Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

In the First Year, students are expected to make presentations of their Long Essay (Translation Project) proposals and on other topics that may be selected by the Course Instructors. This seminar will train them in preparing their PowerPoints and being ready for the oral presentation. The oral presentation will be assessed by a panel of faculty members. Students will receive feedback to enable them to improve upon their proposals.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The course discusses the definition of culture as applicable to the translation process and examines specific perspectives of perception and expression in different communities, with particular attention to the students’ own language communities, to cultural relativity and how cultural differences impact on translation. Students are exposed to relevant authentic materials such as foreign newspapers, advertisements, journals, short stories, novels, plays and other types of literature works as well as videos, movies and audio-visual documentaries. They are exposed to the importance of topical issues in the national, regional and world or international media, print, audio-visual or electronic. 

Credit Hours - 3

This course is designed to introduce students to improve upon the skills acquired in Semester 1 in the area of developing termbases/glossaries and managing translation memories. Students will be introduced to various termbases including the Interactive Terminology for Europe (IATE), Microsoft Terminology Collection, UNTERM. They will learn to import the said termbases, create their own termbases using various tools, export termbases and share termbases with their colleagues. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The course includes two main components. The first component focuses on ethical issues that arise in translation and the position the translator takes on these issues. The second component focuses on skills and competencies for building and running a translation services entity, including managing document workflows, business, managerial, sales and financial aspects, and client relationships.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content 

This is an exposure (at least, 12 weeks) to professional translation practice. The student is required to translate, at least, 6,000 words (cumulatively) over the internship period under competent supervision. The internship takes place in the second semester of the second year, either locally or abroad. Focus is on the various aspects of professional translation, namely: general, specialised and computer-assisted translation with emphasis on the relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes and their relationship with the various courses in the training programme. At the end of the internship, the student is expected to submit a report for assessment.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The course focuses on the correction of translated texts, quality control, unilingual editing of the target text, bilingual revision as well as re-reading. It also explores the relationship between translator and reviser and their respective roles. It includes practical exercises of both unilingual (editing) and translated texts (revision).

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The course focuses on structuring and writing a research paper and an end-of-course dissertation, issues of scientific research, writing a research proposal, stating a research problem and hypothesis, prescribed structural components of a dissertation, chapter structure, paragraphing, connecting ideas across chapters, paragraphs and sentences, introduction to style guides in scientific research. This includes the specificities of translation research, developments in translation research, relevant topics, key issues and findings in translation research. Students review relevant literature and present on it.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

In this course each student shall do well-organized presentations at various seminars, based on their reading of texts on translation studies, taking into consideration comments made by Seminar I panel members and participants. In the First Semester of the Second Year, they will be required to present the finalized versions of their proposals, guided by their preferred theoretical frameworks. They may also do presentations on other topics determined by the Course Instructors. In the Second Semester of the Second Year, they will present parts of their projects at seminars for consideration and improvement, depending on their progress. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course introduces students to discourse analysis, mainly oriented toward the acquisition of a methodological competence in translation of specialised and general texts. It provides students with relevant theoretical tools for discourse analysis, within the process of translating a variety of texts, helping them identify appropriate indicators in written discourse analysis, lexical relations, coherence and cohesion, thematic progression in text.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The aim of this course is to apply reading and writing strategies for translation purposes and teach students to reformulate texts with accurate linguistic requirements in the target language. The course will cover reminders of general writing conventions across languages (including spelling, punctuation, paragraphing) and vertical vs horizontal reading techniques. It also includes text comprehension beyond word level, sensitivity to text-type conventions and preferences, organising and presenting one’s thoughts in writing, using connecting devices in writing, as well as paraphrasing and intralingual and interlingual précis writing. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course introduces students to the theoretical framework and the constraints of audio-visual translation. It covers a wide range of IT tools for subtitling, dubbing, voice-over and other emerging practices in this field. Special emphasis will be placed on hands-on experience.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course focuses on strategies and techniques of reading and writing in professional translation. It explores general writing conventions and genres across languages, sensitivity to text-type conventions and preferences, using connecting devices in writing; paraphrasing, intralingual and interlingual précis writing; lexical relations, coherence and cohesion, thematic progression in text.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course is an introduction to literary translation. Literary translation being a creative process, the difference between this and other types of translation will be explored. While most translation strategies, techniques and general concepts, such as transfer between languages, cultures and contexts, fidelity, precision, inventiveness, etc. will form part of this course, some specific skills that fall into the domain of stylistic and poetic creativity will also be studied bearing in mind that literary translation is a specific kind of translation work.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

In this course, students will translate non-specialised texts with at least two language combinations (such as A>B, B>A). Texts should progress in complexity. Students will put into practice their knowledge of reading and writing as well as techniques and strategies of translation. Subsequently, translation assignment texts dwell on relevant current affairs topics at national, regional, continental and international levels. At this stage, texts are preferably made up of relatively simple discourse structures and focus is on the students’ ability to go beyond the words they read, to understand the source text and translate it appropriately. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The aim of this course, in the first semester, is to expose students to the translation of semi-specialized texts into English from Language B.  This will help the students to increase their mastery of the skills acquired during the programme and prepare them for the professional world.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The course defines and discusses technical translation texts/discourse and explores the difference between them and general translation or general texts. Students will be trained in translating various types of documents and specialty areas such as banking, economics, law, science and technology and environmental affairs. In this course, texts should progress in complexity and the focus will be on the students’ ability to go beyond the words they perceive to understand the relevant source text and communicate it efficiently through a target text which conforms to the functional (orthographical, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, textual) requirements or preferences of discourse in the target language.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The course involves community translation. It focuses on the definition of key concepts, a historical overview and developments of the practice and study of the discipline around the world and in Africa, similarities with and differences from traditional activities, good practices as well as specificities of practice, study and research in Africa. It includes case studies of practice for judicial, health, religious, political and other purposes. The course addresses the requirements for effective and efficient community practice such as linguistic, cultural, intercultural, communication, management skills. Students are given hands-on exposure to actual practice at grassroots level.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The course comprises two separate components of equal weight. The first is text-processing skills that are specifically useful for the activity of managing terms, including keyboards (shortcut keys), online dictionaries, thesauri, spell check and grammar check packages. Secondly, the course entails the major components of a Computer-assisted translation tool (CAT), such as translation memories and matching, Terminology Memory (TM) file types, online and standalone TMs, machine translation systems, creation and maintenance of bitexts, segmentation, and segmentation rules, connection between CAT tools and terminology databases.

Credit Hours - 3

Students will undertake the translation of a document which could include a regular text (whether technical or literary, between 7500 and 8500 words), audiovisual translation or localization of a website and related activities in consultation with the supervisor. In the case of audiovisual translation and website localization, the length of the video and number of words/pages must be determined by the Graduate Programmes Committee or Translation trainers in the Department and the supervisor, depending on the nature of the video and the website. A team could also work on a joint project such as a book.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The course exposes students to translation theories such as the Interpretative Theory (Seleskovitch and Lederer), Skopos (Vermeer), Functionalist/Text Analysis (Nord), Vinay and Darbelnet’s Translation procedures (Direct and Oblique), Newmark’s methods of translation (word-for-word, Literal; Faithful, Semantic, Adaptation, Free, Idiomatic, Communicative). By means of the use of relevant literature, it critically examines the various approaches to and theories of translation around the world. It emphasizes leading approaches and theories applied in Africa and beyond as well as the relevance of such theories and approaches for translation practice and the development of translation on the continent.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The aim of this course, in the first semester, is to expose students to the translation of semi-specialized texts from English into Language B.  This will help the students to increase their mastery of the skills acquired during the programme and prepare them for the professional world.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course is designed to equip students with knowledge of the history of translation. By use of relevant literature, students explore the importance of historical accounts to the development of translation theory and practice, and developments in translation activities (including pedagogy, technology, etc.) around the world. Students will learn about events that have shaped the course of translation.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The course focuses on the actual use of and proficiency in CAT tools, introducing students to specific Computer-assisted tools (CAT) tools (commercial and open source) such as SDL Trados (Live and Studio), Memsource, memoQ, Wordfast, Paratext, etc. It also covers the limitations and potential pitfalls of CAT tools. The course makes extensive use of relevant texts/documents with hands-on practical activities. Texts should increase in complexity. The course includes a focus on the particular demands that the African context place on CAT tools.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

The course comprises an introduction to terminology as a discipline: developments from earlier records to date, relationship with translation, relationship with vocabulary, and key concepts and terms in terminology. It also dwells on conceptual and ontological relations and organisation in terminology, types, perspectives and organisation of terminology work, types and structures of terms, terminological definitions, content and structure of terminological records, terminological products, standardisation and normalisation in terminology, etc. The course also focuses on issues like types and perspectives of terminology research, corpora and other resources in terminology research, term identification and extraction methods, including manual and electronic search.