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 audiovisual translation from/into Italia/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:
- 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
- theory and practice of audiovisual translation (subtitling)

Applying knowledge and competences
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- 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 positive attitude to IT tools designed for learning
- a very good mastery of Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Powerpoint
- a very good mastery of Web-based research tools
- a very good mastery of the Italian language (for international students a B2 level is required)
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.

Course contents:
- Theory and practice of subtitling
- Main software for subtitling
- Practical activities: EN>IT subtitling
- Practical activities: IT>EN subtitling
The audiovisual texts that will be used for practice will include excerpts from TV series, cartoons, travel documentaries, promotional videos, movies.

All the materals that will be uploaded on the Moodle course weekly are compulsory for exam preparation.

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

- Taylor, Cristopher. 2004. “Multimodal Text Analysis and Subtitling”. In E. Ventola, C. Charles, M. Kaltenbacher, Perspectives on Multimodality. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 153-172. (provided by the lecturer)

- Díaz Cintas, Jorge & Remael, Aline. 2021. “The Semiotics of Subtitling”. In Subtitling Concepts and Practices. London: Routledge. (provided by the lecturer)

Recommended readings:
- Díaz Cintas, Jorge & Remael, Aline. 2021. Subtitling Concepts and Practices. London: Routledge.

- Dore, Margherita, 2020. Humour in Audiovisual Translation: Theories and Applications. London: Routledge.

- Pérez Gonzales, Luis. 2014. Theories, Methods and Issues. London: Routledge.


Online or printed dictionaries: free choice
Online monolingual dictionary recommended: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Software: Aegisub

The exam is composed of a written final assignment (Tesina) and an oral exam, as follows:

- Tesina: final assignment involving subtitling a video of around 10 min. from English into Italian. The students will be required to choose one among a range of options provided by the lecturer.

- Oral exam: powerpoint presentation (around 20-30 minutes depending on whether students have worked individually or in group), in which students will illustrate the approach and strategies adopted in the subtitling assignment. Indications on how to structure an academic presentation will be provided during the course. After the presentation, discussion 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. Students are allowed to work in groups of max. 4 students. In this case, the same mark will be assigned to all members of the group.

The course will be held in blended mode: 10 lessons will take place in presence and 5 lessons will be take place asynchronously on Moodle. In the asynchronous lessons, students are required to connect to Moodle and carry out the activities indicated for that week, but the lecturer will not be connected. The calendar of asynchronous lessons will be published on the Moodle course at the beginning of the course.
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 required to sign up to the Moodle course that will be indicated by the lecturer (the link will be published on the lecturer’s personal unive webpage) and, for exam preparation, refer to the materials and activities that will be uploaded in Moodle on a weekly basis.

Italian

Attendance is highly recommended. If you are not able to attend, please contact me at the beginning of the course.
The course will be held mainly in English, but some discussions might be held in Italian.

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