Have a great week!

FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão