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 (the link to the Moodle course will be published before the start of the course on the lecturer’s webpage, section “Avvisi” https://www.unive.it/data/persone/18851176 ).
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; more specifically, students are required to create an audio guide or video guide script in English starting from an Italian source text written to be read.
The Italian source text to be intersemiotically translated will be provided by the lecturer (choice of two). 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 during the course)

- Tesina 2: final assignment involving subtitling a video documentary from English into Italian (further details will be provided during the course). The video to be subtitled will be 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 (‘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. 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: 9 lessons will take place in presence and 6 lesson 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

Information about the delivery mode (i.e. course held in presence, online, or in dual mode) will be provided as soon as possible, in line with Ca'Foscari's guidelines related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Students are highly recommended to regularly check Ca' Foscari website, as well as their own institutional email and the lecturer's webpage for updates on this matter.

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Cities, infrastructure and social capital" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development