AIMS

In the field of political and legal/judicial discourse, this module aims:

• to create awareness of the challenges raised by the translation of a varied range of political, public administration and public law texts;
• to explore and develop effective strategies for managing complex linguistic and cultural transmissions;
• to attain high levels of proficiency in translation practice and critical reflection

MODULE CONTENT

• Specificity of legal and political translation
• Translating political and legal articles
• Translating public legal texts
• Solving specific issues in legal and political translation
• Analyzing legal and political documents

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• demonstrate a high level of critical awareness of the issues raised by the translation of a range of texts
• show understanding of a range of translation texts in relation to their professional and technical context
• evaluate and apply translation theories introduced in EUT401 Theory of Translation
• reflect critically on his/her own translation practice
• demonstrate appropriate use of a wide range of translation resources
• demonstrate proficiency in translation skills by producing fluent translations in his/her target language that reflect the subtleties of nuance and meaning of the source text while maintaining content, style and accuracy
• present ideas in a structured, logical and coherent manner.

Teaching: teaching is by 5 lectures/seminars in the second semester (Spring).

Skills that will be practised and developed

Lectures will develop the student’s capacity to absorb information, including through note-taking.

Seminars will develop the capacity to deploy this information and apply it to teaching and explaining.

Seminars and coursework will enable students to develop their vocabulary, improve their written communication in the sublanguage studied

Through coursework and examination students will demonstrate their knowledge the skills acquired and developed.

Other academic and key skills developed include research and organisational skills, communication and basic word-processing skills, intercultural awareness as well as interpersonal skills to be applied in the professional world of translation.

Assessment will comprise:

(a)  A formative (i.e.., non assessed) translation of a 600 word excerpt about party politics and parliamentary politics.  Commentary: 900 words.                                                                                             

(b)  A summative translation of a 700 word excerpt about public law. Commentary: 1100 words. This translation and commentary is 40% of the final mark of the module.

(c) A summative translation of a 900 word excerpt political administration. Commentary: 1300 words. This translation and commentary is 60% of the final mark of the module

INDICATIVE SYLLABUS CONTENT

Week 1 (28 Jan) Introduction to Translation in the Legal and Political fields (Carlos Sanz Mingo)

Week 2 (11 Feb) Essentially contested concepts, and the ‘travelling problem’ in Politics; The use/non-use of exegetic translation (Mark  Donovan)    

Week 3 (25 Feb) Legal and political texts: the Constitutions. A study case: the translation of the Spanish Constitution into English (Andrew Dowling)

Week 4 (11 March) Translation in Everyday Practice, Science and Politics (tbc)

Week 5 (25 March) Public Law. Public Legal Texts: Statutes, Law Reports and Judgments (Trinidad Clares)

INDICATIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Apter, Emily. 2012. Against World Literature. On the Politics of Untranslatability. London:  Verso.

Bergenholtz, Henning and Sven Tarp. 1995. Manual of Specialised Lexicography. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Biel, Lucja. 2008. Legal Terminology in Translation Practice: Dictionaries, Googling or Discussion Forums? In SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation, 3, 1. Presov. Pp. 22-38.

Cao, Deborah. 2007. Translating Law. Clevedon/Buffalo/Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Topics in Translation, pp. xii, 189

Caramani, Daniele. 2011. Comparative Politics. Oxford: O.U.P.

Feria García, Manuel C. (ed.). 1999. Traducir para la Justicia. Granada: Comares.

Mayoral Asensio, Roberto. 2003. Translating Official Documents. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.

Olsen, Frances, Alexander Lorz & Dieter Stein. 2009. Translation Issues in Language and Law. London: Palgrave.

Peters, B. Guy. 1998. Comparative Politics: Theories and Methods. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kennedy, Chris. 1984. English for Specific Purposes. London: MacMillan.

Kittridge, Richard and John Lehrberger (eds.) 1982. Sublanguage. Studies of Language in Restricted Semantic Domains. Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter.

Šaračević, Susan. 1997. New Appraoch to Legal Traslation. London: Kluwer Law International.

Schäffner, Christina. 2004. Political Discourse Analysis from the point of view of Translation Studies, in Journal of Language and Politics, 3(1), p.117-150.

Tiersma, Peter M. 2000. Legal Language. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

NB:  Individual tutors will provide language specific reading lists

Seminar 2(11^th February 2014)- please ensure you have prepared in advance of the class

The seminar will comprise two parts:

1. A discussion of the “essentially contested concepts” based on the following materials:

Gallie, W. B. (1956) Essentially contested concepts, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56: 167-198. Also in: Gallie, W. B. (1964). Philosophy and the Historical Understanding

Collier, D. et al. (2006). Essentially contested concepts: Debates and applications. Journal of Political Ideologies, 11: 211-46

Students should be prepared to discuss the issue/s raised by the notion of essentially contested concepts in relation to the issues in translation studies of “transcoding” and “non-equivalence”,  as well as “language for specific purposes”.

2. A discussion of the challenges of translating modern “classic” Italian political phrases, and the possible use of exegetic translation, based on the following text:

Bedani, G. (2010). The Language of Italian Politics: Some notes on the use of exegetic translation’, pp. 61-71 in A. Ledgway and A. L. Lepschy (eds), Didattica della lingua italiana: testo e contesto, Guerra Edizioni.