Academic translation

studia pierwszego stopnia

English Philology

studia stacjonarne

profil akademicki

fakultatywne

Realizowany zdalnie

ECTS points in relation to student’s duties

total number of ECTS: 2

1 ECTS = 30 hours participation in classes

1 ECTS = 30 hours preparation to classses with direct participation of the teacher

Course description

This is a practical translation course focused on translating academic texts.

Course objectives

The aim of the course is to provide the students with the basics of working with academic texts from a variety of fields; this means that the texts will be inherently challenging, involving complex vocabulary and unfamiliar topics. The course will provide the students with knowledge and tools to overcome these difficulties and deal with the linguistic and strategic dilemmas that tend to surface when translating academic texts,

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Course content

Stage one

The beginning of the term (two-three classes) will be devoted to rudimentary aspects of translation: common translation errors, proofreading and translator resources.

So as to prepare the students for practical exercises and tasks in stage two they will be assigned homework, which will be checked in class.

This stage will be assessed (long graded proofreading task, small homework assignments for "+" or "-"; 30% of the final grade).

Stage two

The following four classes will focus on translating academic texts from various disciplines. A number of theoretical issues will also be briefly presented and discussed: comparative stylistics of academic texts, translator-author cooperation, peculiarities of English/Polish academic texts, discipline-specific vocabulary, bibliography management.

This stage will be assessed (three or four pieces of homework, 70% of the final grade).

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Methods of instruction/ forms of classroom activity:

extensive reading, text analysis, translation, group discussion, ICT tools - MS Teams

Reading list

Belczyk, A. (2002) Poradnik tłumacza. Warszawa: IDEA.

Chesterman, A. (1997) Memes of Translation: the Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Newmark, P. (2003) A Textbook of Translation. London: Longman.

Pym, Anthony. 1992. Translation and Text Transfer. Tarragona: Intercultural Studies Group.

Learning outcomes acc to PQR 2019:

Knowledge

1. The student has knowledge of the main developments, most important new achievements and fundamental disputed issues in linguistics and translation studies (k_W02/P6S_WG; m-W-1/P6S_WG)

Skills

2. The student can smoothly handle the academic and specialist discourse in spoken and written English (k_U04/P6S_UK; m-U-2/P6S_UW)

Social competences:

3. The student is ready to recognizes and formulates ethical and cultural issues related to their own translation work, responsibility before their colleagues and other members of the society (k_K05/P6S_KR; m-K-1/P6S_KR)

Forms of evaluation of learning outcomes

1. Active participation - 50% of the final grade (outcome 1,2,3)

2. Home assignments (translations) - 50 % of the final grade (outcome 1,2,3)

In order to pass, students are required to obtain at least 51% in every assignment.

Homework shall be submitted before the deadline set by the instructor into the appropriate folder on MS Teams. Any pieces of homework sent via e-mail will be ignored. Failure to submit the assignments on time will lower the grade by 10% for each day of delay. Failed homework assignments may be re-taken once (within two weeks of the original assignment being returned to the students), and will not be graded above 51%. Failing any re-take means failing the class.

The final grade is based on homework assignments. Passing all components is the requirement for passing the course. The final grade is calculated as a percentage of the maximum score that a student could have obtained. Standard grading rules apply (91-100 - 5.0, 81-90 - 4.5, 71-80 - 4.0, 61-70 - 3.5, 51-60 - 3.0, 0-50 - 2.0).

Plagiarism:

Any homework submitted by the students must be their own work. Any signs of co-authorship of homework, use of machine translation engines to assist the translation process (e.g. Google Translate) will be subject to scrutiny and if proven, will instantly result in failing the class. These are extremely easy to detect and way more obvious than you think. I prefer a poor or late (or poor and late) translation done by you than a bad translation done by Google Translate.

pass at 60% of the final grade