MA Translation

This module introduces you to key academic debates within the field of translation studies and addresses a range of topical issues that are highly relevant to the professional practice of translation through the illuminating framework of 20^th and 21^st century translation theory.

Touching on a range of currents of contemporary concern within the field, this module introduces you to broad theoretical questions that influence and impact upon the practice of the translator. This includes issues of 'loyalty', 'duty' and 'faithfulness' to the text-for-translation and to the audience of translation, translator ethics and the political positionality of the translator as an intercultural communicator and mediator. Behind the vision for this module is the insistence that becoming a professional translator requires not only a high degree of interlingual competence but also the development of a sophisticated critical attitude by which one evaluates one’s own strategic approach to meeting the needs and expectations of audiences within the context of a specific client brief.

In this way, a translator needs to navigate the challenges and opportunities posed by different texts and text types, and to do so within the context of changing audience needs and expectations. A translator also needs to understand their own decision-making process with regard to the source text and the audiences that will receive it in translation, in order both to reflect critically upon the challenges and opportunities presented. In addition to developing your knowledge of key debates within translation studies and core strategic approaches to translation, this module is designed to build your critical competence.

This module focuses on preparing you to develop key employability competencies as a freelance or in-house translator in the global translation and language service industry.

We’ll address core challenges for professional translators within the context of the translation employment market, such as:

• understanding the nature of freelance work and self-employment
• meeting the needs of translation agency and in-house translation employers
• the identification, evaluation and implementation of translational responses that match sensitively the demands of diverse texts and text types, within distinct domains of specialist language use and within the context of changing needs and expectations on the part of potential employers and audiences of translation

The content of the module is structured around the professional translation workflow of freelance or in-house translators and tackles key milestones in a translator’s project management cycle, including:

• navigating the translation commissioning process
• project and time management
• information, resource and research management
• linguistic and terminological mediation
• the management and implementation of computer-aided translation, machine translation and online tools for translators
• editing, revising, proofing and submission of completed work

Over the course of the module, you’ll gain experience of the principles of translation project management across a range of texts and text types, and within specialist domains of language use. You’ll learn to negotiate and implement computer-aided and machine translation platforms as well as online tools to facilitate the translation process, and to produce professionally usable translations for identified clients and within identified audience contexts.

This module develops your information management, research, writing, and project management skills within the context of an in-depth investigation into a relevant topic within translation theory or practice. It aims to equip you with the skills to locate and develop an in-depth knowledge of academic debate and currents of topical concern within the field of translation studies, and to critically engage with these discussions in the light of your own in-depth investigations into the theory and practice of translation.

This module offers you a choice between developing an extended critical argument in the form of an essay-style dissertation, or undertaking a capstone practical interlingual translation project and associated research-based critical essay in which the challenges and opportunities of translation are discussed and rooted in relevant debates in the academic field.

The Translation Mentoring Scheme for the MA is channeled through this module. The MA in Translation at Goldsmiths is one of the only programmes to assign students a professional translation mentor who will read your work and give dedicated feedback for you to implement as you progress throughout the programme.

In a globalised, interconnected world, organisations operating at a local, regional, national, and international level depend on skilled multilingual intercultural negotiators to facilitate communication, reach new audiences and promote good community relations.

Students on the MA in Translation have the opportunity to apply for secured telecommuting/remote work experience placements as part of their translator training via this Spring term option module. These remote work-based learning opportunities enable you to gain experience, develop your knowledge of business practice and build your professional competences as a translator and language professional.

This module brings you the opportunity to use your language, transcreation and intercultural communication skills in a professional context and is aimed at students wishing to build their professional translation experience, expand their translation portfolio, augment their CVs, improve their networking skills, and develop relationships towards future employment.

The module surveys key currents in literary and cultural theory from the turn of the 20^th century to the present day. Beginning with the examination of shifting ideas and theories of the literary during the discipline’s development, it goes on to explore key thinkers and tendencies, starting with Nietzsche. These will include Freud, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Benjamin and Adorno, Blanchot, Derrida, structuralism, gender and postcolonial theory.

Although the question of the relationship of theory to literary and cultural criticism is a central one, the module will enable students to focus on theoretical concepts in their own right. You’ll also be asked to consider the theoretical implications of the particular formal and stylistic choices made by the thinkers covered.

In a world increasingly dominated by globalisation and migration, the relationship between language and borders has become more complicated and, in many ways, more consequential than ever.

It is a key feature of contemporary literature to respond to these processes, as writers embed questions of language in the very practice of their writing. Their linguistic and formal innovations register new multilingual realities, bring different cultural and linguistic forms into dialogue, challenge alignments of language and nation, and address the possibilities and limits of translation in a globalised world.

