SPECIALISED ENGLISH AND MEDIA TRANSLATION

This is one of the basic courses within the Interpreting and Translation for Publishing and for Special Purposes. This course aims to provide students with practical and methodological tools for interlinguistic and intersemiotic translation from and into English.
Building on the knowledge and competences acquired in the previous academic year, the course aims to strengthen students’ ability to carry out IT vs EN contrastive linguistic analysis and to apply the findings to audiovisual translation.

Knowledge and competences
By the end of the course, students will have acquired knowledge of:
- key concepts relating to multimodality and multimediality
- the stylistic differences between texts written to be read vs texts written to be delivered orally, and the differences involved in organising and delivering the information
- relevant theories for multimodal analysis
- theory and practice of audiovisual translation (subtitling)

Applying knowledge and competences
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- analyse multimodal and multimedia texts, focussing on meaning-making resulting from the combination and interaction of the different semiotic resources
- rewrite texts depending on the medium used for information delivery (written vs oral)
- apply relevant theoretical knowledge to audiovisual translation
- carry out linguistic analysis aimed at identifying translation problems
- solve translation problems in multimodal texts by appropriately applying translation strategies and techniques
- use software for creating/translating subtitles

Making judgements
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- appropriately select strategies and techniques
- justify and self-evaluate their own translation choices

Communication skills:
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- use the relevant metalanguage in contrastive analysis and evaluation of translation strategies
- communicate their own observations on contrasting features of the two languages involved, as well as translation strategies, both in the classroom and in the e-learning dedicated space

Learning skills:
By the end on the course, students will be able to critically consult the relevant bibliographic resources.

Students are required to possess English language competences and skills at C1 level of the European Common Reference Framework for languages.
Although no certificate in Information Technology is required, for successful learning and training the following skills are necessary:
- a very good mastery of Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Powerpoint
- a very good mastery of Web-based research tools.
Students who do not possess sufficient IT skills will need to acquire them on their own.

The course is composed of a 30-hour monographic course, which is divided into two parts involving the study of the following topics:

Part 1 – Intersemiotic translation
- Stylistic differences between texts written to be read and texts written for oral delivery
- Contrastive analysis of audio guides in Italian and in English at the macro level (structure, content types) and micro levels (verbal and non-verbal language)

Part 2 – Audiovisual translation (subtitling)
- Theory and practice of subtitling
- Main software for subtitling
- Practical activities: EN>IT subtitling

The slides used during the lesson will be made available weekly in a Moodle-based course (https://moodle.unive.it/course/view.php?id=6078 - the password can be requested by email to mariaelisa.fina@unive.it).
The following textbooks are recommended:

- Fina, Maria Elisa. 2018. Investigating Effective Audio Guiding. A Multimodal Comparison of the Genre in Italian and English. Roma: Carocci.

- Perego, Elisa. 2005. La traduzione audiovisiva. Roma: Carocci.

- van Leeuwen, Theo. 1999. Music, Sounds. London: Macmillan.

Students may choose any paper or electronic dictionary.
Recommended monolingual online dictionary: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

The exam is composed of two final assignments (‘tesine’) and an oral exam.
More specifically:

- Tesina 1: final assignment involving intersemiotic translation from Italian into English in the field of cultural heritage promotion, e.g. creating an audio guide or video guide script in English starting from an Italian source text written to be read. The assignment must also include a commentary in which the approach and strategies adopted are illustrated by referring to the theoretical background acquired during the course (further details will be provided in the first lesson)

- Tesina 2: final assignment involving subtitling from English into Italian (further details will be provided in the first lesson)

- Oral exam: powerpoint presentation (around 20-30 minutes), in which students will illustrate the approach and strategies adopted in the subtitling assignment (‘Tesina 2’). Indications on how to structure an academic presentation will be provided during the course. After the presentation, discussion on both Assignment 1 and Assignment 2 will follow.

Assessment criteria:
1. translation quality
2. ability to select appropriate strategies and techniques adopted in translation
3. ability to motivate the translation choices

The activities/assignments that will be indicated on the e-learning Moodle course on a weekly basis are compulsory for ALL students in order to access the exam.

The course will be held mainly in English and will consist in both lecture-based and interactive classes. For learning purposes, students are required to actively participate in the exam practice activities and discussions, both in the classroom and in Moodle.
All students (including non-attendees) are require to sign up to the Moodle course (https://moodle.unive.it/course/view.php?id=6078 - the passwod can be requested by email to mariaelisa.fina@unive.it) and, for exam preparation, refer to the materials and activities that will be uploaded in Moodle on a weekly basis.

Italian

The course will be held in dual mode (a limited group of students will be in the classroom, the others will follow the lesson from home using Zoom). The lessons will be recorded and made available for students for no more than 7 days. All students are warmly invited to read the following information about Ca' Foscari's guidelines for infection prevention:
https://www.unive.it/pag/40644/ (Covid-19: le misure di Ca’ Foscari)
https://www.unive.it/pag/fileadmin/user_upload/ateneo/lavora_con_noi/covid-19/protocollo-anticontagio-covid19-31-7-2020.pdf Protocollo anti-contagio
https://www.unive.it/pag/40185 Covid-19: informazioni per studenti

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "International cooperation" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development