69574 - Translation from German into Italian II (Second Language)

Learning outcomes

Students will acquire a good knowledge of the tools – various grammars and dictionaries, parallel and similar text corpora – as well as of the main translation methods and techniques – minor and major sentence restructuring, writing and editing of target text.

Students will learn how to apply these methods and techniques to the translation of a variety of different complex texts, from German into Italian, and will learn how to identify and apply the most appropriate strategies to the communication/operating function of translation texts.

Course contents

This course sets out to provide a sound grasp of translation methods and techniques, going beyond the usage of calques and metalinguistic translations. Translation will be regarded as a communication and operational process for the production of a new text starting from a source text. The following steps will be necessarily taken: a rigorous text analysis, the comprehension of the text purposes and of the appropriate translation strategy, the adaptation of style and register in the target text. Workshops will be held to focus on an in-depth understanding of widely disseminated texts, also from a cross-linguistic perspective. Specific emphasis will be placed on the analysis of fundamental information, argumentative/expressive structure and of additional information. Every week students will be assigned a translation which will be individually read and corrected by the lecturer. The following text types will be analysed: newspaper articles, paper-based and electronic press releases, websites in their various forms, web-based instruction manuals.

Readings/Bibliography

Eco U. (2003) Dire quasi la stessa cosa, Milano, Bompiani (or see subsequent editions)

Nord C.(1988). Textanalyse und Übersetzen, Heidelberg, Groos. (see subsequent editions)

 Stolze R. (1994). Übersetzungstheorien. Eine Einführung.Tübingen, G. Narr Verlag.

Reiss, K, Vermeer H. J. (1984). Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie, Tübingen, Niemeyer.

AA:VV.(1998), Handbuch Translation, Tübingen, Stauffenberg

Teaching methods

The course will include 1 lesson per week about theoretical principles and 1 lesson per week consisting of a hands-on textual workshop.

Students will be required to submit a translated text each week, which will be individually corrected and assessed by the lecturer. During lectures students will be allowed to use any kind of paper-based and electronic dictionaries, databanks and online resources. In addition, parallel texts will be retrieved and specific corpora constructed. Group work is also contemplated.

Assessment methods

Weekly assessment Every week students’ work will be assessed individually and personalized feedback will be given for improvement and individual study.

Final test: computer-based translation in a computer lab of a text genre among those analysed during the course, with free access to all reference resources and documentation tools, including web-based ones.

Teaching tools

Overhead projector, written work texts, online tools, samples of translated theatre plays, use of Dropbox as cloud storage.

Office hours

See the website of Roberto Menin