This module will allow students to explore the implications of these forces and processes for our understanding of literature from the mid-twentieth century to the present.

Literary texts from a range of geographic, cultural and political contexts will be read alongside critical and theoretical debates at the intersection of several disciplinary perspectives: postcolonial studies, transnational studies, comparative literature, world literature and translation studies.

The aim of this module is to introduce you to a range of linguistic approaches of written discourse analysis. The module explores a range of frameworks and leads students to a discussion of how the analysis of texts can illuminate wider social issues, for example issues of power and ideology and issues of representation and identity. The seminars endeavour to give you the space to apply the techniques explored in the reading to a wide selection of texts (texts from the contemporary media, advertisements, textbooks, political and administrative texts, texts in translation, etc.)

You’ll acquire knowledge of different levels of linguistic analysis and learn to examine written discourse at the micro-level, and to link the micro to the macro. The use of a variety of texts is intended to lead students to debates about language use and social issues in different areas of human activity: mainly media, but also translation, education, etc. You’ll be encouraged to engage with the research literature and apply the theoretical concepts and linguistic approaches you become familiar with to independent analyses of self-selected data.

The overall aim of this module is to explore the diversity of the English language in relation to linguistic and social issues involved in language contact and multilingualism. You’ll have the opportunity to study the spread of English and the rise to its current status as a global language, discuss the establishment of (English) language standards and (standard) varieties world-wide, the emergence of English as a Lingua Franca, translanguaging and other language contact phenomena.

The focus will be on the challenges and opportunities open to multilingual societies and to consider the impact of multilingual settings on individuals. An understanding of Global Englishes and aspects of multilingualism provides you with the necessary conceptual and theoretical tools to understand English practices in a multilingual world and to conduct your own research within an area of interest.

This module combines a sociolinguistic with a discourse analytic approach in order to explore the socio-cultural contextualisation of language and meaning from two angles: language use and language representation. This dual focus will be evident throughout the module ; topics such as language and gender, language and ethnicity or language and the media will be examined in relation to the socio-cultural (and situational) contexts in which speakers use language as well as in relation to different representations of specific socio-cultural groups in the media and other (written) texts.

For example, we will investigate both how women speak and how women are spoken about, and we will discuss if and how the former relates to the latter and vice-versa. Other topics that will be addressed in this module include the political correctness debate, sexist language, multilingualism, cross-cultural approaches to politeness, attitudes to non-standard English (including patois and/or London Jamaican) and the linguistic construction of identity.

The module will introduce you to a wide range of empirical research and methodologies. Drawing on analytical tools and frameworks from semiotics, pragmatics, (critical) discourse analysis, conversation analysis, feminist linguistics, ethnography and variationist sociolinguistics, this module will investigate how language is used and meanings are created, interpreted and contested in a range of different texts, discourses and socio-cultural environments.

This course introduces you to key themes, studies and methods that have shaped the interdisciplinary field of intercultural communication. We’ll address questions of cultural difference and diversity from a range of theoretical and methodological approaches. We’ll study cross-cultural patterns of (communicative) practices, attitudes, values and cognition. We’ll ask how speakers construct culture and cultural identities in interaction, both in everyday private settings (e.g. couples talk) and in work/institutional settings (including business and education).

We’ll also explore how cultural norms and stereotypes are reflected in language and/or discourse and how they affect our thinking. We’ll focus our discussion on various levels of language, including speech events, speech acts, interactional styles, politeness phenomena and written discourse.

Throughout the course, we’ll consider the term ‘culture’ critically, comparing popular definitions of ‘culture’ as homogenous and static with postmodern models that highlight the heterogeneity and fluidity of ‘culture’. You’ll become familiar with a range of methodological approaches to the study of language and culture, including the ethnography of communication, discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, intercultural pragmatics and politeness theory. The course will not only ask you to study cultural and communicative norms and practices in a range of different English-speaking countries and settings, but it will also draw on research from a wide variety of languages. Students will be asked to draw on their own linguistic and cultural backgrounds and personal experiences in their critical engagement with this interdisciplinary field of study.

This module will focus on how language structure relates to meaning and communication. We’ll look at various aspects of language structure – sounds, words, sentences and short texts, and relate them to function and meaning.

For example, we’ll discuss how speakers deploy different grammatical resources to give varied representations of events and their participants. We’ll also explore how different structural choices help speakers express their knowledge, and certainty or uncertainty of events, or how they impose obligations or grant permission to their conversational partners, what means they use to express attitudes and take a stance, and how they figure out what others mean even when they mean something different from what they say.

