Institut für Übersetzen und Dolmetschen (IÜD), Universität Heidelberg

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Institut für Übersetzen und Dolmetschen, Universität Heidelberg, Plöck 57a, 69117 Heidelberg. Contact Professor Dr. Bogdan Babych, email bogdan.babych@iued.uni-heidelberg.de

View the Project on GitHub bogdanbabych/courses

Institute for Translation and Interpreting, Heidelberg University

Winter Semester 2020-2021

0945BUE36222 Übersetzungswissenschaft: Advanced topics in translation studies - Translation quality, critical evaluation and justification of translation decisions

The course will address advanced topics in theoretical translation studies, specifically focussing on methods and approaches for such critical analysis and justification of translation decisions. We will explore theoretical foundations of audience design, understanding text genre, style and register of the translated texts and their interaction with the purpose of translation. We will analyse how these textual parameters inform the choice of a translation strategy for a given text, its target audience and its purpose, and how such strategy selects specific translation methods and guides individual choices of target language resources and available translation equivalents. The course will also explore how corpus-based evidence can support such translation decisions, including the choice of suitable general-language and terminological translation equivalents.

In the course the key theoretical concepts will be introduced during the first few weeks. Further classes will focus on student-lead presentations of chosen articles and chapters from the literature that explore specific topics.

Learning outcomes: The students will be able to critically analyse translation decisions and justify the choice of a suitable translation strategy, in relation to the expectations of the target audience and the purpose of translation. They will be able to orient themselves in the current literature on the topic; to discuss open advanced questions in translation studies, such as the nature and possibility of translation equivalence, principles of evaluation translation quality, types and limitations of modern theoretical models of translation, the (im)possibility of a single ‘correct’ translation for a given text and the need of different ‘fit for purpose’ translations for different audiences, usage scenarios, historical epochs, societies and/or cultural environments; the pro-active role of the translator in cultural mediation and the concept of ‘translation’ as ‘intervention’.

Assessment for the course: Student’s presentation for the class of a chosen article or chapter on a specific topic in translation studies (20% of the mark) and a translation commentary or an essay (up to 2000 words, due 3 weeks after the last class, 80% of the mark).

Language of instruction: English

Virtual Seminar Room

We start this course on-line. Please join our Seminar Room:
https://heiconf.uni-heidelberg.de/bab-eeq-ax3
on Tuesday, 10:15 am. If any problems with computer audio, you can also dial in via the phone: +49 6221 431 0 410, and then enter Phone PIN: 4341-9332-8165

Submission of course assessment

If you take the course for credit, please submit your case study / report / essay via Moodle (the submission area is at the top of the course page) Please submit you work by 23.03.2021. (If you need an extension, please let me know).

Marking criteria and guidance on essays https://heibox.uni-heidelberg.de/d/84a4d5f82bf14578b5f0/

PowerPoints of presentations

Lisa Weygold: Chapter 5 from Saldanha and O’Brien’s Research Methodologies in Translation Studies (via Moodle). This powerpoint presentation includes more in-depth information about the topic and some important techniques and aspects

Course materials

Week01: 02 Nov – 08 Nov 2020: Course Introduction

Week02: 09 Nov – 15 Nov 2020:

Week03: 16 Nov – 22 Nov 2020:

Week04: 23 Nov – 29 Nov 2020:

  1. Please try to find culturally or linguistically marked concepts which may require overt translation, e.g.:
    • UK cultural concepts: “Right Honourable Friend’; “Scottish nationalism”
    • or linguistic expressions which cannot be translated literary, e.g.: “loom large; symptomatic; cause; happen” (maybe you could find some culture-specific expressions in other languages and cultures, and check if they could be translated into English
  2. Explore parallel and monolingual corpora in Sketchengine.eu, e.g., Europarl, Opus, or BNC (check concordances, word sketches, word sketch differences for the expression you have selected), trying to answer the following questions: — Which translation strategies have been used, if a direct translation is not possible? — Is there evidence of semantic prosodies of these words?

Please present your findings as a short (PPT/PDF/Open Office) presentation, up to 5 slides. You can upload your slides onto our Slack channel or send them to me via email before our class.

Week05: 30 Nov – 06 Dec 2020:

Week06: 07 Dec – 13 Dec 2020:

Week07: 14 Dec – 20 Dec 2020:

Christmas break: 21 Dec – 10 Jan (3 weeks, no classes)

Week08: 11 Jan – 17 Jan 2021:

Week09: 18 Jan – 24 Jan 2021:

Week10: 25 Jan – 31 Jan 2021:

Week11: 01 Feb – 07 Feb 2021:

Week12: 08 Feb – 14 Feb 2021:

Week13: 15 Feb – 21 Feb 2021:

Week14: 22 Feb – 28 Feb 2021: