TRAM503 Translation for the Creative Industries

On successful completion you will be able to:

• Relate the fundamentals of key theoretical approaches to cultural facets of translation, with a view to suggesting sustainable digital solutions
• Develop self-efficacy and resilience by reflecting in a productive and critically-informed fashion on translation practice in a principled, lucid and scholarly manner and/or by demonstrating sufficient expertise to translate creative texts to adequate academic standards
• Analyse the strategic interaction of pictorial and linguistic elements with a view to questioning own assumptions, creating effective translations and self-evaluating the strategic use of (digital) resources
• Develop self-efficacy and resilience by reflecting in a productive and critically-informed fashion on the process affecting specific outputs in translation activity, thus questioning own assumptions and self-monitoring performance for real-life texts posing similar challenges
• Gain awareness of the issues, priorities and workflows in the creative industry which will be useful for students' future employment
• Develop/make effective use of relevant useful concepts and assess (digitally informed) creative content that will be transferable to other modules in the programme.

• Introduction to key concepts pertaining to semiotic and broader cultural or ideological aspects in translation of selected texts (such as advertisements, tourism texts, museum texts, plays, comic books).
• Practice in applying these concepts to their respective source text-target text language pairs.
• Practical source-text analysis exercises.
• Exploration of the transformative synthesis of micro-level features, macro-level organisation and pictorial elements in specific samples. • Integration of cultural considerations and aspects of rhetorical organisation in translation.
• Audience requirements and marketing preferences.
• Translation and creativity/originality ('transcreation' in industry settings).
• Using Machine Translation to explore creativity in translation.
• Exploring professional roles and workflows in the creative industry.

• Seminars, which are interspersed with opportunities for group and whole class discussions, where students will be able to assimilate, apply and question acquired knowledge and where they will be able to analyse concrete examples of translation from a process, product and cultural appropriacy angle. The above contact hours will be complemented with further materials (such as existing translations, texts, podcasts, exercise de-briefing) and activities (such as planning translation) for guided study posted on SurreyLearn.
• Students are expected to read language-related and transcreation-related sources outside classes in order to build their confidence in discussing elements of persuasion and cultural appreciation and they are expected to prepare texts for classes in advance so as to maximize their participation in hands-on exercises tackled in class.

• A Written Reflective Commentary (1,000 words) (40%) (to be submitted in the first half of the semester). This takes the form of a reflection on a culturally adapted text, enabling students to explore and test subject-specific knowledge, to develop research skills and to develop professional presentation skills of their final written contributions.
• Critical Essay (2,000 words) (60%) (to be submitted at the end of the module). This takes the form of an extended written piece reflecting on a transcreation project (new or existing) enabling students to develop research skills and subject-specific knowledge in a specialised area with a view to unlocking their creativity.

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