The module aims to make clear the wider aims of linguistic research, as well as enable you to apply theoretical notions to specific data sets and develop your own skills of linguistic analysis, especially as it relates to human interaction and communication. Language structure will be seen as contextualised and contingent, subject to variation at any one time and change across periods of time.

What is English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)? What are ELF implications for language teaching? How can teachers address the plurality of English in their teaching? English as a Lingua Franca, and research into the plurality of English, is a vibrant field of investigation and this module aims to bridge the gap between the socio-cultural research on ELF and language teaching/teacher education.

You’ll start with exploring current research on the nature of ELF, focusing on pragmatic and multilingual aspects, before concentrating on pedagogic implications. Throughout the module, the emphasis is on the plurality of English, the fluidity and intercultural nature of ELF communication, and how to address these in pedagogy, in relation to multilingual resources, materials, assessment, a reconceptualisation of the notion of communicative competence and ultimately a change of mindset for an ELF-informed pedagogy.

This module is open to students interested in ELF and its applications for the classroom and to language teachers who would like to address ELF and the plurality of English in their pedagogy.

This is a new blended-learning module which will run in collaboration with the University of Bahia (Salvador, Brazil) in synchronous communication.

This course emphasises the pleasures of literature and aims to make students knowledgeable and committed readers of literature for children and young people. In the course we aim to address a range of issues in relation to culture and identity through literature for children.

We take a wide definition which includes picture books and graphic novels, media and dramatic texts. We consider historical perspectives and explore children's literature for today, as a distinct form, which is a product of both literary traditions and current ideological contexts.

Sessions will include consideration of the nature of literature for children, poetry and oral texts, picture books, media texts, graphic novels and reader response theory, and an exploration of literature about the refugee experience.

This module critically analyses the growth and character of cultural and creative tourism and the growing relationship between the creative industries and cultural tourism. We'll discuss notions of the creative class, the creative city, and the experience economy, which have been used to underpin strategies in cultural tourism development. Ideas about the growing sophistication of cultural tourists and their changing tastes suggest that travellers wish to move beyond consumption to ‘prosumption’. We'll connect directly with the way how economies change and how it makes imperative the definition of new touristic products, services, and experiences. 

With increasing competition between tourism destinations, the development of timely, attractive, and innovative tourism products has never been more necessary – whether using the historic environment in creative ways or exploiting contemporary cultural forms and/or tourism resources. 

This module looks at the governance of cultural tourism at different levels (from UNESCO to local government and local partnerships), best practices in destination management, and the development of new tourism products. The geographic spread of cultural tourism and the greater diversity of products, necessitates the examination of issues related to contested meanings, authenticity, ethics, and sustainability which has become increasingly significant in the sector.

Some might say that Museums and Galleries of art have been forced to develop an entrepreneurial strategy so that they can remain free, look after their buildings, realise ambitious new projects, compete with other forms of entertainment, including educational and leisure venues and establish themselves as important players on the international art scene. It may be unsurprising that working in an entrepreneurial way has come naturally to those in the creative industries and museums and galleries have enthusiastically embraced the challenges before them to increase audiences, embrace issues of diversity and offer a visitor experience that is both educational and enjoyable.

This ten-week module takes place on Friday early evenings and focuses on Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. Individual sessions examine how museums use their collections for education, interpretation and event programming and have successfully developed a dedicated communications strategy to market, promote, fund-raise and attract sponsorship.

Museums and Galleries of art make an important contribution to income generation in the UK. To achieve this successful outcome it is necessary for them to understand the role that culture plays in our society. The manner in which they display works of art, provide information and education, are committed to making their collections more accessible and generally strive to be welcoming, entertaining, friendly and rich in diverse opportunities shows how well they have understood the part they play in establishing culture at the heart of all that we do. This ten week course will focus on the growing importance of cultural organisations, how taste is shaped not only by museums and galleries but also by designers of fashion and lifestyle products and how commercial organisations are keen to engage in large-scale cultural projects as a way of attracting a new, younger audience and establishing themselves as key players in a modern society.

Individual sessions will focus on the many definitions of culture from Raymond Williams to Brian Eno; the connections between culture and class using the work of Bourdieu and Tony Bennett, the issue of taste as Greenberg saw it and more recently as the type of lifestyle choices we make. The course will also use case studies of large scale public cultural projects like the Unilever series in Tate Modern’s turbine Hall and the Fourth Plinth project in Trafalgar Square.

Although art museums use the words interpretation, education and communication as a way of differentiating between individual departments and the type of responsibility staff members have, there are important fundamental differences inherent within each term that are rarely examined or explained. This module will seek to explore these differences, and look closely at each of the three main concepts: interpretation, education and communication.

