Course Title: Discourse Studies for Translators

Part A: Course Overview

Program: C6067

Course Title: Discourse Studies for Translators

Portfolio: DSC

Nominal Hours: 80.0

Regardless of the mode of delivery, represent a guide to the relative teaching time and student effort required to successfully achieve a particular competency/module. This may include not only scheduled classes or workplace visits but also the amount of effort required to undertake, evaluate and complete all assessment requirements, including any non-classroom activities.

Course Code

Campus

Career

School

Learning Mode

Teaching Period(s)

LANG5395

City Campus

TAFE

365T Global Studies, Soc Sci & Plng

Face-to-Face

 Term1 2007,
Term1 2010,
Term2 2010,
Term1 2011

Course Contact: Miranda Lai

Course Contact Phone: +61 3 99253523

Course Contact Email: miranda.lai@rmit.edu.au


Course Description

This course aims to provide students with the skills and knowledge to perform textual analysis and to extend and consolidate their practical written skills and comprehension of written texts.



National Competency Codes and Titles

National Element Code & Title:

VBN931 Discourse Studies for Translators

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this module you will be expected to be able to demonstrate proficiency in handling a number of aspects of textual analysis deriving from discourse analysis and textlinguistics frameworks relevant to the translation process, and to be able to use such frameworks to “justify” your translation/transfer decisions as a professional translator. You will be able to:

  • Use textual and contextual/extratextual factors to identify types of written professional discourses. 
  • Assess the significance of these factors in the translation/transfer process. 
  • Identify types of cohesion and cohesive devices, and assess their role in enabling you as a translator to comprehend the nature of professional texts and types of meaning.
  • Use cohesion as a tool to “chunk “meaning in a text, and make appropriate translation decisions into the other language, focusing in particular on “transpositions” necessary to achieve a natural effect in the target language. 
  • Look at the levels at which meaning is created in language: the word, the phrase, the clause, the sentence, the paragraph etc, to identify at what level “chunking” is possible. 
  • Identify types of logical connections in texts: coordination and subordination as the two basic universal structures in language.
  • Paraphrase in context words, phrases etc, as a way to test comprehension of real or intended meaning, which is the brief of the professional translator to handle effectively. 
  • Identify technical vocabulary, unfamiliar collocations, register and idioms and develope appropriate strategies for dealing with them in the translation process.
  • Translate short texts in any language direction and use the frameworks discussed in class to provide a rationale for translation decisions and issues or difficulties encountered during the translation process.


Overview of Assessment

Two Learning Outcome tasks.