31304 - Portuguese and Brazilian Linguistics and Language 3

Learning outcomes

At the end of this module, students should be able to reach Level C1 of the Portuguese language proficiency levels described in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

Course contents

This course (Translating and Retranslating Portuguese) aims to address theoretical and practical aspects of translation from Portuguese into Italian. Starting, in fact, with some preliminary and essential notions of translatology, which will enable students to familiarise themselves with some theoretical concepts useful for translation practice, the course will focus, in particular, on the new frontiers of the translator's profession, whether editorial or not, which are as broad as they are threatened by the new technologies. A number of lectures will be devoted to the challenge thrown down to “translation proper” by machine/assisted translation, in order not only to test the effectiveness of these tools (GT, Deepl, etc.) as regards the comprehension of texts in Portuguese and the quality of their rendering in Italian, but also and above all to train the students in that increasingly fundamental operation for those working in this sector, namely post-editing. Thus, with a view to the progressive development of theoretical awareness of translation, rather than the simplistic reduction of this ‘competence’ to an illusory set of rules, part of the teaching will also be devoted to the critical and comparative analysis of translations (mostly literary ) by professional translators, with the aim of reflecting on the strategies adopted by them in individual texts and on any interpretative problems encountered there. At the end of this process of critical refinement of their translating background, each student will then be confronted, individually and/or in groups, with the translation, retranslation and/or post-editing of textual samples of various kinds (bureaucratic, journalistic, specialised, literary), by means of exercises to be carried out at home and discussed collectively in the classroom.

 

Readings/Bibliography

The final exam will cover the following course readings, which will be made available to students at the beginning of the course:

- Umberto Eco, Quase a mesma coisa: experiências de tradução, São Paulo, Record, 2007. 

For those who are interested in deepening their knowledge about reverse translation, from Italian to Portuguese, it is recommended the reading of the following book:

- Claudia Zavaglia - Reginaldo Francisco, Parece mas não é: as armadilhas da tradução do italiano para o português, São Carlos, Editora Claraluz, 2008

Further readings, especially concerning machine/assisted translation, will be recommended and provided during the lectures.

Given the theoretical-practical nature of the course, with parts of individual and group work subject to collective revision in the classroom, students non attending classes are advised to contact the lecturer in order to agree together on bibliographical supplement that may enable them to at least partially compensate for that training gap.

Teaching methods

The course will be delivered through lectures and workshops, including translation exercises. This course provides participants with ample opportunities to apply techniques and skills through a series of translation assignments which form the basis for class discussion.

 

Students are also expected to attend language practice classes given by a native-speaker lector.

Assessment methods

The examination will consist of an oral test (in Portuguese) in which the student will present his or her re-translation and/or post-editing project relating to a Lusophone literary work, i.e. one that has already been translated into Italian and for which the need for a new version in this language must be justified beforehand. To this end, the theoretical reflections and bibliographical references offered during the course will form the basis of the dialogue between lecturer and learner, especially in order to justify the (better) adequacy of the new translation choices with respect to the previous ones, in a way that is not notional, but rather critically mature, and such, therefore, as to demonstrate an idea of translation that is both scientifically founded and methodologically coherent.

The assessment of the examination, obviously expressed in thirtieths (30/30), will take into account not only the overall success of the retranslation or post-editing project, but also the theoretical-practical awareness of the proposer, as well as his/her degree of communicative competence in Portuguese, to be considered more or less adequate for the year of study. The evaluation of the students' active participation in the collective activities of translation and discussion proposed weekly in class will also be included in the final grade.

The final mark of Linguistics will be integrated with the other ones obtained in the practical language classes ("esercitazioni linguistiche") component of the course.

The practical language classes exam is made up of a written and an oral that test all the four abilities. The written exam is four hour long and includes interpreting and translation; the oral part is a conversation on linguistic and cultural issues.

Teaching tools

PowerPoint, machine translation tools and dictionaries.

Office hours

See the website of Roberto Mulinacci