Individual sessions will examine the way in which art museums define their relationship to content, meaning and context, how they communicate their message, their interest in creating a suitable brand and image, the role of library and archive, development, fundraising and conservation.
There will be an emphasis on examining education and learning, the importance of access, diversity and the range of activities museums develop to attract new visitors and address the diversity and needs of an increasingly large visiting public.

The module tutor will introduce theories which relate to the writing of interpretative text, and consider how the experience of looking at art might be different if text were not available. There will also be a discussion regarding the role of the aesthetic in art education and the range of expectations visitors have from a museum visit.

Recent research in Asia has questioned the widely held assumption that tourism arose in the UK during the mid-19th century as a result of Thomas Cook’s introduction of the ‘package’, a combination of the cost of travel and another service.

It has been shown that travel and leisure existed in early Han Dynasty China as scholars and priests explored mountainous areas giving rise to one of the civilizations most enduring art forms, the landscape painting. Travel and leisure also seem to have gone hand in hand with that other widespread phenomenon, the pilgrimage, with the attendant development of hostelries, storytelling and souvenir production.

Industrial forms of tourism were introduced to Asia by European colonial powers in the late 19th and early 20th century with the development of hilltop stations to provide relief for officials and merchants working in tropical areas. Grand hotels were introduced with the Sarkies brothers opening up famous establishments in Myanmar (Burma), Singapore and Indonesia (Dutch East Indies). The inter war cruise ship industry made Asia accessible to wealthy Europeans and Americans with perceptible impacts on Asian hospitality traditions and visual and performing arts.

Western artists used the opportunities provided by tourism to open studios in Asia, notably Bali, often working alongside indigenous artists to create hybrid and highly creative art forms. The post-war era opened up parts of Asia to Western mass tourism, notably the so-called ‘rest and recreation’ of the US military in Thailand.

Tourism was also used as a nation building strategy by Asian leaders such as Suharto in Indonesia to encourage his countrymen to travel and to get to know their country and to project a tourist friendly external image of stability.

As the Asian economies developed, countries like Japan became major sources of outbound tourism with accompanying impacts on Western retail practices, especially with regard to fashion and luxury. By 2014 China had become the largest outbound and inbound tourism market with the introduction of China-friendly hotel ranking systems in Europe, such as the 5-dragons scheme, began to be experimented with in Europe.

Indian outbound tourism also became significant with some novel characteristics, such as an interest in the hybrid Indian-British culinary tradition of the ‘curry house’. Tourism is also one of the drives that has spread Asian culinary traditions around the world.

In our increasingly globalised world, the traditional cultural representations and relations of countries are being challenged to incorporate a multidimensionality of identity and a plurality of actors.

This module will introduce you to the major theories and ideas within international cultural relations and will provide insight into its practice by a wide range of actors (governments, international organisations, corporations, non-governmental organisations and individuals). The role of the arts, their practitioners and mediators is highlighted in relation to their importance in the establishment of relations between the peoples of different countries. 

Topics include learning about the history and theory of international cultural relations, discussing the notions of cultural diplomacy and public diplomacy, analysing the relation between the arts and diplomacy, investigating the concepts of cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue, mutuality, cultural and linguistic human rights, soft power and hegemony, and connecting these with contemporary developments in areas such as communication technology, transport and economic flows.

This module places emphasis on the discussion of current themes and issues at policy and practice level in this transdisciplinary area. It fosters a reflexive and entrepreneurial approach to international cultural relations, by encouraging students to actively engage in the area by developing their own research and projects, relating them to wider debates. The module thus allows for the development of critical, creative, practical and reflexive skills complementing other elements of the MA Cultural Policy, Relations and Diplomacy programme.

The module covers a range of trans-disciplinary contemporary issues that concern those researching and practicing in the areas of cultural relations and diplomacy. It will consider key questions faced by countries, regions, cities, organisations and individuals in creating and delivering policy and projects. The topics are broad and changeable responding to the current issues concerning policy makers, practitioners and the public engaged in the field – an indicative list of topics to be covered in the sessions is provided below.

While providing space for student led education through individual and collaborative presentations, the module works around topical and geographical sessions, each representing a contemporary issue and/or area of current interest in cultural relations and cultural diplomacy. These include for example: culture and international development policies and practices; the role of the cultural and creative industries in cultural relations and diplomacy; migration and (transnational) cultural citizenship; language, communication and identity in international cultural relations; international cultural policies and cultural co-operation; sessions with a geographical focus e.g China’s cultural diplomacy, EU strategy for culture in external relations; project planning, monitoring and evaluation for cultural relations and diplomacy.