Course Title: Discourse Studies for Translators

Part B: Course Detail

Teaching Period: Term1 2007

Course Code: LANG5395

Course ID: 037688

Course Title: Discourse Studies for Translators

School: 365T Global Studies, Soc Sci & Plng

Program Code: C6067 - Advanced Diploma of Translating and Interpreting

Course Contact : Miranda Lai

Course Contact Phone: +61 3 99253523

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


Name and Contact Details of All Other Relevant Staff

Nominal Hours: 80

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.

Pre-requisites and Co-requisites

Co-Requisites:
The module is delivered concurrently with VBN927 Context and Practice of Translation 1A.

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 Codes, Titles, Elements and Performance Criteria

National Element Code & Title:

VBN931 Discourse Studies for Translators


Learning Outcomes


1. Demonstrate proficiency in aspects of textual analysis relevant to the translation process.
2. Paraphrase in context phrases or sentences from a text at the Professional Translator level.


Overview of Learning Activities


Details of Learning Activities

What opportunities does the course provide for me to learn? What will I be expected to do?
In classroom situations, you will be involved in intensive hands on practice with a variety of professional texts to develop practical strategies and skills to enable you to effectively comprehend and translate such texts, using discourse analysis and textlinguistics principles acceptable to the profession internationally. You will also learn to use these frameworks to “justify’ your translation decisions in any language direction.
You will engage in the following:
• Identifying textual, contextual and extra-textual aspects and assessing their role in comprehending and translating texts.
• Paraphrasing words, phrases, sentences etc in context, as a way to test comprehension and to develop appropriate strategies for translating texts, particularly transpositions necessary to achieve a natural target text.
• Comprehending the content and real or intended meaning of texts, and making decisions about how to achieve appropriate equivalence into the target language.
• Recognising technical vocabulary, a variety of registers, collocations and idioms and developing strategies for dealing with them effectively in the translation process.
• Identifying cohesive devices, their types and functions and using them as a basis for working out types of “chunking” that will facilitate the translation process, i.e. aim for accurate and natural target language translations.
• Undertaking translation of short texts and developing the ability to meaningfully talk about the translation process you have engaged in using the principles and the language of discourse analysis and textlinguistics as is expected of professional translators internationally.


Teaching Schedule

Students will be provided with a program calendar outlining a series of weekly themes/topics that form a guide for study and practice.

Learning Outcomes are scheduled as follows: Week 8 and Week 12 or as directed by the teacher.

Part-Time Groups will complete one Learning Outcome in the final weeks of the semester as notified by teacher.

Overview of Learning Resources


Learning Resources

Prescribed Texts


References


Other Resources

To be supplied by the teacher.


Overview of Assessment

Two Learning Outcome activities.



Assessment Tasks

Learning Outcome 1
Textual Analysis of an English language text, involving exercises relating to aspects of cohesion, “chunking” and other textual and contextual factors.
You will be required to discuss the role of these in comprehending and translating the text. (50%)

Learning Outcome 2
A short translation (into either language direction)of a written text and an accompanying “rationale”, based on the discourse analysis principles covered in class, to “justify” your translation decisions.
You will be expected to focus on ‘transpositions’, ie cohesion, lexical, grammatical , syntactical etc changes you have chosen to use during the translation process to achieve appropriate equivalence. (50%)

Course Overview: Access Course Overview