INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATION STUDIES
01:013:304
Course description: This course will introduce students to the main themes and issues in
contemporary Translation Studies. The course will begin with a brief survey of the role of
translation in world history and the various ways in which translation has been theorized
in the modern western tradition. Readings and discussion will then turn to current major
topics in TS: the role or ‘positionality’ of the translator/interpreter, the relationship
between translation and ideology/power (including the role that translation has played
and continues to play in the history of empire, war and global media), the ethics of
literary translation and practical interpreting and the impact of technologies like subtitling
and machine translation.
Course objectives: The course will familiarize students with the main issues in the field
of TS and encourage them to think critically about translation as a highly complex,
culturally and socially determined practice with significant implications for our everyday
interactions with the world in which we live. More broadly, it will teach them to think
critically about wider textual and reading practices and forms of reception - in literature,
the media and institutionalized forms of communication - as a way of exploring what it
means to be an educated and responsible citizen in a globalized and yet increasingly
polarized and conflict-ridden world. The course will emphasize close reading and
intensive discussion of all assigned articles and these will generally be kept to a minimum
of two per week. Impromptu student presentations and an in-class midterm will
encourage students to think on their feet and to bring a measure of spontaneity and
creativity to their analyses of texts and trends.
Students taking the AMESALL Certificate in Translation will additionally benefit from
an introduction to issues in interpreting, subtitling and machine-translating that will
complement required courses in the practical component of the Certificate. They will also
be encouraged to explore translation-related professional and activist websites for both
networking and pedagogical purposes. Certificate students may also substitute a practical
final project for the paper in conjunction with one of the required practicum courses (with
instructors’ permission).
Course requirements: This is a reading and discussion intensive course. Attendance and
participation are obligatory and will be a central component of the final grade. Students
are required to read and prepare each article for class discussion, and will be called upon
at random to give a five to ten minute presentation of a selected reading, based upon
questions that will be circulated to the class as a whole in advance. An in-class midterm
and a 10-15 page final paper will count for 25% and 35% of the final grade respectively.
Required texts:
Critical Readings in Translation Studies, ed. Mona Baker, London & New York:
Routledge, 2010.
The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies, ed. Jeremy Munday, London & New
York: Routledge, 2009.
All other articles will be available on electronic reserve.
Weeks 1 & 2
What is translation?
Readings:
Peter Newmark, “The linguistic and communicative states in translation theory” in The
Routledge Companion to Translation Studies, ed. Jeremy Munday, pp. 20-35.
Basil Hatem, “Translating text in context” [in Munday] pp.36-53.
David Katan, “Translation as intercultural communication” [in Munday] pp.74-92.
Susan Bassnett, “When is a translation not a translation?” in Constructing Cultures:
Essays on Literary Translation, eds. Susan Bassnett & Andre Lefevere, pp. 25-40.
Weeks 3, 4 & 5
The position of the translator and the ethics of translation
Readings:
Maria Tymoscko, “Ideology and the position of the translator: in what sense is a
translator ‘in-between’?” in Critical Readings in Translation Studies, ed. Mona Baker,
pp. 213-228.
Theo Hermans, “Translation, politics, ethics” [in Munday] pp.93-105; “The Translator’s
voice in translated narrative” [in Baker] pp. 195-212.
Lawrence Venuti, “Invisibility” in The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation,
pp. 1-42; “Heterogeneity” in The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of
Difference, pp. 8-30.
Brad Davidson, “The Interpreter as institutional gatekeeper: the social-linguistic role of
interpreters in Spanish-English medical discourse” [in Baker] pp. 152-173.
2
Weeks 6 & 7
Translation and empire
Readings:
Susan Bassnett & Harish Trivedi, “Introduction: Of colonies, cannibals and vernaculars”
in Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice, eds. Bassnett and Trivedi, pp. 1-18.
Andre Lefevere, “Composing the other” [in Bassnett & Trivedi] pp. 75-94.
Vicente Rafael, “The Politics of translation” in Contracting Colonialism: Translation and
Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under early Spanish Rule, pp. 23-54.
Weeks 8, 9 & 10
Translation and ideology
Readings:
Mohja Kahf, “Packaging ‘Huda’: Sha’rawi’s memoirs in the United States reception
environment” [in Baker] pp. 30-46.
Mona Baker, “Reframing conflict in translation” [in Baker] pp. 115-130.
Esperanca Bielsa and Susan Bassnett, “Translation in global news agencies” and
“Journalism and translation” in Translation in Global News, pp. 56-94.
Richard Jacquemond, “Translation policies in the Arab world” in The Translator, vol. 15,
no. 1, pp. 15-35.
Sehnaz Tahir Gulcaglar, “Translation, presumed innocent” in The Translator, vol. 15,
no.1, pp. 37-64.
Weeks 11 & 12
Translation and war
Readings:
Vicente Rafael, “Translation in wartime” [in Baker] pp. 385-390.
Zrinka Stahuljac, “War, translation, transnationalism: interpreters in and of the war
(Croatia 1991-92)” [in Baker] pp. 393-414.
3
Lisa Hajjar, “Speaking the conflict, or how the Druze became bilingual: a study of Druze
translators in the Israeli military courts in the West Bank and Gaza” in Ethnic and Racial
Studies, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 299-328.
Weeks 13 & 14
Translation and technology
Readings:
Tony Hartley, “Technology and translation” [in Munday] pp. 106-127.
Delia Chiaro, “Issues in audiovisual translation” [in Munday] pp.141-165.
Rita Raley, “Machine translation and global English” [in Baker] pp.419-434.
Eric Cazdyn, “A new line in the geometry” [in Baker] pp. 451-460.
4